Pitfalls abound as legal marijuana sales begin
SourcePitfalls abound as legal marijuana sales begin
Associated Press Sun Dec 29, 2013 10:14 AM
DENVER — Colorado and Washington state are launching the world’s first legal recreational marijuana markets in 2014. Though pot has been sold for three decades at coffee shops in the Netherlands, the two states are the first to regulate and allow a full industry. [Yea, and millions of tons of marijuana has been sold on the black market since it was made illegal at the Federal level in 1937 with the passage of the "1937 Marihuana Tax Act", so I say "so what!!!!" to that silly argument]
Being first to allow growing it, processing it and selling it doesn’t come without risks. The states face plenty, from a potential crackdown over a drug that’s still illegal under federal law to threats to public health. [What rubbish!!!! 6 million people die world wide from the harmful health side effects of using tobacco each year. 2.5 million people die world wide from the harmful health side effects of using alcohol each year. And of course a big 0, that's ZERO people die every year from the harmful health side effects of using marijuana. Even if that increases to a few thousand people who cares, it ain't nothing compared to the millions of people that die each year from the unhealthy side effects of booze and tobacco!!!!]
A look at some of the pitfalls the two states will want to avoid as Big Weed tries to go mainstream:
YOUTH USE: The U.S. Department of Justice has told the states it won’t interfere with state marijuana laws as long as they keep the drug away from those without permission to use it. Top of that list: children. Neither state will allow people under 21 to buy pot. [This is probably another one of Obama lies. Obama lied about not sending his DEA thugs to California to shake down medical marijuana patients, and Obama lied about not sending his DEA thugs to Colorado and Washington to shake down legal users of recreational marijuana.]
HEALTH: Some doctors warn that increased marijuana use will result in more emergency-room visits. There’s not enough data to show if that is happening, though some hospitals have reported spikes in child admissions for pot overdoses. With no Food and Drug Administration oversight, the two states are producing their own product-safety standards to make sure pot is as potent as labeled and doesn’t contain harmful molds or other contaminants. [Again 8.5 million people die worldwide every year from the harmful health side effects of using tobacco and liquor, but ZERO people die every year from the use of marijuana. I seriously doubt that recreational marijuana use will cause any new problems in America!!!]
SMUGGLING: The states have also been told they must keep legal pot out of other states and off federal property. [Since when it it the job of state governments to fence off their borders and prevent contraband from leaving their state and entering other states???] That’s no small task in Western states with huge swaths of federal property, such as parks and ski areas. The states will allow visitors to buy pot, but also warn them about where they can and can’t take it. [Oddly the Feds didn't say a word about the huge number of marijuana growing operations that the drug cartels have created in National Parks and recreation areas owned by the Federal government??? Is Obama going to fire himself because more marijuana is grown in the Golden Triangle of Northern California then imported from Mexico every year???]
CRIME: Legalization opponents say residency requirements won’t prevent criminal cartels from setting up straw-man growing operations. [As I just said the drug cartels already have huge marijuana growing operations in Federal National parks which are on Federally owned land] The states also have tracking systems to make sure what is grown ends up sold legally. Colorado, however, also allows people to grow pot at home, making it impossible to keep track of where it is coming from and where it’s going.
DRIVING: The states set up marijuana analogies to drunk-driving laws, setting driver blood limits for pot’s psychoactive chemical, THC. The laws are new, and it’s too soon to say whether legal pot has made highways more dangerous in Colorado and Washington. Both states report seeing more positive driving-high tests, but it’s not clear whether that’s because of increased driver use or increased testing. [I don't advocate driving drunk or stoned, but most people will agree that it's much safer when a person drives stoned on marijuana then drunk on alcohol!!! And studies have show it is much safer to drive when you are stoned over being drunk.]
TAXES: Nobody knows how and at what level to tax marijuana. Too low, and the states won’t be able to afford intense regulatory supervision of the industry. Too high, and pot users may stay in the black market. [Taxes too high???? Rubbish. The Federal government and the states are spending literally billions of dollars every year in their failed attempt to keep drugs from entering this country and to jail people that use drugs and it ain't working. If anything legalizing marijuana should cause our taxes to decrease substantially!!!!]
DEMAND: Guessing marijuana demand is a tricky proposition. Colorado growers warn that early demand could lead to sky-high prices and shortages, with state production caps still uncertain. In Washington, regulators are taking a new look at supply needs after a recently released study produced a demand estimate that far outstripped earlier guesses. [As long as states tax the krap out of medical and recreation marijuana and taxed but legal marijuana costs more then black market marijuana I am sure the drug cartels will continue to supply the people with the marijuana they want. Of course if the states stop taxing the krap out of marijuana, a pound of weed won't coast any more then a pound of potatoes!!! Marijuana is frequently called "weed" because it grows like a weed.]
BANKING: Marijuana legalization hasn’t taken away one black-market aspect for the drug in Colorado and Washington: Cash runs the business. Financial services as simple as checking accounts and credit cards are off-limits because of federal guidance to financial institutions. Colorado officials say they’re optimistic the U.S. Treasury Department will loosen those rules next year, but it’s unclear what that would look like. [Hey the cartels who currently supply Americans will billions of dollars of illegal drugs every year don't have a problem with not being allowed to deposit their illegally earned money in banks. They have created a huge black market money laundering network to handle it. If the Feds don't allow legalized marijuana dealers to use banks, I am sure the cartels will let them use their black market money laundering networks to manage their legal profits.]
Of course all that rubbish and propaganda was just a big lie by the police who wanted to keep their "jobs program" of arresting people for victimless gambling crimes.
Hey, it's a lot easier and safer for the cops to arrest some guy for the victimless crime of betting on the "numbers" or some other silly form of gambling then hunting down robbers, rapists and other dangerous criminals who hurt people.
The same thing happened again a couple years back when we voted on legalizing marijuana for medical uses.
Again numerous police agencies from around the state of Arizona told us again that told us it would cause a crime wave of Biblical proportions if medical marijuana were legalized and that this time the drug cartels would take over the state of Arizona. And that crazed medical marijuana patients would cause a crime wave never before seen in Arizona, robbing, raping and plundering the citizens of Arizona after they smoked a joint at a medical marijuana dispensary.
So were is all the crime??? How come the cops aren’t telling us "Look at that huge crime wave caused by medical marijuana. See we told you not to legalize medical marijuana"???
Again it seems the cops lied to us again about the crime wave that medical marijuana would cause.
Again the cops would prefer to arrest harmless pot smokers. It's a lot safer and easier then arresting dangerous criminals like robbers and rapists who hurt people.
So remember when that initiative to legalize marijuana for recreational use gets on the ballot vote for it and ignore the lies and propaganda the cops will be telling us that legalized recreational marijuana use will cause a crime wave of Biblical proportions in Arizona.
It's the same old rehashed lied the cops told us when they wanted to keep gambling and medical marijuana illegal. It ain't nothing but lies by lazy cops who would prefer to arrest harmless pot smokers then to hunt down real criminals like robbers and rapists.
NSA reportedly intercepting laptops purchased online to install spy malware
By T.C. Sottek on December 29, 2013 10:29 am Email @LaughingStoic
According to a new report from Der Spiegel based on internal NSA documents, the signals intelligence agency's elite hacking unit (TAO) is able to conduct sophisticated wiretaps in ways that make Hollywood fantasy look more like reality. The report indicates that the NSA, in collaboration with the CIA and FBI, routinely and secretly intercepts shipping deliveries for laptops or other computer accessories in order to implant bugs before they reach their destinations. According to Der Spiegel, the NSA's TAO group is able to divert shipping deliveries to its own "secret workshops" in a method called interdiction, where agents load malware onto the electronics or install malicious hardware that can give US intelligence agencies remote access.
While the report does not indicate the scope of the program, or who the NSA is targeting with such wiretaps, it's a unique look at the agency's collaborative efforts with the broader intelligence community to gain hard access to communications equipment. One of the products the NSA appears to use to compromise target electronics is codenamed COTTONMOUTH, and has been available since 2009; it's a USB "hardware implant" that secretly provides the NSA with remote access to the compromised machine.
This tool, among others, is available to NSA agents through what Der Spiegel describes as a mail-order spy catalog. The report indicates that the catalog offers backdoors into the hardware and software of the most prominent technology makers, including Cisco, Juniper Networks, Dell, Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, Samsung, and Huawei. Many of the targets are American companies. The report indicates that the NSA can even exploit error reports from Microsoft's Windows operating system; by intercepting the error reports and determining what's wrong with a target's computer, the NSA can then attack it with Trojans or other malware.
"Sometimes the NSA hops on an FBI jet for high-tech raids"
The Der Spiegel report, which gives a broad look at TAO operations, also highlights the NSA's cooperation with other intelligence agencies to conduct Hollywood-style raids. Unlike most of the NSA's operations which allow for remote access to targets, Der Spiegel notes that the TAO's programs often require physical access to targets. To gain physical access, the NSA reportedly works with the CIA and FBI on sensitive missions that sometimes include flying NSA agents on FBI jets to plant wiretaps. "This gets them to their destination at the right time and can help them to disappear again undetected after even as little as a half hour's work," the report notes.
The NSA currently faces pressure from the public, Congress, federal courts, and privacy advocates over its expansive spying programs. Those programs, which include bulk telephone surveillance of American citizens, are said by critics to violate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches, and were uncovered earlier this year by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Beyond the programs that scoop up data on American citizens, Snowden's documents have also given a much closer look at how the spy agency conducts other surveillance operations, including tapping the phones of high-level foreign leaders.
First legal marijuana retailers to open Jan. 1 in Colorado
Keith Coffman Reuters
8:20 a.m. CST, December 29, 2013
DENVER (Reuters) - The world's first state-licensed marijuana retailers, catering to Colorado's newly legal recreational market for pot, are stocking their shelves ahead of a New Year's grand opening that supporters and detractors alike see as a turning point in America's drug culture.
Possession, cultivation and private personal consumption of marijuana by adults for the sake of just getting high has already been legal in Colorado for more than year under a state constitutional amendment approved by voters.
But starting January 1, cannabis will be legally sold and taxed at specially regulated retailers in a system modeled after a regime many states have in place for alcohol sales - but which exists for marijuana nowhere outside of Colorado.
For the novelty factor alone, operators of the first eight marijuana retailers slated to open on Wednesday morning in Denver and a handful of establishments in other locations are anticipating a surge in demand for store-bought weed.
"It will be like people waiting in line for tickets to a Pink Floyd concert," said Justin Jones, 39, owner of Dank Colorado in Denver who has run a medical marijuana shop for four years and now has a recreational pot license.
Jones said he is confident he has enough marijuana on hand for Day One but less sure of inventory levels needed after that.
About 90 percent of his merchandise is in smokable form, packaged in small child-proof containers. The rest is a mixture of cannabis-infused edibles, such as cookies, candy and carbonated drinks.
"People seem to prefer smoking," he said.
FROM MEDICAL TO RECREATIONAL
Washington state voters legalized recreational marijuana at the same time Colorado did, in November 2012, but it has yet to be made commercially available there.
Pot designated strictly for medical use has been sold for some time in storefront shops in several of the nearly 20 states, including Colorado and Washington, that have deemed marijuana legal for health purposes.
But Colorado is the first to open retail pot stores, and craft a regulatory framework to license, tax and enforce its use for recreation.
Outside of the United States, Uruguay's parliament recently cleared the way for state-sanctioned marijuana sales, but the South American nation is at least months away from having a system in place.
The Netherlands has long had an informal decriminalization policy, with Amsterdam coffee shops allowed to sell marijuana products to customers. But back-end distribution of the drug to those businesses remains illegal.
"It will actually be fully legal in Colorado, at least under state law, whereas in the Netherlands it's been tolerated, not actually legal," Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a pro-liberalization group, told reporters earlier this month.
"Colorado is essentially the first. It's really the first in which this is explicitly legal and where marijuana is being grown legally, sold wholesale legally, sold retail legally," Nadelmann said.
"This is groundbreaking," said Mike Elliot, spokesman for Colorado's Medical Marijuana Industry Group. "We are way ahead of Washington state, Amsterdam and Uruguay."
Critics of liberalized marijuana laws likewise view Colorado's new order as a landmark, albeit one they see in a more negative light.
Kevin Sabet, co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a leading anti-legalization group, said the movement toward ending pot prohibition is sending the wrong signal to the nation's youth.
ENDING PROHIBITION
"There will still need to be a black market to serve people who are ineligible to buy on a legal market, especially kids," Sabet said. "It's almost the worst of both worlds."
Critics say the social harms of legalizing pot - from anticipated declines in economic productivity to a potential rise in traffic and workplace accidents - will outweigh any benefits.
Legalization backers point to tax revenues to be gained and argue that anti-marijuana enforcement has accomplished little but to penalize otherwise law-abiding citizens, especially minorities.
