Vote YES or NO on Prop 19

[SCF]

ok back on track,

lets here those Facts, rip apart prop 19 with the actual wording of it, instead of what you think might happen.

so you think if people thought that way for prop 215 it would of passed??

fear is your worse enemy, dont be afraid to fight the man.


also i want to say one thing.

prop 19 DOES change something in medical prop 215, by excluding them from TAXES. as it should be, so now club owners, caregivers and patients shouldnt have to worry about those cost.

where as of now, i know of at least 5 counties Taxing it!!!!!!!

its already being taxed people. and with timothy Leary Vs the Supreme court , you can not self incriminate by filing taxes.. and wont be held liable.

court rulling!!!!

 

[TruthOrLie]

There are over 2000 posts in this thread. Excuse me for asking for some clarity.

Not all of us mark down on paper where we left off on a thread so that when we come back we can click back to that page.

Also, since when on a public forum are messages directed to certain individuals? If you have problems with other members chiming in, then send a private message.

I don't waste my time reading people's opinions here if I can't share my opinion as well.

 

[vta]

DIANNE FEINSTEIN TRIES TO PLAY THE BIG VILLAIN IN THE FIGHT FOR LEGAL POT

Feinstein Is the Poster Figure Against Prop 19, Trotting Out Lame-Duck Allies and Hackneyed, Incorrect Arguments.

Last month, Senator Dianne Feinstein signed the dotted line on California's Proposition 19, which would responsibly decriminalize cannabis for personal use after ballot results this November. But she signed the wrong side, becoming co-chair of the No on 19 Campaign -- the latest in a long line of out-of-touch positions by Feinstein in California politics.

There are so many reasons for Feinstein to support legal pot in California: Legalizing cannabis for recreational use would generate over a billion dollars for the state's parched coffers, during a time its deficit has fully dwarfed that of other American states and its hyper-inflated housing market has run out of air. In any sane world, that alone would be reason to vote yes on 19. But once you add all in the ancillary benefits -- whether it's the millions of dollars saved from not having to imprison and process weed patsies, or the millions of sick and elderly who would have access to cannabis, which would in turn become more culturally accepted as the millennia-old medicine that it is -- it's pretty much a no-brainer.

Feinstein's Priorities

But while Feinstein has opposed Prop 19, it's clear she hasn't quite figured out whether marijuana is a priority. A cursory glance at the venerable California senator's official Web site reveals her public positions on many issues. Feinstein's press release page has a menu bar featuring over 30 issues that have consumed her legislative time and concern. But not one of them is dedicated to cannabis legalization or even criminalization proper, even though her own state is about to vote on it in November. Feinstein's inability to side with her state on what the polls have consistently shown is a local winner is instructive: Recent polls show there is more local support for Prop. 19 than for many of the state's major politicians, including Feinstein herself.

Her Math Sucks

Despite her official site's deafening silence on decriminalization, Feinstein is nevertheless determined to kill Prop. 19. But when she summons the courage to criticize it publicly, she's lacking in sense and cents.

"California will not see a single positive result if Proposition 19 passes," Senator Feinstein claimed, in a statement announcing her co-chairmanship of the No on 19 campaign with L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca. "It is a poorly constructed initiative that will cause harm to Californians on our roadways, and in our schools, workplaces and communities."

Look past the loaded rhetoric, and Feinstein's data doesn't work. Although she offered up multiple scary political and economic certainties in defense of her co-chairmanship, Feinstein cited a RAND Corporation study concluding that the only certainty from Proposition 19's passage would be lowered cannabis prices and increased consumption. "Tax revenues could be dramatically lower or higher than the $1.4 billion estimate provided by the California Board of Equalization ( BOE )," RAND's report Altered State? Assessing How Marijuana Legalization in California Could Influence Marijuana Consumption and Public Budgets explained.

Meanwhile, California's State Board of Equalization -- which unlike RAND is actually tasked with collecting sales and use taxes from alcohol, tobacco and fuel -- has crunched the numbers on Proposition 19 ( PDF ) and found that excise and purchase fees could bring in $1.4 billion to cash-strapped California, which is about 10 percent of the $14 billion the plant pulls in annually. And the BOE is standing by its math.

"The BOE's revenue estimate was a sound analysis based on a specific proposal with specified revenue measures applicable to a defined commercial market, where supply, demand, and price could reasonably be estimated," BOE chairwoman Betty Yee ( PDF ) explained in late September. But even she admitted that how much revenue the proposition will ultimately generate depends on how much local governments choose to tax it. In other words, parsing the RAND nerdspeak, Proposition 19 could generate way less than $1.4 billion if local governments decided to tax it hardly at all, or way more if local governments decided to tax it heavily. Which do you think they'll pick?

