Law enforcement was among the winners in the massive economic stimulus bill passed last week by Congress and signed this week by President Obama. The package includes nearly $3.8 billion for state and local law enforcement, much of it destined for enforcing the country's draconian drug laws.
The Byrne JAG program has been criticized by fiscal conservatives and progressive reformers alike as ineffective and a waste of money. The Bush administration tried repeatedly to zero out funding for the program, but it was always reinstated -- albeit sometimes at lower levels -- by the Congress.
The second largest chunk of police spending in the bill, $1 billion, is for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program. It will pay to put thousands more police officers on the street.
The bill also includes $225 million in state and local law enforcement grants "to improve the functioning of the criminal justice system" and another $225 million for law enforcement assistance to Indian tribes. There is another $40 million in grants "to provide assistance and equipment" to police agencies along the Mexican border, with $10 million of that allocated for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for its Project Gunrunner aimed at reducing gun smuggling into Mexico. Another $125 million is destined for rural states and rural areas to prevent and combat crime, "especially drug-related crime."
Cops and elected officials are already salivating and have created huge wish lists. The public safety wish list from the US Conference of Mayors totaled $5.5 billion and includes items such as $1.6 million for SWAT equipment, $56,000 for military grade rifles, $625,000 for unmanned aerial surveillance drones, and $130,000 for "covert operations" in Arlington, Texas; $600,000 for a "live fire" SWAT team practice house and $420,000 for a SWAT armored vehicle in Sparks, Nevada; $3.5 million for "Air Tactical Unit Support and Equipment" (read: cool new helicopter) for Hampton, Virginia; and $60,000 for five "tactical entry rifles" and other equipment in Ottawa, Iowa. (See more wish list examples at Radley Balko's The Agitator.)
Don't Buy Marijuana
Prohibition has created a toxic marketplace that pollutes the lives of many people.
Tell your kids: Don't buy marijuana! Getting high by making a lot of other people miserable isn't much fun.
Work for legalization, so we can all be happier.
Perhaps grow your own, instead?
The vast majority of home growers do not get caught. But for those who do, most LEA in the country will not arrest you for 2 or 3 plants; they'll take the plants, but you won't go to jail. Some places they'll let you get by with up to 10 plants without arrest, check your state's laws before you plant one seed or clone. You can usually disguise one plant among a bed full of flowers and foliage plants; don't group them, it makes it easier to see them from the air. Additionally, grow them as horizontally as possible, tie down the branches to keep the profile low and so the surrounding plants hide them from view but not sunlight. If you grow them right, are careful and don't get caught, you can often get a whole year's supply for one smoker off three plants (depending on how heavy a smoker you are). I haven't grown any for a couple of years, I don't do much gardening of any kind anymore, but this worked for me for many years and I''m right under the flight path of my local airport.
I do not advise growing indoors, drug cops watch power bills and who buys indoor growing equipment, besides there's too much chance of pests like spider mites attacking your plants, indoors. North, where there is a short growing period, grow an indica strain, it matures 2 months sooner than sativa does.
If you do decide to grow your own, tell no one at all, not even your best friend; secrets get out because you tell just one person, and sooner or later they will tell just one person and the person they tell will eventually tell just one person, and pretty soon it's no secret anymore. If the secret does get out you could be ripped off by pot thieves or the police could be tipped off, so keep your mouth shut and you should be fine. It also doesn't hurt to be a "Johnny Cannabis-seed" and plant lots of cannabis seeds in public flower beds and those big public flowerpots, to keep them busy with eradicating those plants, and away from your home garden.
Corporate Welfare Rats
Nixon Lie Keeps on Killing
"You're enough of a pro, to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we're planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell. Even if the Commission does recommend that it be legalized, I will not follow that recommendation."
- Richard Milhouse Nixon
Outside View: Nixon Tapes Pot Shocker
If Lies are Laws then War is Peace
Ooo - eeeee - hoo! Yooo - ho!