They also argue that legalization will free up strained law enforcement resources and strike a blow against drug cartels, much as repealing alcohol prohibition in the 1930s crushed bootlegging by organized crime.
But Sabet counters, "We are witnessing the birth of big marijuana," which he compared to the tobacco industry.
Under Colorado's law, however, state residents can only buy as much as an ounce of marijuana at a time, while individuals from out of state are limited to quarter-ounce purchases. State law also limits cultivation to six marijuana plants per person.
Those limits were not enough to deter a 30-year-old high school sports coach who is visiting Colorado from North Carolina but gave his name only as Matt.
"I don't really drink a whole lot, but I'd prefer to smoke a little bit and have a good time with the friends that I hang out with," he told Reuters on Friday. His New Year's plans include a "Cannabition" pot party in Denver.
Marijuana remains classified an illegal narcotic under U.S. law. But in a major policy shift in August, the Obama administration said it would give states leeway to experiment with pot legalization, and let Colorado and Washington carry out their new laws permitting recreational use.
The state has issued a total of 348 recreational pot licenses to businesses statewide, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue's Marijuana Enforcement Division.
Of those, 136 are for retail stores, 178 for cultivation operations, 31 for manufacturing of infused edibles and other sundries, and three are for testing facilities.
Last month, Colorado voters approved a combined 15 percent excise and 10 percent sales tax to be imposed on recreational pot sales, with the first $40 million raised to fund school construction projects.
The Colorado Legislative Council estimates the marijuana taxation scheme will generate $67 million annually in tax revenue to state coffers.
Only people over age 21 can buy recreational pot. Public use of marijuana remains illegal, as is driving while stoned. The state has set a blood-THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) limit of 5-nanogram-per-milliliter threshold for motorists.
Other states are taking a wait-and-see approach to the Colorado and Washington experiments before they take the leap toward legalization, said Rachel Gillette, head of Colorado's chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
"Colorado has found an exit strategy for the failed drug war and I hope other states will follow our lead," she said.
(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Additional reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Steve Gorman and Ken Wills)
Where is all the medical marijuana related crime????
Many years ago when we voted on legalizing various forms of gambling in Arizona such as the lottery, the Pick and gambling on Indian reservations numerous police agencies from all over Arizona told us it would cause a crime wave of Biblical proportions and that the Mafia and organized crime would take over the state of Arizona.
NSA reportedly intercepting laptops purchased online to install spy malware
Hey, if you have a gun and a badge it ain't illegal!!!! Well at least that's what the cops want us to think!!!!
First legal marijuana retailers to open Jan. 1 in Colorado
Source
Uruguay’s marijuana growers come out into open
Source
Uruguay’s marijuana growers come out into open
By Leonardo Haberkorn Associated Press Sat Dec 28, 2013 12:19 PM
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Juan Andres Palese was using a fake name in public when he opened Uruguay’s first store dedicated to cultivating marijuana, where he offered growing equipment and advice but no illegal plants or seeds. Now that President Jose Mujica’s plan to create and regulate the world’s first national marijuana market has the force of law, Palese’s got much bigger plans.
His tiny shop, Urugrow, is already too small to support a rising number of clients, and he’ll be moving to a larger, higher-profile locale soon. Once the law’s regulations are in place, he hopes to openly sell seeds and cuttings along with all the tools anyone needs to legally grow up to six plants in their own home.
The symbols of marijuana are in full bloom in Uruguay: T-shirts featuring designs of pot leaves are sold on the streets, the radio carries the music of Jamaican singer Bob Marley.
But the people who are so enthusiastically buying potting soil, lights and irrigation equipment to start their own marijuana gardens also could be buying trouble from police if they don’t wait to start cultivating the weed until after the state launches its registration and licensing system, the nation’s drug czar said Thursday.
“From a strictly formal point of view, you still can’t. Until the regulations are in place, there’s no way to legally have marijuana plants in your house,” Julio Calzada, secretary general of the national drug junta, said in an interview with Uruguay’s Radio Universal.
Once registered and licensed, any Uruguayan adult will be allowed to choose one of three options: grow plants at home, or join a pot-growing club, or buy marijuana cigarettes from pharmacies, Calzada said. “If a person isn’t registered, he’ll have legal problems, and the plants will be seized.”
Meanwhile, even as the law’s fine print is being written, he said judges now have clearer guidelines for separating marijuana smoking, which has long been legal in Uruguay, from selling the drug, which remains illegal for now.
Palese is content to wait a bit longer to open his larger store.
“The law is a great way to start with this issue. For us it’s really useful,” he said when The Associated Press visited his store. “We have more customers. There are many people interested in growing their own plants. There are also many opportunists who come to the store because they see a way to make money from this new law.”
One young man, irritated that a reporter was there, bought bags of vermiculite, which absorbs excess humidity in the soil of house plants. Then two Spanish tourists came in, much less inhibited, looking for marijuana cigarettes. Palese explained that the law, which aims to avoid “marijuana tourism,” won’t authorize purchases by foreigners.
In came Augustin, a regular customer who works as a tattoo artist next door and stayed in Palese’s store to chat. He’s been growing pot in the bathroom of his apartment for two years, he explained. “Until this became law I was a criminal. No longer,” he said proudly.
A few blocks away in another downtown Montevideo locale, “Yuyo Brothers” is the store to go to for other marijuana accessories, from rolling papers to pipes. “Yuyo” means weed in Spanish, and some of the store’s customers don’t want people to know they use marijuana. But owner Enrique Tubino, who has sold marijuana accessories for years, happily keeps his plants in a window at home, visible to anyone who walks by. “No one has ever denounced me,” Tubino said.
But not all growers are happy with the new law.
A university employee, speaking with the AP on condition of anonymity to avoid prosecution, said he’s grown marijuana for years and never sold it to anyone.
“With the old law, if a judge decided that my plants were for my personal use, I would have been let go. The new law sets the limit at six plants. And since I have more than six, now it doesn’t matter if I sell or if it’s for me — I’m a criminal.”
And if you think about it, this is the same tatic the cops have used over the past 100 years to change their task of hunting down real criminals who hurt people, to hunting down people for victimless drug war crimes who are a lot safer and easier to arrest then real criminals.
New York Mayor De Blasio inherits big counterterror force
De Blasio inherits big counterterror force — and New Yorkers fighting in Syria
By Tom Hays and Colleen Long
Associated Press
Saturday, December 28, 2013
NEW YORK — At a recent briefing in lower Manhattan, the New York Police Department gave an auditorium full of private security executives plenty to worry about.
One of the NYPD’s intelligence analysts warned that New Yorkers have gone to fight in the Syrian civil war and could come back radicalized against the West. A high-ranking officer described drills testing the NYPD’s ability to respond to a dirty bomb attack. And a detective offered a detailed analysis of the deadly siege at a shopping mall in Nairobi, brashly challenging the Kenyan government’s claim that the gunmen were dead.
The presentations demonstrated the nation's largest police department’s determination to stay at the forefront of counterterrorism, even as the man who spearheaded the effort — Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly — is headed out the door.
Kelly, whose 12-year tenure ends this month without a major successful terror attack on his watch, repeatedly has suggested that anyone considering remaking one of the defining initiatives of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration should proceed with caution.
New York “remains squarely in the crosshairs of terrorists,” Kelly said in his final appearance at the recurring briefings. “We must do everything in our power to defend it.”
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his designated police commissioner, William Bratton, plan to take a hard look at a counterterrorism operation that grew to lengths never imagined before the Sept. 11 attacks.
With the staunch support of Bloomberg, Kelly reassigned about 1,000 of the city’s roughly 35,000 officers to counterterrorism duty, posted detectives overseas to report on how other cities deal with terrorism and spent tens of millions of dollars each year to outfit the department with the latest technology, including a network of security cameras and command centers, to track suspicious activity. [Sounds like a lame excuse to justify sending NYPD cops on vacations to interesting foreign lands for do nothing jobs that are nothing more then vacations] Kelly also put the NYPD's Intelligence Division under the direction of a former CIA official and directed it to analyze and detect overseas and homegrown threats.
The mission has become so institutionalized at the NYPD that it “would be very difficult to dismantle it” — nor should anyone want to, said Richard Falkenrath, who led the NYPD counterterrorism unit for four years before joining The Chertoff Group security firm. “It’s an extraordinary achievement.” [Of course he wouldn't want to dismantle it - it's the source of all the cold hard cash he gets paid to chase imaginary terrorists]
Bloomberg has heaped praise on Kelly and the NYPD, mostly for overseeing dramatic declines in homicides and other conventional crimes during their tenure together. Both men have credited the controversial stop-and-frisk strategy for deterring crime by discouraging criminals from carrying illegal guns. [Hey, anther way to deter crime would be to make breathing illegal. The cops could then arrest anybody they consider scum bag criminals for the crime of breathing. It would certainly lower the crime rate along with placing a huge number of innocent people in jail, just like the stop and frisk laws do.]
The mayor has spoken less frequently about the counterterrorism effort. But he has defended claims by the NYPD that it had helped uncover more than a dozen terrorism plots against the city, including what was considered the most serious attempt on the city since 9/11: a failed conspiracy by Najibullah Zazi and two former high school classmates from Queens to bomb the city’s subway system in 2008.
“I could make as cogent an argument there’s double or triple the number that were stopped, we just don’t know about it,” Bloomberg said late last year. Would-be terrorists, he reasoned, might look at the city’s beefed-up security “and say, ‘I don’t want to run that risk.’ We’ll never know.” [Yea, and a lot of people say the program hasn't prevented ANY crimes and is just a cushy jobs program for under worked and overpaid cops.]
The campaign to protect the city has had some unintended costs: The NYPD's Intelligence Division has been accused of interfering with federal investigations, bringing weak cases against suspected homegrown terrorists and being careless with confidential information. The division also came under fire for its surveillance of Muslims, including the secret infiltration of mosques and other tactics detailed in a series of stories by The Associated Press.
Some say it’s time to rethink the scale of the programs — and the reasons behind them.
“The philosophy that appears to be driving the surveillance programs predicated on the erroneous assumption that all Muslims are terrorists has resulted in a bloated program,” said Donna Lieberman, head of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
De Blasio has said he wants Bratton to conduct a review of the department’s intelligence-gathering operations, and he must also decide how to fill the top counterterrorism and intelligence positions that will be vacated at the end of the year.
Still, the police headquarters briefing this month made the argument that, under any administration, the city must keep devoting resources to counter a threat that isn’t going away.
As proof, police officials cited a sting last year that snared a man plotting to blow up the Federal Reserve in lower Manhattan, the arrest earlier this year of two men accused of plotting with al-Qaida to derail a train running from New York City to Toronto, and revelations in April that the Boston Marathon bombers had talked about detonating explosives in Times Square.
Rebecca Weiner, director of the Intelligence Division, emphasized the threat of homegrown extremists with no official affiliation with a terrorist group. She revealed the NYPD is trying to track New Yorkers drawn to the Syrian conflict.
“Our overriding concern is what will happen when they come back,” she said.
Posted on December 26, 2013 10:33 am by Linda Valdez
Pot makes Uruguay country of the year
What makes right? Not might, according to the Economist’s choice of Uruguay as Country of the Year.
“(T)he accomplishments that most deserve commendation, we think, are path-breaking reforms that do not merely improve a single nation but, if emulated, might benefit the world,” the Economist wrote.
These included gay marriage “which has increased the global sum of human happiness at no financial cost,” the magazine wrote. Uruguay was among nations that implemented it in 2013.
Uruguay also legalized marijuana, something that will undercut the power of drug syndicates.
“This is a change so obviously sensible, squeezing out the crooks and allowing the authorities to concentrate on graver crimes, that no other country has made it. If others followed suit, and other narcotics were included, the damage such drugs wreak on the world would be drastically reduced,” the Economist wrote.
Yes. The benefits would be enormous. As a legal drug, we could more easily control it. We could tax it to provide funding for drug treatment. [Why does everybody think that we should tax the krap out of pot smokers to for for the pork of all the other special interest groups????] We could knee-cap the cartels. Pot is their cash cow.
The United States ought to consider the cost- and life-saving benefits of legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana. [Again why does everybody think that we should tax the krap out of pot smokers to pay for the government projects that non-pot smokers want????]
As for same-sex marriage – some states within these United States are moving little by little to make it a reality.
It ought to be a national change based on U.S. Constitutional rights. Such a sensible and decent step is unlikely to make it through our current self-serving Congress. So we wait for the Supreme Court.
But we shouldn’t have to wait. Congress should follow the lead of a nation that most in the United States would consider less developed. Less powerful.
Yet extending human rights to more human beings is an act far more powerful than anything possible through use of all the arms and ammunition stockpiled by all the wealthy nations.
Of course if the government wasn't throwing people in prison for the victimless crime of pot smoking we wouldn't need all these new prisons. And if that was true we wouldn't need this government welfare program for the Corrections Corporation of America.
