Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, last week blocked the release of $95 million in funds destined to help Mexico prosecute its war on drugs, saying neither the US nor the Mexican governments had shown they had a clear strategy for moving forward.
"The whole things looks like coughing up money with no accountability," a Leahy aide told CQ Roll Call.
Leahy had originally blocked a $229 million State Department request for Plan Merida funding last fall, but the committee released $134 million in April after receiving a 2 ½ page explanation from State. The committee held up the remaining $95 million pending further information from the US and Mexican governments, but neither government had responded by last week, so last Thursday, Leahy reconfirmed the hold on the funds and called on both governments to define a joint strategy that could succeed.
"We received less than three pages of explanation," said the Leahy aide. "Senator Leahy does not sign away a quarter of a billion dollars just like that."
In addition to concerns over the lack of strategic vision, Leahy also has raised alarms about increasing human rights violations as the Mexican government handed a larger role to the military and about the issue of coordination and consultation. His aide said that lack of a clear difference in vision under new Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto also contributed.
Leahy blocks release of funds for Mexico to fight the drug war.
It's ABOUT time that these "pot politicians" start understanding that they're pissing away over $50 BILLION/year fighting this FAILED War on Drugs. Over 80% (87% IIRC) of the money spent to fight this FAILED WAR ON DRUGS, went/goes directly to Cannabis eradication. 47% of the people in Prison right now were there INITIALLY for "Simple Possession". Over 80% of those in prisons right now are "Non-violent drug offenders". Since the Drug Wars inception we've spent $1 TRILLION to fight this war that hasn't changed the usage rates of Americans one iota since 1936. We've outfitted our Police forces to look like "Military Special Ops" and that's UNCONSCIONABLE to do to American citizens. We're having DRONES flown over our homes to see if we're growing Cannabis, they SPY on you, they ask your NEIGHBOR to SPY on you for them, they tell the Utility companies report to them unusually high usage rates of electricity, or your cellphone records, they listen to your phone calls, read your e-mails, taken away your 2nd Amendment rights, etc... and every arrest they make allows the CARTELS to get more and more powerful. The kind of stuff they're doing to us right now, is shit that we were taught in grade school, that the RUSSIANS did to their citizens and how oppressive they were for doing it. Maybe I'm dating myself with that comment however. ;-) Now they're taught that Russia's our friend, and I'm a Prince too.
Having 30 Cops dressed like "Special Ops", bust down your door in the middle of the night, then expect you NOT to defend your HOME or your FAMILY! If you try to defend your Castle, they'll just shoot you! They don't care! Throwing you and your kids or Grandchildren (in the particular instance I'm referring to and NO it's not ME) on the ground FACE DOWN with an M-5 trained directly on the 5 year olds head with his foot in her back, traumatizing and terrorizing the child. All this so they could eradicate 12 plants (that were strictly for personal use and perpetrated upon a Card holding patient, who with 12 plants was within his limit) from some ones BASEMENT! Oh... btw... all charges were dropped within 2 days. However, the 5 y/o STILL suffers from the effects of what they did to her. She still has "Night Terrors" over the incident. The CURE in this instance is definitely worse than the PROBLEM and is in many more cases as well, but they just KEEP throwing $$$ at it. This has GOT to stop and will ONLY stop after the American citizens say ENOUGH!!! It's time to get past this crap they've been spewing about Cannabis. It's time to realize that they not only LIED to you but, they're wasting Taxpayer money (then tell us to send more), trying to eradicate a product/plant that the majority of Americans 56%, believe should be legal anyway. We're destroying the American Society with this Drug War. We're breaking up families, creating single parent households which more often than not the kids end up getting in trouble and VOILA, all of a sudden they are in the system as well. We've got to stop creating criminals out of people over a damned flower. When we incarcerate these people for "Simple Possession", we all of a sudden have to pay $77,000/yr to house them, all the while taking someone OUT of the Taxpayer BASE that a lot of times were "Successful, Law abiding, taxpaying citizens" right up until the point that WE made a criminal out of him. There's a lot of movement lately for the States to regulate their own drug policy as well as numerous other issues the Feds have put upon the States with another "Unfunded Mandate". The States need to just STOP participating in these raids like they did during the end of Alcohol Prohibition. Then the Feds will have to capitulate because THEY don't have the manpower to police the entire country and NO MONEY to hire them. We only need another 5-6 States before we can nullify the War on Cannabis anyway.
DECRIMINILIZING ALL DRUG RELATED JAIL TIME
For as much as the remaining Congressional support for Medical Marijuana being another tool of the American Congress and the nations involved in a border dispute, it does not capitalistically involve the use and safety of using the grown herb, marijuana. The laws regarding personal recreational use have become more harsh as I remember the country's National Comprehensive Drug Act of the late 70's almost winning over the majority of nonusers voting for a policy that included no illegality at all. No , this War has become just this- a War for someone or others just to collect the BOOTY OF WAR. We today have never ever seen the dispondancies to ferver a United States Cold and Foreign War on the land regarding division of races and thusly reinstill Confederate Practices after the Civil Rights had all but represented an EEOC procurement of employments and rights for women like Negroes earning equal pay. This war is waged by the same ones who relegated a look to Civil War answers to a Blackwoman's personal wealth that had been finagled by the USGovernment when chopped into individual state security programs. Does anyone know the depth to which the everyday housing of inmates, state and federal expenses are that are not listed on the budgets?
The unspecified entities that are not funded by US Sociopolitical are just that. In order to h ave an encounter of the third kind, there must have been busy "labs" conducting studies on biochemical altercations of the norm. These subjects are now taking the highest paid positions on Wall Street, and corporate policies runaway with morphing entities that online, are named one minute and changed the next. It is the byproduct or hybrid person, not car, that is establishing itself as a GROUP OF IMMIGRANTS HOMEMADE TERRORIST FROM DRUG CHARGES ON INMATES. Scifi channel itself is enough to discourage the promotions of UNKNOWN SUBSTANCES...ALL IF THAT WERE REAL. NOW WE KNOW THAT MUCH OF THE TERRORISTIC ACTIVITIES CAN BE A DUPLICATE POLICY IE. MAMMY MADE MOSLEMS, THAT ARE ACTUALLY CLINICALLY CLONED FOR WHAT NEXT, TERRORISTIC ACTS???LIKE 911 AND ALL OTHER INTERNAL SECURITY MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS,
yET BLAME IT ON THE DRUG LORDS.. I SAY STOP T HE MADNESS AND INVESTIGATE THE CRIMINAL INTENT WHEN QUANTIFYING THE PENALTIES AND JUST SEE WHAT GETS DRAWN ONTO THE TABLE, WHEN IT IS JUST SMOKE THAT IS BEING REGULATED...NO IT IS ANOTHER BEAST IN THIS FARCE.
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