"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."
John F. Kennedy
Blessed is the Police State?
Exporting DEAmocracy
400 agents x $60/hr...
Target DEAth Merchants
"At DEA, our mission is to fight drug trafficking in order to make drug abuse the most expensive, unpleasant, risky, and disreputable form of recreation a person could have."
-- Donnie Marshall, Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
Authoritarians
This is part of our global contribution. The drug war has become the preferred foreign policy approach toward controlling much of the world. We export our drug war, our tactics, and, most of all, our DEA. (Now with offices in Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, Canada, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, Suriname, Jamaica, The Bahamas, Turks & Caicos Islands, Haiti, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Thailand, Mongolia, Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caldeonia, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Wallis & Futuna, Western Samoa, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia, Kiribati, Nauru, Philippines, Burma, South Korea, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Laos, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Greece, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Bahrain, Chad, Dijibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Russia, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, Germany, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Western Sahara, Channel Islands, Ireland, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, Azores, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Gibraltar, Portugal, Principality of Andorra, Spain, Spanish Enclaves (Ceuta & Melilla), Algeria, France, Monaco, Morocco, Tunisia, Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Central African Republic, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Italy, Malta, Montenegro, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Belarus, Hungary, Moldova, Slovak Republic, Ukraine.)
Money Spent on the War On Drugs this Year
$4,425,742,0 10 22:28pdt
The U.S. federal government spent over $19 billion dollars in 2003 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $600 per second. The budget has since been increased by over a billion dollars.
People Arrested for Drug Law Offenses this Year
407,434 10 22:28pdt
People Arrested for Cannabis Law Offenses this Year
193,128
Throwing Away the Key or the Taxpayers' Money? (PDF)
"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."
- John F. Kennedy
gunut rant...
The NRA strikes Back By Chris Bryson
An important and largely overlooked force driving the prison boom in the United States is the National Rifle Association. With a membership of some 3 million, an estimated war chest of $140 million, and paid lobbyists in ail 50 states, the NRA has thrown its weight behind so-called "get tough on crime" measures and prison-building initiatives.
Charlton Heston died,NRA's MandatoryMinimum didn't
FAMM - All about Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
Slavery: Another Fine Product Still Made in the USA! 12/17/01
SLAVERY IS STILL LEGAL in the USA. Contrary to what we may learn in school, the American Civil War did not see the complete abolition of slavery in 1865. The 13th Amendment to their constitution reads "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime..."
Prison Industrial Complex Attacks Prop. 5
Getting Rich Off Prohibition
Judges Caging Kids for Cash & Rehabmolestations
Signs of Sickness and D.E.A.th
"Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both."
- John F. Kennedy
Corporate Welfare The Shame Page
TESTIMONY of Stephen Moore Director of Fiscal Policy Studies
Cato Institute Washington, D.C. before the Budget Committee
U.S. House of Representatives Corporate Subsidies in the Federal Budget June 30, 1999
Olbermann: To all of you in the Corporate boardrooms.
By Heather Mar 19, 2009 excerpted
Enough! Stop viewing the public's reaction to this naked, unhindered robbery of the public coffers, and your audacious, immeasurable sense of proprietorship and entitlement stop viewing our anger as some kind of brief impediment, some traffic delay that keeps you from your God-given corporate ballpark sponsorships, and perpetually remodeled offices, and the divine right of $38 million "compensation packages."
You, gentlemen and ladies, and not the good and long-suffering average people of this country, you are fomenting rage in this nation. You are the losers in this equation, and the people are the generous ones; they have not assembled in the streets with pitch-forks and flaming torches. You are the ones perceived — understood in a visceral and even transcendent way — as the committers of what is becoming class economic rape. ...
... And heed this one word before these people grow weary of forgiving you, and instead decide to bring the "good life" — which you have built on their backs — crashing down on top of your heads. When the next boardroom needs re-modeling, or the next bonus paid, or the next jet purchased, remember that one word: Enough!
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