And if you are a police officer or other person involved in law enforcement you probably support the program too, because after all the "war on drugs" is also a jobs program for cops, prosecutors, judges, probation officers and of course prison guards.
Of course if you are not a stock holder in the Corrections Corporation of America or a member of a family involved in law enforcement you probably agree with me that this program is a huge waste of tax dollars and a insane violation of human rights.
Arizona faces growing cost of private prisons
By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Dec 29, 2013 12:39 AM
The Red Rock Correctional Center, Arizona’s newest private prison, will begin housing inmates next month, with taxpayers guaranteeing its owner a profit to help alleviate overcrowding in the state penitentiary system.
State Corrections Director Charles Ryan hopes to house up to 1,000 inmates there by the end of next year — twice the number originally planned in the first year. The facility along East Arica Road and Arizona 87 just outside Eloy has the capacity for 1,596 inmates.
The complex about 65 miles south of Phoenix was built in 2006 by Corrections Corporation of America to house inmates for the state of California. After CCA won an open-bid contract last year to house Arizona inmates, it moved its California prisoners to other CCA sites around the country.
According to Ryan, state-owned facilities have roughly 5,000 inmates sleeping in temporary beds because of overcrowding. Arizona, as of Friday, housed 41,157 inmates, about one-sixth of them in private facilities.
“The department was in need of beds,” Ryan said. “The solution was a private-prison operator.”
Corrections officials forecast the state prison population will surpass 43,000 in fiscal 2016, despite four recent years of relatively little growth or declines in the population.
The Corrections Department is wary of building its own new prisons to accommodate the growth, citing costs that could exceed $100 million. Instead, it is expanding its use of private prisons.
If the contract lasts 20 years as expected, the long-term cost of the CCA contract is likely to exceed $400 million.
CCA wins contract
The Corrections Corporation of America beat four other private-prison companies in August 2012 to win the contract.
CCA is guaranteed a 90 percent occupancy rate at Red Rock, meaning the state will transfer inmates out of state-operated facilities and into the private prison until the minimum occupancy is met.
The guarantee requires a minimum of 450 inmates by the end of the first year, and 900 by the end of the second, but Ryan wants to accelerate the transfer of up to 1,000 inmates in 2014. There also is room to expand to the facility’s capacity.
Arizona will pay CCA $65.43 a day per inmate. Once the contract is fully implemented, the 90 percent occupancy guarantee will result in the company being paid at least $58,887 a day for 900 inmates — nearly $21.5 million a year. The contract is for an initial term of 10 years, with two five-year renewal options upon mutual agreement. Should the contract run 20 years, CCA could make at least $430 million. Ownership of the facility would transfer to the state after 20 years.
The Arizona Republic reviewed Corrections documents and CCA financial records and calculated the company’s operating margin on the Red Rock contract. The operating margin measures how much of each dollar of revenue from the state Red Rock will keep after ordinary expenses.
The Nashville-based company, which is publicly held, said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing that its average total daily expenses per inmate at facilities it owns and manages was $45.89 during the first nine months of 2013. Based on that figure, Arizona’s daily payment will provide $19.54 in daily operating income per inmate, as compared with $22.23 in daily income per inmate the company typically makes in other facilities it owns and operates.
That equates to an operating margin of about 30 percent on the Red Rock contract. The company, which operates 69 facilities in 20 states and the District of Columbia, averages just more than a 29 percent operating margin at all facilities it manages or owns, according to a recent company filing.
The state is requiring CCA to make numerous improvements, such as building a new softball field, enhancing dining facilities and adding parking at Red Rock. The company, in an SEC filing, said it expects to incur approximately $20.5 million in capital-improvement expenses — less than what it will make in an entire year with Arizona’s occupancy guarantee.
“We are being compensated for a service we provide,” said Steven Owen, a CCA spokesman. “It’s a very specialized service.... We are providing cost savings at the end of the day to taxpayers and relieving unsafe overcrowding.”
Corrections Corporation of America trades on the New York Stock Exchange. For the first nine months of this year, it recorded $1.26 billion in revenue and posted $253.3 million in profit — more than double the earnings recorded for the same time in 2012.
High occupancy
Critics say promising such a high inmate-occupancy rate at Red Rock guarantees CCA a healthy bottom line at taxpayer expense. The occupancy guarantee at Red Rock, however, is the lowest among the state’s three private-prison operators, with other sites having occupancy guarantees of 95 to 100 percent, according to Corrections Department records. The other private operators are the GEO Group Inc. and Management & Training Corp.
Ryan said occupancy-rate guarantees are a way for the state to secure a fixed cost to house inmates, and it keeps contractors from raising rates because of demand. The guarantees also are needed, he said, to attract private-prison operators who must recover their costs to build facilities. The state saves money upfront by not having to build new prisons despite a growing inmate population, he said. The state also assumes ownership of the facilities at the end of the contract.
“We are not closing state prison beds to ensure a private-bed operator a guaranteed occupancy rate,” Ryan said.
But Shar Habibi, research and policy director for a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group called In the Public Interest, said Arizona taxpayers are on the hook if the CCA beds and other private facilities go unused.
“If you don’t fill those beds, you are still paying for them,” said Habibi, whose group monitors private-prison contracts around the country.
CCA spokesman Owen called In the Public Interest’s claims against private-prison companies “sensationalized.” He said occupancy guarantees are commonly used by state governments to control costs.
“We look at what we can do to provide the most cost-effective solutions,” Owen said.
But Justin Jones, former Oklahoma Department of Corrections director who has worked with Habibi and is an opponent of private prisons, said correctional facilities should be used to reduce recidivism — not become a “profit machine” for private businesses.
Lower costs
Arizona began looking at private prisons in the late 1980s, Ryan said, when a group of lawmakers and Corrections officials visited Louisiana and compared the operational cost between state-run and private facilities.
Ryan, at the time an upper manager at DOC, was asked to go on the trip and assess staffing levels and operations. He said he concluded that the private prison had lower operating costs because it did not have a correctional officer at all of the security posts.
He said his opinion was not solicited at the time about whether Arizona should have private prisons. He sidesteps the question today.
“Private prisons are part of the public policy of the state of Arizona as determined by the Legislature and the executive branch,” Ryan said. “I am here to support the public policy, and that public policy has served the Department of Corrections and the state of Arizona particularly well during difficult budgetary times.... To me, it’s not a philosophical issue. It’s a business decision.”
Arizona’s first contract prison opened in Marana in October 1994, 10 months after a “truth in sentencing” law went into effect that dramatically increased prison sentences and the state’s inmate population, which at the time was just less than 19,000 inmates. Arizona’s prison population is now more than double that.
And since fiscal 1995, the number of in-state private-prison inmates has grown from 273 to 6,489. Arizona also contracted to house inmates with out-of-state private prisons from fiscal 2004 to 2010.
Whether CCA or other private-prison operators save the state money is debatable.
A Corrections Department study found it was less expensive in 2008, 2009 and 2010 to house inmates in state-run medium-security facilities compared with similar in-state private facilities.
That still may be the case, but it is difficult to determine because the state no longer factors inmate costs the same way.
In fiscal 2013, which ended June 30, the non-adjusted average daily cost per inmate at a medium-security prison was $64.52, compared with the private-prison cost of $58.82.
However the state’s number includes inmates who have significant medical or mental-health issues. The private prisons house only healthy inmates.
When an adjustment is made for the medical costs, the balance tips significantly in the state’s favor.
The adjusted 2010 daily cost of housing a medium-security inmate in a state-run facility was $48.42, compared with the private-prison cost of $53.02.
Ryan acknowledged that private-prison inmates are “a healthier, less-expensive population” to house.
The Legislature in 2012 repealed the law that required the Corrections Department to conduct a state and private cost comparison, which had occurred since fiscal 1995.
Taxpayers held hostage by private prison industry
We don’t privatize prisons in Arizona, we communize them.
If we actually privatized prisons – as our politicians say we do – the free market would dictate how much money the prison operators make. There would be risk, like there is when an entrepreneur opens a restaurant or a hair salon or a motel.
There is no risk for private prison operators in Arizona.
As pointed out in an article by The Arizona Republic’s Craig Harris, the state guarantees the folks who house our convicted criminals that taxpayers will pay them for a 90 percent (or even higher) occupancy rate. In other words, we pay them whether the beds are full or not.
That’s not what capitalists do.
It’s what communists do. (Or did, before the Soviet model collapsed.)
Arizona needs prisons. It also needs restaurants and hair salons and motels.
How would you feel if the legislature guaranteed to pick up the tab for all of the empty tables at a new restaurant, the empty chairs at a salon or the empty beds at a motel?
“There are times when privatization or public-private partnerships are definitely the way to go,” said Democratic State Rep. Chad Campbell, “This is not one of them. If people think CPS is a mess, wait until you get into DOC. I’ve been fighting this battle for going on five years. I can’t even get the legislature to buy into auditing these things. To do an independent performance analysis. Just to make sure we’re getting our money’s worth.”
According to Caroline Isaacs, Program Director for the American Friends Service Committee office in Tucson, we’re not.
Arizona has contracted with corporations who run private prisons for 20 years.
“Why should taxpayers care?” Isaacs said. “Certainly, one reason is the costs. These are not efficient businesses. Also, these are facilities that have chronic and systemic problems. They have to cut corners and where they cut corners is in staffing. So you have people who are poorly paid and poorly trained. You have a high level of staff turnover. Also, the total lack of transparency and accountability. These folks get to operate almost completely in the dark. Not like the regular Department of Corrections.”
Also, private prisons house what state DOC Director Chuck Ryan described as “a healthier, less-expensive population.”
If that wasn’t the case, and private prisons has to absorb the costs of treating the ill, and problems of dealing with the more dangerous inmates, the so-called savings of privately run prisons may well disappear.
“Another argument for privatization is that it will be more efficient,” Isaacs said. “Supporters will tell you that the free market can always do everything better than a bureaucracy. But what we find in this case is that you are only complicating the bureaucracy. There is still a state Department of Corrections. All we have done is taken several for-profit corporations and stuck them in the middle of an existing bureaucracy. Each of those companies has its own structure, its own rules. We have to hire people to monitor the contracts. And the free market, it turns out, isn’t free.”
The state recently granted a private corporation the contract to run a state prison in Marana. There was only one bidder. The company lobbyist is the former director of Arizona DOC.
A number of Gov. Jan Brewer’s top aides also have close ties to the private prison industry.
“In the long term these companies have a vested interest in more people being in prison,” Isaacs said. “There is something wrong with incentivizing incarceration for profit.”
In 2010 three prisoners escaped from a medium-security private prison near Kingman. It led to the murder of a retired Oklahoma couple.
“I’m hoping that this issue becomes something people talk about during the coming election year,” Rep. Campbell told me. “It should be. It exemplifies everything wrong with how the state is currently being run. We are costing the taxpayers money just to make sure that a few companies get rich. That’s the bottom line.”
Well at least that's how the cops feel about things. They ain't much different then the goons at the NSA and FBI who also think their guns and badges make them above the Bill of Rights!
Portable drug test a new addition at New Year's DUI checkpoints
By Paresh Dave
December 27, 2013, 2:41 p.m.
The upcoming New Year’s crackdown on drunken driving will include a new test for many people who are pulled over — an oral swab that checks for marijuana, cocaine and other drugs.
The voluntary swabbing has been used just 50 times this year. But Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer is pushing to use it at more checkpoints and jails as officials try to limit the number of drivers impaired by substances other than alcohol.
“Traditionally, our office has focused on drunken driving cases,” Feuer said at a news conference Friday. “We’re expanding drug collection and aggressively enforcing all impaired-driving laws.”
Individuals arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs must submit to a blood test. But prosecutors said the eight-minute, portable oral fluids test could eventually become a more effective use of resources in drugged-driving cases.
The test screens for cocaine, benzodiazepine (Xanax), methamphetamine, amphetamines, narcotic analgesics, methadone and THC representative of marijuana usage within the past few hours. City prosecutors have yet to use results from the test as evidence in a case.
The city attorney's office filed 598 DUI cases in the last year that involved drugs, compared with 577 drunken driving cases during last year’s winter holiday period alone.
This year, about 1,520 people across Los Angeles County were arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol during the two weeks leading up to Christmas, local law enforcement agencies announced earlier this week.
The stepped-up enforcement will continue through New Year’s Day.
Checkpoints are expected Friday night in El Monte, Hawthorne, Pasadena, San Gabriel, Crenshaw, Industry and the western San Fernando Valley. On Saturday, checkpoints are to be set up in Arcadia, San Gabriel, Whittier, downtown L.A., Hollywood, Northridge, Redondo Beach, South L.A. and the west Valley again.
“The Los Angeles Police Department is giving fair warning to all New Year’s partyers,” police Cmdr. Andy Smith said. “We anticipate making a large number of arrests, unfortunately, as is the case every year.”