Feinstein's Weak Allies

Feinstein is lined up against Proposition 19 with a bong-load of compromised political animals. That includes Republican candidate for governor Meg Whitman, whose latest disgrace is getting caught railing against illegal immigration, even though she employed an undocumented housekeeper for years. Feinstein's No on 19 ally and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate Carly Fiorina is similarly flawed: She was named one of the 20 worst American CEOs off all time, after her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard ended with a forced resignation and a 50 percent devaluation of the company's stock. But Feinstein's most compromised No on 19 ally probably has to be outgoing California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose cannabis hypocrisies range from smoking a joint ( while eating fried chicken and birthday cake ) in the weight-training film Pumping Iron to actually helping kick-start the state's decriminalization process.

"I think it's time for a debate," Schwarzenegger argued in 2009. "And I think that we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what effect it had on those countries, and are they happy with that decision."

More recently, Schwarzenegger signed a new California law that demotes possession of up to an ounce of cannabis to no worse than a speeding ticket. And you could hear his creaky rationale all the way to Washington.

"Notwithstanding my opposition to Proposition 19," Schwarzenegger hedged, "I am signing this measure because possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction in everything but name. In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket."

Schwarzenegger's bald-faced political equivocation has a strong ally in Feinstein. She similarly hedged in a 2009 letter on legalization, decrying in one paragraph cannabis' community harm and in the next praising its broad possibilities.

"I do recognize that marijuana may have medicinal properties that could alleviate conditions such as AIDS-related wasting and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting," Feinstein said. "I do not oppose further research on the potential medical efficacy of marijuana and support compassionate use in medical situations when prescribed by a physician in writing for serious and/or catastrophic illnesses."

Feinstein Standing In the Way of History

Contrary to Feinstein's confidently dystopian prophecies, cannabis and hemp have been around for centuries and we're all still here. Evidence of its usage dates back to the third century B.C.E., although its real record probably stretches back further. Its criminalization as we know it didn't start until the UK and America started banning it in the early 20th century. By the time this century is over, it is certain to be decriminalized, meaning this last century or so of criminalization is a vanishing coordinate in the temporal stream. A recent Rasmussen poll showed that 65 percent of respondents believe that cannabis will be legal within a decade.

"It is worth remembering that our last three presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, would have been stigmatized for life and never would have become presidents if they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and been busted for pot during their reckless youthful days," former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara wrote in defense of legalization. "Countless other Americans weren't so lucky."

She Won't Go Green

Apart from being a historical inevitability, decriminalization of pot also makes serious environmental sense. Which ought to sit with Feinstein just fine, given how worried she is about global warming.

"I am working on a comprehensive package of legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - the leading cause of global warming - from all sectors of the economy," Feinstein's mission statement on the global climate crisis explained. "Every business, home, and industry will have to do its part."

One would hope that would mean ramping up local industrial hemp production, currently illegal, which made obvious sense to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who both grew it. California's lumber industry had its worst year ever in 2009, which would smart less if hemp, one of the fastest-growing and environmentally friendly biomasses on Earth, was grown and forested locally rather than expensively imported from Canada and China. Hemp should also make Feinstein smile, since her environmental mission mandates that America increase its supply of biofuels.

"The fact that hemp does not need to have land cleared to grow it, grows faster than any of the crops currently used and leaves the ground in a better state when it is harvested should surely be enough for it to be considered a perfect crop to offset the carbon currently produced by fossil fuels and by the less efficient biofuels," argued Giulio Sica in the Guardian. "Surely if it was mass-produced," he added, its drawbacks "could be overcome and its many benefits as an efficient biofuel could be harnessed."

But in spite of convincing economic, political, cultural and environmental arguments, to say nothing of history itself, Senator Feinstein has added her clout to an opposition running on empty. Whether this is because she doesn't feel like staving off critics -- although even anachronistic whiners like Glenn Beck and so-called tea partiers are leaning towards decriminalization -- or because she honestly believes her astounding claim that "California will not see a single positive result if Proposition 19 passes" is besides the point. In California, we like to get ahead of history when possible, and Proposition 19 is an obvious example of our revolutionary political spirit. Feinstein is standing in the way. Let's hope she moves out the way before she's steamrolled by history.




Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Author: Scott Thill
Note: Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

 

[Greyskull]

Just one-third of those surveyed said it was “morally wrong” for adults to smoke marijuana, but 70 percent disagreed with the statement “it should be legal for my neighbor to grow marijuana in his or her yard.”

yep. thats a quote. from: http://totalbuzz.ocregister.com/2010/10/13/o-c-poll-taxing-marijuana-is-a-good-idea/42500/

full text:

Orange County residents don’t want their neighbors growing pot, but they like the idea of raising money for the state by taxing it, according to a new survey from Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Public Policy and Social Science Research Center.
Just one-third of those surveyed said it was “morally wrong” for adults to smoke marijuana, but 70 percent disagreed with the statement “it should be legal for my neighbor to grow marijuana in his or her yard.”