About 193,000 people annually statewide were arrested on DUI charges from 2003 to 2011, the most recent year for which data is available. On average each year during that span, 2,140 people were killed and 30,900 injured because of crashes that involved alcohol or drugs.
About 70% of DUI cases in Los Angeles County end in convictions. That's similar to the state average, though conviction rates range from 56% in San Francisco County to 85% in Ventura County.
Feuer, who took office in July, said city prosecutors reached convictions or guilty pleas in 99% of the 12,000 misdemeanor DUI cases brought since the beginning of the year. The city's conviction rate has been the same since at least 2010.
A first-time drunken driving conviction for people 21 and older can cost nearly $16,000 in fines, fees and auto insurance premium increases, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.
"[Medical marijuana] patients and caregivers will be fingerprinted and undergo background checks"
2014 ushers in new state laws on issues from medical marijuana to tanning beds
By Monique Garcia, Chicago Tribune reporter
6:33 a.m. CST, December 28, 2013
It was a history-making year at the state Capitol, with lawmakers legalizing gay marriage, allowing medical marijuana for those with chronic illnesses, permitting concealed handguns and approving major changes to the government worker pension system.
But those high-profile measures represent just a handful of new laws to be put on the books, with more than 200 rules and regulations set to take effect Jan. 1. The laws will affect everything from how students are taught sex education in public schools to who can use a tanning bed to how dogs can be legally tethered outside.
"Obviously, pension reform was the big issue and I think nothing else even came close to that in terms of the importance to the people of this state," said Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno of Lemont. "But I think a lot of the legislation we undertook really reflects the concerns of the day. They are all issues that across the country are very timely right now."
Medical marijuana
The New Year ushers in the official start of a four-year trial program that would allow patients with certain chronic illnesses to obtain a prescription for medical marijuana. However, the afflicted still are many months from being able to light up legally as state regulators are working out rules and have yet to issue licenses for marijuana growers and dispensing centers.
Supporters say Illinois' medical marijuana law is among the toughest in the nation.
[What did you expect??? It wasn't created by the PEOPLE!!!! It was created by a bunch of
government bureaucrats who have a vested interest in keeping marijuana illegal!!!]
Patients cannot legally grow their own supplies and must have an existing relationship with their prescribing doctor. Patients and caregivers will be fingerprinted and undergo background checks, and must promise not to sell or give away marijuana. Workers at 22 grow centers and 60 dispensaries will undergo the same vetting.
Precisely where growers and sellers could locate will be determined by state regulators. While suburbs are putting in place strict zoning laws to limit where marijuana could be sold or grown, local officials cannot prevent such businesses from opening in their towns. Property owners would have the ability to ban marijuana use on their grounds. Employers would maintain their rights to a drug-free workplace, meaning someone with a valid medical marijuana card could be fired for using the drug if their employer prohibits it.
Sex education
Public schools that teach sex education will now be required to provide students information about birth control, a departure from previous policy in which abstinence was the only required curriculum.
Backers argue that abstinence-only education is not effective and that students should be taught about other methods of birth control and how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Those opposed to the change say parents should decide how to educate their kids about sex.
Schools still have the option to not teach sex education, and the law allows school districts to set their own "age-appropriate" lesson plans and allow parents to examine instructional materials. Parents also can opt to keep their children out of sex education classes without penalty.
Pets
Pet shops will be required to disclose outbreaks of potentially life-threatening diseases, and cat and dog owners could receive a refund and return a new pet to a store up to one year after purchase if a veterinarian finds an animal had a hereditary or congenital condition. If an animal dies of an illness, pet shops also could be on the hook for veterinary costs.
Meanwhile, a judge could hand down fines of up $1,500 and jail sentences of up to six months to dog owners who don't follow new rules on how to properly tether their pet outside. A dog's lead must be at least 10 feet and cannot exceed one-eighth of the animal's body weight. It also must be attached to a harness or collar that does not pinch or choke the dog. Tethered dogs must be provided adequate food, water and shelter and be restricted from being able to reach someone else's property or a public sidewalk or road. Penalties increase with subsequent violations. As is usually the case with this type of law, enforcement will be key.
Consumers
Illinois teens under age 18 will no longer be allowed to use tanning beds, even if they have permission from a parent. Previously, children 14 and younger were banned, while those 14 to 17 could use the tanning beds with parental permission. Some cities, including Chicago and Springfield, have policies that ban minors from using tanning beds. Teenagers still could use get a bronzed glow using spray tan machines, which do not use ultraviolet lights.
Those under 18 also will be banned from buying electronic cigarettes. Meanwhile, smokers of traditional cigarettes could face fines of up to $1,500 and up to six months in jail for not properly disposing of butts after cigarettes were added to the state's definition of litter. It remains to be seen if a judge will mete out such severe punishment, however.
Another law requires mobile home owners or operators to notify potential buyers if the unit for sale was used to cook methamphetamine. And Illinois wineries will be allowed to let customers take home an open and partially consumed bottle of wine.
Crime, punishment
One new measure would crack down on boating under the influence by requiring boat operators to undergo drug and alcohol testing if they are involved in an accident in which someone is hurt or killed. Those who refuse testing, test positive for drugs or have a blood alcohol content limit of .08 or higher could have their driver's license suspended. The law was prompted by the July 2012 death of 10-year-old Tony Borcia of Libertyville, who was killed when he was struck by a speedboat driven by a man who authorities said was found to have alcohol and cocaine in his system at the time of the crash on the Chain O' Lakes.
People who use social media and other forms of electronic communication to organize mob attacks could face tougher penalties under a new law brought about by high-profile incidents in which large groups of teenagers organized on sites like Twitter and Facebook to cause disturbances along Michigan Avenue. Under the law, a judge would have the discretion to impose a more severe sentence on anyone who uses social media, text messaging or email to orchestrate a mob attack.
Legislators also put in place regulations for law enforcement agencies that use drones, requiring search warrants before they could be used to examine private property. Warrants would not be required to patrol state-owned lands, highways or roads. Police would be allowed to use drones to help find a missing person, and could use the unmanned devices to review crime scenes and take traffic crash scene photography.
Women who conceive and have a child as a result of rape will get more power to try to deny parental rights to their attackers under another measure. Previously, mothers had to secure criminal convictions before they could prevent their attacker from having visitation, custody on inheritance rights. Now mothers will be able to request fact-finding hearings to determine with "clear and convincing evidence" that a child was conceived through nonconsensual sex. That process is often quicker than court hearings, and in some cases there is enough evidence to prove a child was conceived by rape but not enough to convict an attacker.
mcgarcia@tribune.com Twitter @moniquegarcia
Coliseum incurred big expense in trying to keep USC lease talks secret
By Paul Pringle and Rong-Gong Lin II
December 28, 2013, 6:00 a.m.
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was flirting with insolvency, but that didn't stop its government overseers from incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses to keep secret their deliberations on a new long-term lease for the stadium.
For more than a year, the Coliseum Commission fought an open-government lawsuit that challenged the legality of the closed-door talks on USC's lease of the historic venue. The suit also sought to make records related to the deal public.
After losing the court battle, the commission had to pay about $415,000 in legal expenses incurred by the plaintiffs in the case, the Los Angeles Times and a 1st Amendment group called Californians Aware. The award, paid last week, is one of the largest ever granted under the state's transparency statutes, experts said.
The commission was also forced to give The Times hundreds of pages of Coliseum emails. Their contents support critics who said stadium officials worked closely with USC to limit scrutiny of the deliberations while drafting a lease that favored the private university at the expense of the taxpayers who own the Coliseum.
The emails, along with others obtained earlier under the California Public Records Act, show the Coliseum's top executive granting nearly every wish USC had for the negotiations and then helping the university build and maintain political support for the lease.
The lease won final approval from the Coliseum's landlord, the California Science Center, in September.
The emails between Coliseum executive John Sandbrook and USC administrators, which cover the four months of talks on principal terms of the lease, feature none of the bargaining-table tensions that are typical of such negotiations. The documents show Sandbrook and commissioners deferring to USC on matters of transparency; at the school's insistence, they signed a confidentiality agreement barring both sides from discussing the negotiations publicly.
In January 2012, Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, a commissioner, wrote to Sandbrook that a special public hearing on the lease before the panel voted on it "is a must!"
USC Senior Vice President Todd Dickey, who also received the email, responded: "If you want us to hold an open house … and listen to 500 people speak for 5 hours, and maybe answer a few questions, I guess we can do that, but I see no value in that at all."
Knabe and Sandbrook dropped the idea of a special public hearing. Knabe was unavailable for comment, a spokesman said. Sandbrook and Dickey did not respond to requests for comment.
The lease talks, which began in 2011, were in stark contrast to the commission's negotiations with USC four years earlier, when the panel flatly rejected many of the school's proposals.
But the more recent discussions came as a corruption scandal unfolded in the Coliseum's management ranks. The controversy exposed the stadium's weak financial underpinnings and proved embarrassing to the commission.
As a result, a majority of the panel members, who represent the city, the Board of Supervisors and governor's office, opted to get out of the stadium management business and renegotiate their existing 25-year lease with USC, whose football team plays at the Coliseum.
The redrawn, 98-year agreement gave USC almost total control of the Coliseum and neighboring Sports Arena and nearly all revenue from the properties, including those from the sale of naming rights and advertising.
In return, the school picked up the commission's annual rent to the state for the Coliseum land, which starts at $1 million, and promised to spend at least $70 million on stadium improvements.
The Times first asked for the Sandbrook-USC emails in February 2012. The commission produced some later that year but said the rest were exempt from disclosure because they involved confidential real estate negotiations.
The commission also rejected The Times' position that the closed deliberations violated California's Ralph M. Brown Act, which requires the government to do its business in public.
In July 2012, The Times and Californians Aware sued. In October of this year, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Luis A. Lavin found that the commission repeatedly violated the records law and Brown Act. He also determined that Sandbrook testified falsely in connection with his claim that secrecy was warranted because of the threat of a lawsuit by USC.
In a deposition, Sandbrook said the commission's public agendas included references to closed-door discussions of a possible lawsuit by USC. However, the panel's internal records showed no such discussions.
Lavin ordered the commission to release the emails and other documents and record all its closed-door meetings for three years.
The plaintiffs' legal fees were paid by the Coliseum's insurance company. The commission also spent money on its own outside attorneys, although it has yet to disclose how much.
Some of the emails the government sought to keep under wraps show that the stadium officials and USC collaborated in securing backing for the lease in City Hall and Sacramento.
In one exchange, Sandbrook asked Dickey if he knew an alternate commissioner who represented then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and might attend a lease meeting.
"Damn, no I don't," Dickey replied. "We need to get to the Mayor so he can encourage her to support the lease."
After receiving a report that Villaraigosa was miffed at not receiving advance notice on the lease terms, Dickey wrote to Sandbrook and then-commission President David Israel, that USC President Max Nikias and others had been lobbying the mayor:
"Tom Sayles has been in constant contact with the Mayor's office trying to get them to support the term sheet," Dickey said in the correspondence, referring to a USC administrator. "We even had President Nikias call the Mayor and he got him today."
Villaraigosa's two representatives on the commission voted for the lease. The former mayor, now a USC faculty member, did not respond to interview requests.
In another email, Sandbrook shared with USC a briefing he said he received from City Councilman Tom LaBonge, a commission alternate, regarding Gov. Jerry Brown's thoughts on the talks:
"Tom indicated that the Governor expressed his support for the Coliseum-USC negotiations but that he also indicated that 'full value' was needed."
Sandbrook then wrote that he believed Brown might be misinformed about the Coliseum's financial picture.
Dickey responded: "Our trustees are working on him."
Brown's three representatives on the commission subsequently voted for the lease. A Brown spokesman said he had no comment for this article. LaBonge did not respond to an interview request made through his spokeswoman.
As the lease talks progressed, Sandbrook also tipped off USC negotiator Kristina Raspe to potential missteps that could hurt USC's position.
Sandbrook warned Raspe in a September 2011 email about a possible public relations problem for her side: painting a Coliseum tunnel in USC's cardinal and gold colors.
"Would not holding off painting the remainder of the tunnel be wise in order to avoid criticism that 'USC is already taking over?' " he wrote.
Shortly before the commission was scheduled to vote on its pursuit of a new lease, Sandbrook offered in an email to give Raspe "an update as to nose-counting." The commission subsequently voted 8 to 0 — in secret — to begin negotiations.
In his testimony in the Times-Californians Aware lawsuit, Sandbrook denied that he had taken a poll of the commission before the panel voted, a practice generally prohibited by law because it leaves out the public. He said he was tallying "which commissioners understood and appreciated the gravity" of their obligations to USC.
Sandbrook later acknowledged the possibility that he had surveyed some commissioners on whether to reopen the lease.
Raspe, who no longer works for USC, did not respond to an interview request.
About four months after the commission vote, with the negotiations essentially concluded, Sandbrook alerted Raspe to a Trojan fan website that was urging that the Coliseum and the surrounding Exposition Park, which belongs to the public, be turned "into a true extension of the University of Southern California campus."
Sandbrook wrote, "I am hoping that this website does not have a wide audience at City Hall or in other sections of Exposition Park."
Once the lease terms were made public, the emails show, Sandbrook and USC worked together to urge USC alumni to post endorsement messages on the Coliseum's website.
"Trojan Nation has been unleashed," Sandbrook wrote to Raspe.
The tactic generated more than 2,800 positive responses, which Sandbrook cited in a report to the commission as evidence of public support for the lease.
paul.pringle@latimes.com
ron.lin@latimes.com
I guess if you are a jackbooted police thug, it's nice to hear U.S. District Judge William Pauley says he not going to force you to stop committing crimes by forcing you to obey the 4th Amendment and get a search warrant before you illegally tap any phones.
The judge also didn't mention that less then 1 percent of the arrests under the Patriot Act are for so called "terrorist crimes". And that over 50 percent of the arrests are for victimless drug war crimes.
N.Y. judge rules NSA phone surveillance is legal
Associated Press Fri Dec 27, 2013 11:16 AM
NEW YORK — A federal judge on Friday found that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ telephone records is legal and a valuable part of the nation’s arsenal to counter the threat of terrorism.
U.S. District Judge William Pauley said in a written opinion that the program “represents the government’s counter-punch” to eliminate al-Qaida’s terror network by connecting fragmented and fleeting communications.
In ruling, the judge noted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and how the phone data-collection system could have helped investigators connect the dots before the attacks occurred.
“The government learned from its mistake and adapted to confront a new enemy: a terror network capable of orchestrating attacks across the world. It launched a number of counter-measures, including a bulk telephony metadata collection program — a wide net that could find and isolate gossamer contacts among suspected terrorists in an ocean of seemingly disconnected data,” he said.
Pauley’s decision contrasts with a ruling earlier this month by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, who granted a preliminary injunction against the collecting of phone records of two men who had challenged the program. The Washington jurist said the program likely violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on unreasonable search.
Pauley dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU did not immediately respond to a message for comment.
“We are pleased with the decision,” Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said.
In arguments before Pauley last month, an ACLU lawyer had argued that the government’s interpretation of its authority under the Patriot Act was so broad that it could justify the mass collection of financial, health and even library records of innocent Americans without their knowledge. A government lawyer had countered that counterterrorism investigators wouldn’t find most personal information useful.
The ACLU sued earlier this year after former NSA analyst Edward Snowden leaked details of the secret programs that critics say violate privacy rights. The NSA-run programs pick up millions of telephone and Internet records that are routed through American networks each day.
New sidewalks prevent mail delivery in Paradise Valley
By Philip Haldiman The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Dec 27, 2013 8:31 AM
An infrastructure improvement intended to beautify a section of Paradise Valley left some residents with an interruption to their mail service.
New sidewalks were recently constructed on Tatum Boulevard north of Lincoln Drive, near the Paradise Valley Country Club.
As a result, the U.S. Postal Service restricted service to some residents because it says the sidewalk material changed and has created a safety issue.
Previously the sidewalks were made of asphalt; the new ones are made of colored concrete.
Town officials say the new sidewalks have the same dimensions and postal delivery should be able to continue.
However, postal workers no longer are allowed to drive on them and deliver mail per their delivery standards, according to a town document.
The Postal Service notified Paradise Valley that the previous asphalt sidewalk was considered a drivable path, which allowed workers to drive mail trucks onto the sidewalk.
But Town Manager Jim Bacon disagreed.
The sidewalk material has no bearing on mail delivery and the town has no objection to the Postal Service continuing delivery in the same way they did before, he said.
“For decades the sidewalk was asphalt and the same dimensions as they are now, but they still drove on it,” Bacon said. “The town is perfectly fine with postal workers using the sidewalk as they had in the in past. We’re OK with postal workers driving on the sidewalk. We just want our residents to have mail service.”
Peter Hass, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, said last week that the postmaster has agreed to a temporary delivery change with some driveway delivery and walk-up delivery.
“This will allow the Postal Service to work with the town on a long-term solution for those deliveries,” he said.
Hass verified that postal workers previously had delivered mail from the sidewalk, but that they should not have been doing it “without first carefully considering safety, legal or other factors.”
The Paradise Valley area is delivered out of Scottsdale’s Hopi Station post office, 8790 E. Via De Ventura.
Hass said the Scottsdale postmaster, who oversees that Paradise Valley area, as well as all others in Scottsdale, has been on the job for a little over a year and was unaware of the situation along Tatum Boulevard.
“Construction of the sidewalk is what brought this issue to the postmaster’s attention. ... Once it was called to his attention because of the construction, safety became a concern,” Hass said. “And with safety paramount, we need to consider this issue very carefully.”
Town officials say the intention of the project was to remove the asphalt sidewalk and pour colored concrete to match the existing sidewalks townwide, creating a cohesive pedestrian network.
Council approved the $298,492 construction contract June 13.
During construction, which began in August, residents were instructed to pick up their mail at the Hopi station.
However, some residents say home delivery did not resume once construction was complete in November.
The town has asked former Mayor Vernon Parker to work with the residents and post office to come up with a resolution.
Hass said the post office has proposed the installation of a cluster unit to the town and residents. But Parker said residents don’t want this.
A neighborhood delivery box unit, also called a “cluster unit,” provides several mail receptacles for multiple residences in a central location, as well as a parcel locker to provide secure delivery of packages.
“The Postal Service has been using these types of units to make deliveries for many years now on routes throughout the country,” Hass said.
Parker said a solution should be reached by the end of the year.
On the other hand I guess it's a lot safer for these cops trying to entrap horny old men, then it is for them to hunt down real criminals like robbers and rapists.
I suspect a lot more cops were involved in this wasteful use of tax dollars then the two cops that answered the phones.
The cops also wasted a lot of our tax dollars arresting people for victimless drug war crimes.
Tempe teen prostitution sting: Dozens hung up after ‘girls’ said they were 16
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Dec 27, 2013 7:56 AM
Thirty men called two officers posing as 16-year-old girls, showed up at a Tempe hotel and attempted to pay for sex, according to investigators, but dozens more were scared off by the prospect of committing a felony during a two-week operation targeting men soliciting underage prostitutes.
The 30 suspects who completed the transaction were arrested on felony allegations, but the 25 men who hung up when they learned of the girls’ supposed ages committed no crime and were not arrested. The interactions of all the men, and one woman, who called the undercover officers were captured on tape, and this week the the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office released tapes of those who were not charged because the evidence is not being used in a criminal prosecution.
The calls illustrate the explicit conversations the undercover officers had with the men, which prosecutors require in some detail in order to bring solicitation charges, and the responses from the men, including some who began to lecture the supposed teens.
None of the men committed any crime by phoning the women, and none were arrested, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The cases against the solicitation suspects have begun making their way through the court system where the recent focus on the sex trafficking of minors, which has seen a host of politicians, including Gov. Jan Brewer and Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, take a stand against the crimes, could run up against the quest for efficient justice.
The suspects arrested in the sheriff’s operation could face years in prison if convicted of the Class 2 felony for child prostitution, but such cases are frequently challenged by defense attorneys and pleaded down to lesser charges by prosecutors.
County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who served on Brewer’s human-trafficking task force that recommended tougher penalties for defendants who solicit sex from minors, declined to comment on the sheriff’s sting because the cases are still being prosecuted.
Former Sunflower Farmers Market CEO Michael Gilliland was caught in a similar sting in 2011 and last year pleaded guilty to attempted pandering. Gilliland was sentenced to 30 days in jail and one year probation
The sheriff’s operation was not limited to targeting child predators: Investigators made 21 arrests on drug-related charges and recovered 32 pounds of methamphetamine, nearly 500 pounds of marijuana and about $35,000 during the 12-day detail.
Sheriff’s detectives also made 18 arrests at adult businesses in the area for unlicensed employees, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
But it was the volume of calls the undercover detectives received and the number of men who went ahead with their intentions after learning the girls’ supposed ages that took some investigators by surprise.
“It was how compulsive these guys were, the predatory side of these guys,” said Capt. Steve Bailey. “They couldn’t help themselves.”
They are not "royal rulers" as many thing but "public servants". Well at least that's what they want us serfs to believe!!!!
Former part-time pols in Bay Area reap medical benefits at taxpayer expense
By Thomas Peele
tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com
Posted: 12/26/2013 04:28:59 PM PST
Virgil Gay, James Shattuck and Donald Bartels sat together on West Contra Costa Unified's school board way back when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon.
So why almost 45 years later are taxpayers still spending thousands of dollars a year on their health insurance?
The last of them left office in 1982, when Ronald Reagan was in his first term as president, but they are among more than 200 former officials in the Bay Area still benefiting years -- and sometimes decades -- later from what government watchdogs call a "dirty little secret'' of local elected office: taxpayer-funded medical coverage for life.
An investigation by this newspaper found Bay Area taxpayers spent more than $1.5 million last year on health benefits for former part-time elected officials -- and, in many cases, their dependents. In fact, the newspaper discovered, in 19 instances, taxpayers still paying for dependents' health care for politicians who not only are no longer serving the public -- they are no longer alive.
"I really don't think that voters in California know about this," said Sabrina Brennan, an elected commissioner for the San Mateo County Harbor district, one of 13 agencies providing benefits for dependents of deceased politicians.
The newspaper found at least 65 agencies big and small across the greater Bay Area, from affluent Palo Alto to blue-collar Concord, from BART to the Santa Clara Valley Water District, that are on the hook for taxpayer-funded health policies for former politicians that can cost as much as $20,000 to $50,000 yearly.
While more and more agencies are ending the perk for future elected officials as an unjustifiable expense in a time of tight budgets, the newspaper discovered 161 elected officials currently sitting on part-time city councils, special districts or school boards who still qualify for lifetime health coverage.
"Why shouldn't we have that benefit? We're no different than any other (city) employee," said Daly City Mayor David Canepa, 38. [What BS!!! Most elected officials are part time employees who do next to nothing]
In fact, local elected officials are different. With a few exceptions like county boards of supervisors and the city councils in San Jose and Oakland, most are part-time, a status that in the private sector rarely qualifies one for such generous post-employment benefits.
Canepa insisted the part-time designation is not reality, saying he works more than 40 hours a week for an $18,000 salary he called "extremely meager.'' That's why he said he deserves the $9,300-a-year health care perk once he leaves office, even though he was unaware of it until informed by a reporter. [Well if you are over worked and underpaid why don't you quit and get a job in the private sector that pays better]
Another Daly City council member, Carol Klatt, 75, said she was unsure whether she would take the medical coverage when she leaves office, acknowledging it was "probably not" a good deal for taxpayers.
Data collected by this newspaper from governments in 12 counties shows:
Who paid out the most? Palo Alto topped the region, paying $115,275 in insurance costs last year to provide medical benefits to 13 former politicians and their dependents. Each will receive the benefit for the rest of their lives. Former council member and Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto, 58, received $21,575 worth of coverage in 2012 after serving eight years in office. She was quick to point out that she voted in 2004 to stop offering the benefit to her city's future elected officials. But she and others on the council stopped short of stripping themselves of the perk. "It is ironic that I am of the last generation that is getting that benefit," she said.
Which school district paid most? West Contra Costa paid more than any other school district -- more than $97,000 to cover nine former trustees, including Shattuck, Bartels and Gay, all of whom couldn't be reached or didn't return calls. That's equivalent to what the district spends to educate 11 students a year.
Who received the most? Former six-term Santa Clara Valley Water District Director Patrick Ferraro, 74, who left office in 1995, received benefits that cost nearly $50,000 last year that covered himself and two dependents. He is one of three former board members who receive the perk.
Elected when Kennedy was president: Eight former politicians still drawing benefits first took office in the 1960s. First among them was Frank Borghi, 89, of Union City, who was elected in 1962 to the Alameda County Water District and stayed in office 30 years. His insurance cost $11,676 last year.
Better than Congress care: Even a retired member of Congress got vision and dental coverage last year from her time on a city council more than 20 years ago. Petaluma paid $160 in administrative fees to its self-insured plans for former Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey, 76, who served on its council from 1985 to 1992. However, the city refused to reveal how much taxpayers actually paid for her vision and dental bills, claiming that would violate medical privacy laws. [And even worse make her look like a self serving crook]
Woolsey said in a phone interview that she opted for the lifetime benefit when she left the council for Washington, because "I was having some dental work done and honestly, the federal plan isn't very good. ... I kid you not.''
Elected to new office but still covered by old post: San Rafael's school district doesn't pay for board member Paul Cohen's health insurance, but the city of San Rafael shelled out more than $32,000 for his family's coverage last year. That's thanks to the lifetime benefit the 57-year-old received during his time on the City Council from 1991 to 2007. In all, San Rafael paid $102,000 for health insurance last year to seven former officials and one current one drawing benefits from a previous term in office.