Separate from a question on Proposition 19’s call to legalize pot, the survey found that 61 percent agreed that “raising money for the state by taxing marijuana is a good idea.”

Pollsters also asked if Orange County residents favored the passage of Prop. 19, which would allow cities and counties to tax the sales of pot. However, that finding deserves a big asterik: Only 78 percent of those surveyed voted in the last presidential election, and Republicans were undersampled compared to the O.C. electorate.

In other words, it’s not a scientific predictor of how O.C. will vote, let alone what will happen statewide.

Nonetheless, the findings are likely to cheer Prop. 19 foes, as 57.8 percent said they would vote against it even though the question stated it could “significantly increase state and local government revenues.”

note that the article clearly states "it’s not a scientific predictor of how O.C. will vote, let alone what will happen statewide."

discuss

 

[VIKINGtrich]

Anyone catch the MMJ piece on AC360 the other night? I only saw a few minutes of the end, but from what I watched, it was Pro-Pot all the way....I wish I could have caught the entire program, but I didn't know it was coming on....Looked cool though..Had Doctors and Phsycologist that, from what I could gather, where for pot, or atleast coming out saying its not harmful...which is great to hear on tv, instead of the usual bullshit, ie: If you smoke pot more than 6 times you will start to kill your family members, or, After the 10th time of getting high, you will turn into a vampire and try to take over the world, at night time of course....Shit like that.....There are tons more, but thats all I care to make up at this point, still have to search the new post on ICM to get my daily fix.....Later!

Puff Puff Pass........FUCK THAT! lets all smoke a joint to ourselves.

 

[dagnabit]

So I'm serious when I say I'm done with ya'll. Good luck in your endeavors, peace in your lives, but I don't want anything to do with any of you.

 

[mean mr.mustard]

Well isn't that antagonistic.

Shame on you.

 

[vta]

the quote or the reply?

 

[mean mr.mustard]

 

[SCF]

All you need is Love!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4p8qxGbpOk


Hugs everyone

 

[mean mr.mustard]

And maybe some pot...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ_G9ETE21U

 

[Mr Celsius]

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! But that is what you do best isn't it. You need to delete this account and come back as Celcius Boy! Mr Celcius kind of implies that there is some level of maturity there.... and everyone knows there is not!

later dude!

 

[rives]

I thought that I picked up on a trend here, so I went back a bit to check it out. About 80% of the posts made by MMM and Celsius have some component of whining in them based on their treatment by the YES cadre. Most of the remaining posts are insulting, demeaning, defamatory, or just deranged. The funny thing is that they appear to believe that their treatment stems from voicing opposition to prop 19!

 

[Herborizer]

Yeah, a moderator is desperately needed in this thread. Thanks in advance!

 

[mean mr.mustard]

I thought that I picked up on a trend here, so I went back a bit to check it out. About 80% of the posts made by MMM and Celsius have some component of whining in them based on their treatment by the YES cadre. Most of the remaining posts are insulting, demeaning, defamatory, or just deranged. The funny thing is that they appear to believe that their treatment stems from voicing opposition to prop 19!

Really?

I'd agree that many of my posts are responses to treatment.

I also think you missed any of the posts that the treatment derived from.

Just because I think that repeating GREED doesn't a fact make shouldn't require belittling me or others.

I don't know how I got lumped in with an angry Jesus, but I'd like to reasonably request more honesty from everyone.

Insulting, demeaning, defamatory, and deranged seems to describe another in this thread much moreso than myself.

I would also tend to agree with the notion that this treatment does stem from what people THINK I said... but I don't see what's so funny about it at all.

I was pretty respected in this community and have done much to further its cause.... I can't seem to feel much of the same vibe as of late...?

If I am hindering this community, by all means, tell me to stop.

Or you could give me a reason you find it funny.

 

[SCF]

But when you talk about destruction, dont you know you can count me out!!!!

But you know its going to be! All right!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jKhmjdx01U&feature=related

 

[kmk420kali]

Really?

I'd agree that many of my posts are responses to treatment.

I also think you missed any of the posts that the treatment derived from.

Just because I think that repeating GREED doesn't a fact make shouldn't require belittling me or others.

I don't know how I got lumped in with an angry Jesus, but I'd like to reasonably request more honesty from everyone.

Insulting, demeaning, defamatory, and deranged seems to describe another in this thread much moreso than myself.

I would also tend to agree with the notion that this treatment does stem from what people THINK I said... but I don't see what's so funny about it at all.

I was pretty respected in this community and have done much to further its cause.... I can't seem to feel much of the same vibe as of late...?

If I am hindering this community, by all means, tell me to stop.

Or you could give me a reason you find it funny.