Services cut but not lifetime benefits: Fairfield, a struggling Solano County city that closes its City Hall on Fridays to cut costs, paid more than $76,000 last year to insure three former council members.
Just how lucrative the lifetime benefit can be depends on how long an elected official served, when they left office, and the nitty-gritty of each agency's rules.
In some cases, governments pay the entire cost of coverage, while others pay a share of it through the California Public Employees Retirement System. But while the insurance cannot be taken away once it is provided, the former politicians can be required to pay more of the cost.
A government "can lower the amount of its health care subsidy even after the former elected official enters retirement," said CalPERS spokesman Brad Pacheco.
But dozens of governments paid far more than the required minimum CalPERS health insurance contribution last year, which was $1,344.
There is little public discussion of how much governments end up paying for the perk. [And we certainly don't want the public to find out. We might have another 1776!!!] Government watchdogs said the practice is fraught with secrecy, potential conflicts of interest and self-dealing, and creates ongoing strains on government budgets during times of layoffs, furloughs and cuts in public services.
Officials in one city, Rohnert Park in Sonoma County, reported spending more than $63,000 last year to insure five former politicians but refused to identify them. [So much for an open and transparent government]
"It's a dirty little secret,'' said former state Assembly member Joe Nation, who's now a Stanford public policy professor. "People who do this know, deep down, that it's wrong."
In all, 65 agencies that responded to the newspaper's survey reported that they provided insurance coverage in 2012 for at least one former board member, or in a few cases for other part-time elected officials like clerk or treasurer. That's 23 percent of the agencies that answered the newspaper's request. (About 150 agencies did not respond to the survey.) A 1995 state law banned special districts from providing benefits to former elected officials who took office after that year. It didn't strip the benefit from those already receiving it, though. Cities and school districts can still offer the perk.
The head of a national government watchdog questioned why former part-time elected officials would receive such benefits in the first place.
"It's impossible to imagine part-time people in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors getting health coverage when they leave (employment)," said Thomas Schatz, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Citizens Against Government Waste. "It's something taxpayers should be outraged about. It should be stopped. This is one of the reasons why a lot of governments in California are having problems." [And it's one of the reasons the Founders gave us the 2nd Amendment!!!]
However, some former officials were quick to defend the benefit. [Yea, we have heard it a thousand times before. I don't consider myself a royal government rulers, but I deserve the big bucks for the few hours i worked ....]
"Don't you get into this with me," said Peter Snyder, 79, who left office in 1996 after serving 16 years on Dublin's council. Last year, the city contributed $9,200 to his health insurance. "There were agreements that were in place. Don't you know how government works?" [Translation - Don't you dare accuse me of screwing the taxpayers]
Snyder took office when Dublin became a city in 1982 and voted two years later for the policy that allowed himself and other council members to receive medical benefits when they left office. Three other members of the council who received benefits last year also voted for that policy, records show.
Snyder said he didn't consider that to be a conflict of interest because the benefit was not limited to him specifically. [Sadly that's how government works - "I will vote for your pork if you will vote for my pork.", and that is how these laws got passed] Six other former elected Dublin leaders also got health coverage form the city last year for a cost $46,100. The city no longer offers the perk to elected officials.
Robert Stern, the former general counsel to the state ethics watchdog, the Fair Political Practices Commission, said votes where officials give themselves benefits need to be viewed through a prism of "who else is there to approve it?" But he was critical of officials taking benefits after they leave office as a matter of public policy. "They bury it so no one flags it and questions it."
Offering such a perk to potential hires for full-time government jobs may be proper "to attract the best candidates," said Stern, also the former director of the defunct Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. "But what's the justification for giving health benefits to someone 30 or 40 years after they left office?"
Both Nation and Stern said local governments should take the decisions about benefits out of the hands of politicians by appointing citizen commissions to decide them. That would also remove potential ethical dilemmas of elected officials voting on medical benefits they receive while in office, which are often the same as full-time government employees receive.
Those benefits can clearly be pricey.
Ferraro, who served on the Santa Clara Valley Water District from 1973 to 1995, was shocked to learn his family coverage cost taxpayers nearly $50,000 last year.
"Get out of here. That's ridiculous. I had no idea the cost of our insurance is so high,'' he said. "Hopefully with the Affordable Care Act it will go down."
Unlike many agencies that provide insurance through CalPERS, the district purchases its employee insurance directly from Kaiser and Blue Shield.
After leaving office in 1995, Ferraro worked for the water district for eight years. But, he said, he had already qualified for the same health coverage.
Since Ferraro stopped working for the district in 2004, his health coverage has cost the public $397,000.
"It's because I had my kids late in life," he said. "I hope my neighbors don't start throwing rocks at my house now.''
If governments won't stop offering lifetime health benefits, there's one other group who could say no: the politicians themselves.
Brennan, the harbor commissioner, declines to take any taxpayer-funded medical coverage, period. She says politicians who accept lifetime benefits are looking out for themselves, not the voters.
"There is a sense of entitlement when people get elected," she said. "It's like a disease."
Staff writer Daniel J. Willis contributed to this story.
Contact Thomas Peele at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com and follow him at Twitter.com/thomas_peele.
Ex-employee accuses lobbying firm of directing illegal contributions
By Patrick McGreevy and Paige St. John
December 26, 2013, 9:56 p.m.
SACRAMENTO — A lawsuit filed Christmas Eve alleges that a prominent California lobbying firm sought influence by directing illegal contributions to dozens of politicians — including nearly a third of the Legislature.
The suit charges that Sloat Higgins Jensen and Associates tapped its roster of Fortune 500 clients to steer hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks to favored politicians — although the document fails to name any.
According to the court papers, company founder Kevin Sloat, who was once an aide to former Gov. Pete Wilson, also improperly gave gifts to legislators, instructing that no written record of them be kept.
Legislative lobbyists are barred by California law from donating to lawmakers or candidates for the Legislature, and from directing such contributions. The state also prohibits lobbyists from making, arranging or delivering gifts worth more than $10 to an elected state official in a single month.
The allegations are made by Rhonda Smira, a former employee of Sloat's firm. She contends that she was fired in late 2012 because she protested that Sloat's practices were illegal and says Sloat falsely accused her of theft.
Smira asserts wrongful termination and defamation, and seeks various damages but does not specify an amount.
Sloat did not respond to the accusations.
But in a written statement provided by a media consultant, the Sloat firm questioned Smira's credibility. The statement said Smira is under investigation by local authorities on unspecified charges.
"We are not at all surprised that the plaintiff, a former bookkeeper for the firm, has resorted to such a desperate legal maneuver," the statement said.
Shelly Orio, spokeswoman for the Sacramento County district attorney's office, said the department has a case against Smira under review.
Smira's lawyer, Jesse Ortiz, said the lawsuit lacks legislators' names because it is not his practice to spell out such supporting details in an initial pleading.
The lawsuit alleges that Sloat and his firm routinely broke state political law over the last decade, arranging private dinners, doling out floor tickets to Sacramento Kings basketball games and passes for San Francisco Giants baseball games, and setting up golf outings.
Smira, who now runs a consulting firm that specializes in campaign finance reporting and event hosting, says in the suit that she was ordered not to provide receipts for the gifts; that way, recipients could avoid disclosing the transactions on financial reports required by the state.
The lawsuit says Sloat told her: "If I don't report and there is no written record, and they don't report it, then it didn't happen."
She also says it was her job to arrange elaborate fundraisers for California lawmakers at Sloat's showcase home in Sacramento, stocked with cognac and imported cigars and served by private caterers.
Sloat's lobbying clients were expected to attend and make political donations, Smira alleges.
"A typical evening at [Sloat's] mansion would result in between $10,000 and $50,000 for an elected official," the lawsuit states, and in return the firm's clients "were promised exclusive access to the governor, legislators or candidates."
The lawsuit alleges that 37 lawmakers and an undisclosed number of other public officials received "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in illegal contributions this way.
Sloat was Wilson's chief legislative aide in the 1990s, when he "supervised legislative operations in 81 state departments in the executive branch," according to the firm's website.
Sloat's business partner, Kelly Jensen, worked in the 1990s as chief of staff for Charles Calderon, who was then state Senate majority leader. Calderon is a brother of current state Sen. Ronald S. Calderon (D-Montebello), who is under investigation by federal authorities alleging that he engaged in influence peddling and bribery.
That investigation has spotlighted Ronald Calderon's legislative lifestyle, including travel, dinners, cigars and liquor paid for by lobbyists and their clients.
The Sloat firm reported receiving $4.4 million from four dozen clients last year to lobby state government, making it the seventh-largest concern in the Sacramento lobbying corps.
The company's client roster includes Indian casino operators, city governments, water agencies and beer makers and other large corporations.
patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com
paige.stjohn@latimes.com
Here in Arizona almost anyone can carry a concealed weapon without getting a stinking permit or license!!!
Just where will it be legal to carry a gun in Illinois?
Law has tricky mix of where it's legal for permit holder to have gu
By Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune reporter
7:12 a.m. CST, December 27, 2013
After a hard-fought battle, Illinois residents next month can begin applying for permits to carry concealed guns in public. But those who do could face another challenge: figuring out where it's legal to carry a firearm and where having a gun could land them in jail.
While the Illinois statute lays out nearly two dozen places where guns are prohibited — including schools, public parks, government offices and hospitals — it also includes caveats that might seem confusing, even contradictory, particularly to novice gun carriers.
For example, the law prohibits guns at events where there is a large gathering of people, like neighborhood street festivals. But it allows people with guns to walk through a public gathering on the way home, to work or to their car.
That means, according to some firearms instructors, that people could legally walk through the crowd at the South Side Irish Parade with a gun tucked in their belt but they couldn't hang around and watch the performances.
And although the law forbids guns in public parks, nothing in the statute prohibits someone from carrying a gun on a trail or bike path that goes through a park.
In other words, firearms instructors said, it's OK to arm yourself while riding a bike through the Cook County Forest Preserves, but you'd better not get off your bike to use the bathroom.
"It's like a Byzantine maze," said Colleen Lawson, owner of Lawson Handgun Institute, a firearms training facility on the North Side. "It's possible to get through it without breaking any laws, but it's tricky."
In most cases, permit holders can leave their gun in the glove compartment or the trunk of their vehicle in the parking lot when they go to the Field Museum, Brookfield Zoo or other entertainment venues where firearms are prohibited. But when they go to the post office, they'd better park on the street. Under federal law, firearms aren't even allowed in the parking lot of a post office in Illinois and most other states.
Though instructors are required to teach the basics of the Illinois and federal statutes during the16-hour training course, Lawson and others said it is inevitable that inadvertent violations will occur. So it is important that permit holders be as familiar as possible with the laws.
The new law also could pose a challenge for law enforcement, according to Cook County sheriff's officials.
"There is going to be a learning curve for prosecutors and law enforcement as people carrying concealed weapons on our streets in Illinois becomes a reality, particularly in Cook County," said Cara Smith, spokeswoman for Sheriff Tom Dart.
"We are very heavily populated and also home to a tremendous amount of gun violence. ... It will be a challenge on multiple fronts," she said.
There are serious penalties for violations. The first offense is a Class B misdemeanor, which has a maximum penalty of 180 days in jail and a $2,500 fine. A second violation is a Class A misdemeanor, which could result in up to a year in jail, a $2,500 fine and a six-month suspension of the concealed carry license. A three-time offender could get the same jail sentence, the same fine and a permanent revocation of the concealed carry license.
Lawmakers were forced to cobble together the new law after the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the state's long-standing concealed carry ban in December 2012.
Some gun rights supporters said the law is needlessly complicated because legislators had to try to appease the anti-gun lobby in Chicago as well as the pro-gun lobby Downstate in order to get it through the General Assembly. Gun supporters point to discrepancies in the law, such as firearms being off-limits in Cook County Forest Preserves but legal in forest preserves in the rest of the state.
"We proposed laws like those in effect in other states, but instead they chose to reinvent the wheel," said Charles Lawson, who teaches courses along with his wife, Colleen, and pushed for concealed carry in Springfield. "There are a lot of 'gotchas' in there, particularly when it comes to public transportation."
For anti-gun advocates in Chicago, prohibiting guns on public trains and buses was an important issue. But Charles Lawson said such restrictions place an unnecessary burden on gun carriers.
As an example, he described a scenario in which an armed person goes to a restaurant for a meal and decides to take a CTA train home. In that case, the permit holder would have to unload the gun and put it in a purse, backpack or other encasement. But the trick is removing it from the holster and unloading it, he said. That can't be done in public view.
"You can't even go to a restroom inside the station and do it," Lawson said. To do it legally, the carrier would have to find a place nearby that allows firearms and go there to unload and put away the gun, he said.
Todd Vandermyde, an Illinois lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, said this is what happens when a bill is rushed through the legislature in 24 hours. But he said he is confident that the law won't be as difficult to follow as some people might fear.
"Some people are overly cautious because the city has a horrendous record," said Vandermyde, referring to the strong opposition to concealed carry by Chicago officials. "But you can't start flooding the courts with these cases. I have more faith in law enforcement than that."
Lindsay Nichols, an attorney for the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said there is no reason permit holders can't comply with the law. Her concern with the law is not so much where you can or cannot take a gun but who is allowed to carry one.
As one of 19 so-called "shall issue" states, Illinois is required to issue a license to any applicant who meets the requirements, without determining whether he or she has a legitimate reason for carrying it.
"There's an approach that some states use, where you can't get a permit in the first place unless you really need one. That leads to much simpler laws and more straightforward laws," Nichols said. "It makes the community safer, whereas Illinois' new law simply requires the state police to issue permits to almost anyone."
While people on both sides of the argument agree that it is unlikely the state will reverse its "shall issue" status, lawmakers likely will have to confront other issues in the next couple of years.
In December, Sheriff Dart publicly raised concerns about the law, saying the application process was flawed and could lead to guns ending up in the hands of the mentally ill and people arrested for domestic violence or gang crimes. He said the law needs to be more stringent, barring people with a single arrest for such offenses.
He said he would consider filing a lawsuit to stop what he called an "absolutely absurd" approval process that would force his office to file individual objections to applications his office deems unacceptable. Such a legal move could affect more than 150,000 applications the Illinois State Police expects to receive from Cook County residents alone beginning Jan. 5.
The state has 90 days to process the applications, meaning it could be April before most licenses are issued.
Other states have grappled with questions about guns in the workplace, both inside the building and in the parking lot, and the thorny issue of carrying guns on private property, such as in retail stores and movie theaters.
While Illinois law allows businesses to ban guns on their premises by posting a sign, some business owners have said it places too much of the burden on them. They said it forces them to make a political statement and to take too much responsibility in protecting their employees and consumers.
One of the most high-profile cases involved Starbucks, which in September asked customers to stop bringing firearms into its stores and outdoor seating areas, creating a firestorm of protests from pro-gun advocates. The coffee store chain stopped short of banning guns but made it clear that guns were unwelcome.
As far as gun control advocates are concerned, there are two key issues: keeping guns out of places where alcohol is consumed and sensitive areas where children and families gather. But pro-gun advocates said that would make firearms illegal just about everywhere.
"There are things in the law that complicate the issues," said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association. "Those things haven't been a problem for permit holders in other states, and they won't be in Illinois. They need to be streamlined so it's not a prohibiter to the cardholders."
One of the things Pearson and other gun-rights advocates tell people is to be patient as the public gets used to the idea of concealed carry. In time, they insist, laws will loosen up in Illinois, just as they did in other states.
Brian Malte, national policy director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the NRA has a track record of getting states to gradually ease up on requirements, often after initially throwing its support behind tougher standards.
"They got legislators to agree that certain places were not appropriate for firearms, that there should be training and that there should be background checks. And year by year, brick by brick, they go out to repeal these things they helped set up," Malte said. "It's all kind of done in the backroom where the public may not be paying close enough attention. And 10 years later, your concealed carry law looks a lot different than it did when it first started."
Pearson said people are worried about the criminal misuse of firearms and want to unfairly punish the law-abiding community.
"If you're walking through an outdoor art show and you can't stop and take a look at the art, it doesn't make sense," Pearson said. "The legal permit carriers aren't the problem. The people who are the problem are the gangbangers, the illegal carriers of firearms, the drug dealers.
"I'm sure if they're carrying and want to stop and look at the artwork, they will."
dglanton@tribune.com
---------------------------------
Many cops HATE the 2nd Amendment. That's understandable, the whole purpose of the Second Amendment is to give the people the guns they need to keep police tyrants under control.
Sheriff: Concealed carry process 'fraught with problems and holes'
By Steve Schmadeke Tribune reporter
9:16 p.m. CST, December 17, 2013
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart on Tuesday took aim at the state's concealed carry law that takes effect next month, calling it a “monstrosity” that is “fraught with problems and holes” and vowing to object to permits being issued to those arrested even once in the last seven years for domestic violence, gun possession or gang crimes.
Dart wouldn't rule out going to court to seek an injunction to block what he called an “absolutely absurd” approval process, saying the law will result in permits being issued to people who shouldn't have them.
“This is not something I'm going to blindly go along with, saying, ‘All right, they've done it again to us in Springfield, another law that doesn't make any sense and we're just going to stand back and do it,'” Dart told reporters at the sheriff's police headquarters in Maywood.
“How many more incidents do we need to see where people shouldn't have guns?”
The law tasks Illinois State Police with overseeing the permit process but gives county sheriffs, state's attorneys, local police and the attorney general's office the power to object to a permit being issued. When objections are made, a review board will decide if the permits will be issued.
Illinois is the last state in the U.S. to allow residents to carry concealed handguns. While the law takes effect Jan. 1, the first permits are expected to be issued in early April, a state police spokeswoman said.
Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, criticized Dart's concerns and said background checks already being run by state police are sufficient to keep “bad people” from getting a permit.
“I think that it's a good chance for Sheriff Dart to get some press,” he said.
While Dart wants to bar permits to Cook County residents with a single arrest for domestic violence, gun possession or gang crimes, Illinois law has a less stringent standard. State police are required to file an objection if an applicant has five or more arrests in the last seven years or three or more arrests on gang-related charges.
In a Monday letter to the sheriff made public by Dart, state police director Hiram Grau said the sheriff must file his objections individually, not make a blanket objection as he hoped.
Nearly 360,000 Cook County residents are licensed to own a gun. Dart said he believes maybe half of them will apply for a concealed carry permit.
He said the process for running a background check on applicants is flawed, with law enforcement agencies — including state police — banned from searching a more comprehensive national database called LEADS.
Without that tool, Dart said he will be left searching his own databases on arrests as well as jail records. Other agencies won't be told if any objections have been filed on a permit, aides said, and they will have to do their own investigations into applicants even if state police have already determined it won't issue that person a permit.
“(It's a) horrifically unworkable (system) that clearly puts local law enforcement on the hook,” the sheriff said.
He said the screening for mentally ill applicants is also woefully inadequate and flags only those who have been committed to a hospital for psychiatric treatment or been found by a physician to be a danger to themselves. Dart said that when a “bad event” happens, neighbors will wonder why police issued a permit to a person who was clearly mentally ill.
“When you throw in the mental health component here, it's like what in God's name were these people thinking?” Dart said of state lawmakers. “They were in such a hurry to get something done.”
sschmadeke@tribune.com
Países donde ser homosexual es un delito
Sostener una relación con una persona del mismo sexo no es un delito, sin embargo, actualmente existen diversas naciones que así lo consideran.
Mientras algunos países consideran la homosexualidad como algo normal y han regulado los matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo, otros lo consideran como uno de los peores delitos de la historia.
En este contexto, nos hemos dado a la tarea de retomar el listado sobre los países en los que, desafortunadamente, el tener preferencia por una persona del mismo sexo se ha convertido en una violación a las leyes. Sin duda, es una situación alarmante.
Con información de Animal Político y The Clinic
*.- India: Recientemente el Tribunal Supremo Indio anuló la legalidad de la homosexualidad, la cual, puede ser castigada con hasta 10 años de prisión. [10 years in prison for being gay???]
*.- África: En este continente los ataques y las persecuciones a homosexuales son cada vez más comunes, y es que las relaciones gay son un crimen en más de 38 países de este continente, tanto que en Uganda, Libia y Nigeria están intentando endurecer las penas.
*.- Uganda: En este país muchos han sido los intentos de imponer la pena de muerte para castigar a las personas homosexuales, y hasta para aquellos que no denuncien las violaciones a la ley que establece a la homosexualidad como un delito. [The death penalty for being gay???]
*.- Camerún: Muchas han sido las personas arrestadas por su apariencia, y algunos hasta fueron encarcelados por más de 3 años sin derecho a un proceso judicial.
*.- América: Este continente no queda libre de los abusos contra los homosexuales, y es que mientras algunos países hasta han legalizado el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, otros se encuentran en "pañales" sobre el tema.
*.- Honduras: Más de 186 homosexuales han sido asesinados entre 2009 y 2012; y es que la llamada homofobia ha hecho de las suyas sin que estos asesinatos hayan sido castigados por la ley.
La Patrulla Fronteriza utilizará globos aerostáticos
Esta nueva herramienta permitirá combatir el contrabando y el cruce de inmigrantes indocumentados.
Volando a 765 metros (2,500 pies) sobre ranchos cubiertos por matorrales cerca de la frontera con México, un globo aerostático cargado con cámaras de tecnología de punta utilizado por la Patrulla Fronteriza puede ver fácilmente a un grupo de reporteros y la marca, color y modelo de sus vehículos a un par de kilómetros de distancia.
En Irak o Afganistán, donde la tecnología ya demostró que es efectiva para ubicar atacantes, este tipo de dirigibles vigilan alrededor de las bases. Las autoridades estadounidenses creen que pueden ser igual de efectivos para rastrear a traficantes de drogas e inmigrantes que intentan cruzar la frontera sin permiso por un escarpado tramo del Río Bravo donde no hay valla limítrofe.
La Patrulla Fronteriza está probando dos dirigibles llenos con helio que les prestó el Departamento de Defensa. Personal del Congreso se unió a representantes de los departamentos de Seguridad Nacional y Defensa el miércoles cerca del pueblo fronterizo de Roma, a unos 400 kilómetros al sur de San Antonio, para presenciar lo que el aerostato puede hacer.
Los dos dirigibles uno de casi 17 metros y el otro de 22 metros que están a prueba en la frontera fueron fabricados en Carolina del Norte por TCOM, una empresa con sede en Maryland.
Por dentro, el globo está equipado con aire acondicionado y tres bancos de videomonitores escanean el área, hacen acercamientos a vehículos que están a kilómetros (millas) de distancia, cambian a infrarrojo y rápidamente ubican a un automóvil que avanza por un estacionamiento.
Las cámaras de los dirigibles tienen capacidad para ver en territorio mexicano, pero el vocero de la Patrulla Fronteriza, Henry Mendiola, dijo que esa no es la intención.
Another reason the insane and unconstitutional "war on drugs" will continue to be a failure!!!
Muere Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, protector de narcotraficantes
La tarde del pasado jueves falleció el general de 78 años de edad, en las instalaciones del Hospital Central Militar en la Ciudad de México.
Fuentes de la Secretaría de la Defesa Nacional confirmaron que el deceso se debió a complicaciones de una operación en el cráneo, que se le comenzó a realizar durante la madrugada.
Quien fuera director del desaparecido Instituto Nacional de Combate a las Drogas, fue detenido en 1997 como responsable de vínculos con el cártel de Juárez, según publica Excélsior en su versión digital.
En febrero de ese año, el entonces secretario de la Defensa, Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, dio una conferencia de prensa en la que informaba que el general Gutiérrez Rebollo tenía nexos y protegía al líder del cártel de Juárez, Amado Carrillo, conocido como "El Señor de los Cielos".
"Durante los últimos años, el general Gutiérrez Rebollo engañó a sus superiores. Defraudó la confianza en él depositada; atentó contra la seguridad nacional de México; y vulneró el esfuerzo conjunto de las instituciones en contra del narcotráfico, ya que si bien actuó eficazmente contra algunos grupos de narcotraficantes, ahora consideramos que también sirvió consciente y preponderantemente a los intereses y al fortalecimiento de otro grupo, " dijo Cervantes Aguirre.
Su chofer lo delató
Según indica Milenio Diario, una llamada anónima había detonado la investigación que duró 13 días. El informante acusaba al general de vivir en un departamento propiedad de Carrillo Fuentes.
De acuerdo al expediente judicial, la voz anónima había sido la del chofer del general, Juan Galván Lara. El chofer declaró más tarde que el nexo entre Amado Carrillo y Gutiérrez Rebollo era el lugarteniente del capo, Eduardo González Quirarte, quien entre otras cosas, le había regalado dos autos blindados y un departamento.
Tras ser declarado culpable por ayudar al "Señor de los Cielos", fue condenado a 31 años 10 meses y 15 días de prisión.
En 2011 autoridades penitenciarias autorizaron su traslado al Hospital Militar debido a sus malestares derivados del cáncer, diabetes y enfermedades cardiorespiratorias.
Puerto Peñasco está seguro, dice el Procurador de Justicia del Estado de Sonora
Carlos Navarro Sugich, invita a la comunidad arizonense a que visiten la ciudad y dice que los acontecimientos violentos de los últimos días donde murieron cinco delincuentes, son echos aislados.
Ante una alerta emitida por el Gobierno Norteamericano a sus ciudadanos a que no visiten Puerto Peñasco, a raíz de los echos violentos que se suscitaron el pasado miércoles en plena zona hotelera, donde fueron abatidos cinco presuntos sicarios del cartel de Sinaloa, las autoridades mexicanas aclaran los echos y exhortan a la comunidad del estado de Arizona a que visiten el puerto ya que está más seguro que nunca.