Dude...enough with the melodramatics--
Yeah, you have been around as a respectable member for a while-- That has not changed--
This is 1 (One) Topic...you have repeatedly failed to respond in a way that has much merit-- Yes, I do agree that there are things about 19 that don't go far enough...but I do not think they are worthy of a "No" Vote--
You have even agreed to that...but still you seem to oppose--
I don't get it--
No bro, this has nothing to do with the rest of your History here...only this--

 

[vta]

"Stoners Against Prop 19" Debunked in New Video


by David Borden,
Last week we reported on the forces lined up for and against California's Prop 19. A surprising element found in the "against" mix are portions of the cannabis reform community. Some of them are clearly self-interested medical marijuana sellers, and we believe that all of them are thoroughly mistaken or misguided. It's a loud group of people, but one whose actual size and significance is unclear.

I did not closely follow the evolution of the "Stoners Against Prop 19," but one event that's said to have given it steam was a video interview by California medical marijuana patient KC Kimber with Dennis Peron, the father of medical marijuana in California and sponsor of the Prop 215 medical marijuana initiative, who regrettably has opposed Prop 19. (I'm having trouble find the video, hence no link.) Kimber discovered later that Peron had fed him a lot of disinformation, and has been campaigning since then for Prop 19's passage. Yesterday he released an interview with cannabis expert and Prop 19 proponent Chris Conrad which debunks Peron's claims.

We hope that common sense (perhaps with some help from our reporting) has already made it clear to our readers that Prop 19 is a legalization initiative (albeit the first stage of legalization with more work to be done); that it will help, not hurt, medical marijuana patients (as I've gone into on Huffington Post); and that any compromises it makes are small and necessary ones and that we'll be far better off, now and in the continuing effort, if it passes. We don't want to contribute an exaggerated sense of the importance of the "Stoners Against Prop 19" movement by focusing too much attention on them, but because the vote is likely to be close, and because some of their claims have made it into the mainstream media, we are posting the video here just in case. If you want more information on this subject, we recommend Chris's Prop 19 Fact Check and Rumor Control page.

Regarding Peron, we see him as a hero for what he did to bring medical marijuana into being in California, work without which Prop 19 might not even be possible today. We've heard that he's ill, and we wish him well. Prop 19 is too important to hold back on, and so even Dennis Peron cannot be let off the hook when he spreads false information about it, at least not until the election's done.

Click here for Video...do it

 

[vta]

Fact: If California Legalizes Marijuana, the Feds Can't Overturn It



by Scott Morgan

Arguably the most plainly false argument to emerge in the debate over Prop 19 is that the new law could be "challenged in court" and overturned by the federal government if it passes. Obviously, opponents of marijuana legalization would like its supporters to believe their vote is pointless, but the truth is that Prop 19 would be just as legally binding as the medical marijuana law that came before it.

The latest example of this false claim comes from Bill Whitaker at CBS News:

Even if it passes, pot would still be illegal under federal drug laws, so it's likely Prop 19 will be challenged in court. That means the whole controversial issue could just go up in smoke.


This just isn't true. There is literally nothing the feds can do to change California law. If state laws had to be the same as federal laws, then the term "state law" wouldn't even be familiar to us. Each state has its own unique set of laws that are enforced by police and courts in that state. Federal laws are completely different and they only apply when you're dealing with federal police and federal courts.

Of course, it's also true that federal law can be enforced anywhere in the country, and that seems to be what's confusing people here. If Prop 19 passes, the closest the federal government can come to interfering with it is to make their own arrests and carry out prosecutions in federal court. This works fine for making an example out of someone they don't like, but it hardly lessens the impact of a major change in state law. Marijuana would remain legal in the eyes of California police, and that's what counts. Just look at the medical marijuana situation, where the feds made some busts, but still failed to prevent a massive industry from forming, because the feds can't realistically take over the role of local law enforcement.

It's critically important that voters (as well as journalists) understand how this works so that everyone knows the facts before the vote on November 2nd. If Prop 19 passes, the issue cannot and will not "just go up in smoke," no matter how badly the drug warriors in Washington, D.C. wish that such a possibility existed. Please consider contacting CBS to suggest a correction to their coverage.

 

[vta]

I like this comment from that last article,,,

Prop 19’s passage does not violate anyone’s civil rights. Rather, it establishes new rights, or at least a partial restoration of rights since the 1937 marijuana tax stamp act took them away. Prop 8, however, as well as Arizona’s neo-fascist ID verifications; both violate people’s civil rights. Civil rights violations can be challenged in court. Challenging freedom is much more difficult.

Much like the federal court decision against Prop 8, the appropriate legal standing necessary to bring a lawsuit against Prop 19's passage will be critical. Because Prop 19 promotes civil liberties as opposed to curtailing them, there can be no aggrieved accuser other than a federal government that’s lost its grip on reality.

Giordano