El Procurador de Justicia del Estado de Sonora, Carlos Navarro Sugich, Eduardo Javier Tapia Camau, Secretario de Turismo y Enrique Franco Celaya, Representante del Gobierno del Estado de Sonora en Arizona, mediante una conferencia de prensa que se llevó a cabo en el Consulado Mexicano, aclararon los acontecimientos y dijeron que lo que pasó pudo haber pasado en cualquier ciudad, e invitaron a la ciudadanía a que no dejen de visitar este sitio turístico.
"Puerto Peñasco es una ciudad muy bonita, una ciudad muy agradable de visitar y seguiremos trabajando para que así se mantenga, los niveles de criminalidad de la ciudad, los podemos comparar como los de cualquier otra ciudad, lo que pasó no fue consecuencia de una pelea entre bandas del narcotráfico, fue que las autoridades hicieron valer el imperio de la ley, por parte del Gobierno Federal, aclaró el Procurador".
Pero extraoficialmente se dijo que la balacera entre autoridades y delincuentes duró por lo menos dos horas, lo que causó pánico entre la población, sin embargo, el alcalde de la ciudad, Gerardo Figueroa Zazueta, destacó que todo está bajo control, la población no está en peligro y que este hecho es algo inusitado en la ciudad.
Even if I am an atheist I still think all people should have the same rights including superstitious dopes like this priest.
Sadly despite most our government masters lies that they would rather have a thousand guilty people get out of prison rather then have one innocent person spend time in prison our jails are still packed with innocent people who have been framed by the police and prosecutors.
Monsignor William Lynn's Conviction Overturned In Church Sex Abuse Scandal
By MARYCLAIRE DALE 12/26/13 01:11 PM ET EST AP
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Roman Catholic church official who has been jailed for more than a year for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints had his conviction reversed and was ordered released Thursday.
In dismissing the landmark criminal case, a three-judge Superior Court panel unanimously rejected prosecutors' arguments that Monsignor William Lynn, the first U.S. church official ever charged or convicted for the handling of clergy-abuse complaints, supervised the welfare of any particular child.
"He's been in prison 18 months for a crime he didn't commit and couldn't commit under the law," said Lynn's attorney, Thomas Bergstrom. "It's incredible what happened to this man."
Lynn, 62, is serving a three- to six-year prison sentence after his child-endangerment conviction last year. His lawyers will try to get him released as early as Thursday from the state prison in Waymart.
Prosecutors had argued at trial that Lynn reassigned predators to new parishes in Philadelphia while he was the archdiocese's secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004.
Lynn's conviction stems from the case of one priest, Edward Avery, found to have abused a child in 1998 after such a transfer.
Lynn's attorneys have long contended the state's child-endangerment law at the time applied only to parents and caregivers, not supervisors like Lynn. Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina rejected their argument and allowed the case to move forward, but the Superior Court panel reversed her decision.
Prosecutors could ask the full Superior Court to rehear the case. A message left with a spokeswoman for Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams wasn't immediately returned.
Lynn's supporters believe he was made a scapegoat for the church's sins, including two cardinals who were never charged. After Lynn's trial, Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn was convicted of a misdemeanor for failing to report a priest with child pornography.
US Church Official Seeks Bail; Conviction Quashed
PHILADELPHIA December 26, 2013 (AP)
By MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press
Associated Press
A Roman Catholic church official sentenced to prison for his handling of priest-abuse cases had his conviction overturned, and may soon be back before a judge for bail.
Monsignor William Lynn had served 18 months of his three- to six-year term for child endangerment before the state Superior Court overturned the felony conviction on Thursday.
The three-judge panel unanimously rejected arguments that Lynn, the first U.S. church official ever charged or convicted for the handling of clergy-abuse complaints, was legally responsible for an abused boy's welfare. Defense lawyers have argued that Lynn, 62, was convicted under a law passed years after he left his post at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
"It was fundamentally unfair from the day it started," defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom said. "He's been in prison 18 months for a crime he didn't commit and couldn't commit under the law. It's incredible what happened to this man."
Defense lawyers hoped for his immediate release from prison, but the appeals court sent the bail issue back to the trial court. That could put Lynn back before Common Pleas Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, who had repeatedly denied defense efforts to have the case dropped before trial.
Prosecutors say they will oppose bail and challenge Thursday's 43-page ruling.
"Because we will be appealing, the conviction still stands for now, and the defendant cannot be lawfully released until the end of the process," District Attorney Seth Williams said in a statement.
His office had argued at trial that Lynn reassigned known predators to new parishes in Philadelphia while he was the archdiocese's secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004. Lynn's conviction stems from the case of one priest, Edward Avery, found to have abused a child in 1998 after such a transfer.
"We know thousands of betrayed Catholics and wounded victims will be disheartened by this news," said David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Lynn's attorneys contend that the state's child-endangerment law at the time applied only to parents and caregivers.
Sarmina concluded that Lynn perhaps drafted a 1994 list of accused priests to try to address the clergy abuse problem. But when Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua had the list destroyed, Lynn chose to remain and keep quiet, she said. Sarmina, in sentencing Lynn in July 2012, had said the church administrator had "enabled monsters in clerical garb ... to destroy the souls of children," rather than stand up to his bishop.
Lynn told the judge: "I did not intend any harm to come to (the boy). The fact is, my best was not good enough to stop that harm."
Lynn's supporters believe he was made a scapegoat for the church's sins, including two cardinals who were never charged. Bergstrom said his client hopes to return to ministry, and has enjoyed support of the current Philadelphia archbishop, Charles J. Chaput, who twice visited him in prison.
Lynn had left the archdiocesan hierarchy for parish work after he featured prominently in a damning 2005 grand jury report into the priest-abuse scandal. Then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham concluded that too much time had passed to charge anyone.
Williams, her successor, revisited the issue when new accusers came forward under new laws that extended the time limits and added church or school supervisors to those who could be charged.
Tucson sued for favoring area contractors
Associated Press Thu Dec 26, 2013 10:11 PM
A Phoenix-based think tank is accusing Tucson of violating state law with an ordinance aimed at helping local businesses.
The Goldwater Institute is threatening legal action if the city doesn’t repeal the ordinance, which allows contracts to be awarded to local companies even if those businesses aren’t the lowest bidders.
The group claims such action is illegal and burdensome to taxpayers, who will bear the increased cost.
The ordinance was passed last year and allows the city to grant contracts to area businesses that offer bids that are up to 5 percent higher than the lowest bid. The city says it is legally skirting the law by granting extra percentage points to local companies in the bidding process.
Under the ordinance, Arizona companies outside the Tucson area receive a 3 percent preference over national bidders, while national franchises with local owners receive a 1.5 percent credit.
The policy applies to contracts ranging from $50,000 to $1 million, which represents about 60 percent of the city’s contracts.
Proponents say the ordinance helps the community by keeping money in the local economy, but the Goldwater Institute says it allows officials to dole out contracts to special interests at the expense of taxpayers.
“When somebody does business with a local company, the money stays here and generates more tax revenue,” said Katharine Kent, who owns the Solar Store and was a member of the committee that developed the ordinance. “Getting business locally has the multiplier effect, and it’s much better for our community to keep the work here.”
Kent said more than 20 states also have similar so-called local-preference laws in effect.
“It’s intended to level the playing field,” she said. “If businesses are not able to do business in New Mexico, we should make it easier to do business here.”
Goldwater Institute attorney Jon Riches disagrees.
“We know the direct cost to taxpayers is at least a 5 percent increase on those contracts,” Riches said, adding that the ordinance violates not only state law but the city’s own charter.
Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild said that he believes the ordinance is legal and that the city is prepared to defend itself if Goldwater takes the matter to the courts.
“Ordinances like this have been utilized across the country to benefit business communities,” Rothschild said. “If someone who has standing thinks otherwise, they can challenge the ordinance.”
Pot makes Uruguay country of the year
What makes right? Not might, according to the Economist’s choice of Uruguay as Country of the Year.
“(T)he accomplishments that most deserve commendation, we think, are path-breaking reforms that do not merely improve a single nation but, if emulated, might benefit the world,” the Economist wrote.
These included gay marriage “which has increased the global sum of human happiness at no financial cost,” the magazine wrote. Uruguay was among nations that implemented it in 2013.
Uruguay also legalized marijuana, something that will undercut the power of drug syndicates.
“This is a change so obviously sensible, squeezing out the crooks and allowing the authorities to concentrate on graver crimes, that no other country has made it. If others followed suit, and other narcotics were included, the damage such drugs wreak on the world would be drastically reduced,” the Economist wrote.
Yes. The benefits would be enormous. As a legal drug, we could more easily control it. We could tax it to provide funding for drug treatment. We could knee-cap the cartels. Pot is their cash cow.
The United States ought to consider the cost- and life-saving benefits of legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana.
As for same-sex marriage – some states within these United States are moving little by little to make it a reality.
It ought to be a national change based on U.S. Constitutional rights. Such a sensible and decent step is unlikely to make it through our current self-serving Congress. So we wait for the Supreme Court.
But we shouldn’t have to wait. Congress should follow the lead of a nation that most in the United States would consider less developed. Less powerful.
Yet extending human rights to more human beings is an act far more powerful than anything possible through use of all the arms and ammunition stockpiled by all the wealthy nations
"the school will not allow them to volunteer without an Arizona-issued identification and fingerprint clearance"
School visitors policy at Phoenix elementary prompts complaints
By Eugene Scott The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 26, 2013 9:47 PM
Dozens of parents of children at a west Phoenix elementary school are angry about the school’s public-safety policies, which they say blocks some of them from coming on campus.
But district officials said their biggest concern is the safety of the students.
The parents spoke out against the Isaac Elementary School District’s policies at a Dec. 18 board meeting.
Most of the parents have children at J. B. Sutton Elementary School, where some say Principal Juliette Carrion has created a hostile environment for undocumented parents.
Several non-profits — including Team Awesome, Campaign for Better Neighborhoods and Puente Movement — are working to improve communication between parents and administrators.
Many of the parents want to volunteer at the school, said Diri Hernandez, a volunteer with Team Awesome, a west Phoenix community improvement organization. Some of the parents claim the school will not allow them to volunteer without an Arizona-issued identification and fingerprint clearance, Hernandez said.
But school staff and other parents said Carrion and district officials are just enforcing state-mandated policies in an era of increased sensitivity about school safety.
Carrion and Superintendent Mario Ventura came to the district during the 2012-13 school year, said Abedon Fimbres, the district’s director of safety and emergency manager. The administrators began enforcing policies that previous leaders were somewhat lax on.
“There’s been a lost of innocent lives in other parts of the country, and we want to make sure we do everything possible to make sure something like that doesn’t happen on our campus,” Fimbres said.
Some parents said they want the school to issue identification cards because some do not have government-issued identification.
“People were asking for residency proof from parents. And they were confused with the staff, because you’re not supposed to be asked if a parent is a legal resident,” Hernandez said.
Fimbres disputed the parents’ claim and said school leaders will accept non-Arizona identification, but they do require some type of government-issued ID to pick up a child if that person is not on the student’s emergency contact list.
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De Blasio inherits big counterterror force
Think of it as a huge do nothing jobs program for cops
This is a perfect example of H. L. Mencken statement of:
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
on how our government masters use a bunch of BS to increase the size and power of government!!!
Pot makes Uruguay country of the year
Source
Arizona faces growing cost of private prisons
Why the government needs to put people in prison for the victimless crime of pot smoking????
Portable drug test a new addition at New Year's DUI checkpoints
F*ck the 4th Amendment, I got a gun and a badge and I'm gonna make you take a drug test.
2014 ushers in new state laws on issues from medical marijuana to tanning beds
Requiring sick people to be fingerprinted and under go background checks before they get their medicine??? That's something only a cruel uncaring government bureaucrat would do.
Coliseum incurred big expense in trying to keep USC lease talks secret
F*ck those public record laws. We are royal government rulers!!!!
N.Y. judge rules NSA phone surveillance is legal
Judge says 4th Amendment is null and void???
New sidewalks prevent mail delivery in Paradise Valley
Here are a few good reason the US Post Office should be replaced by private mail delivery.
Tempe teen prostitution sting: Dozens hung up after ‘girls’ said they were 16
Sounds like a huge waste of tax dollars. Two of Sheriff Joe's goons spent two weeks trying to con men into having sex with imaginary, hot, sexy 16 year old women that exist only in the minds of the cops.
Life time free medical insurance for part time government bureaucrats????
Life time free medical insurance for part time government bureaucrats????
Ex-employee accuses lobbying firm of directing illegal contributions
They are not bribes, they are campaign contributions - Honest!!!! Well at least that's what the politicians who receive the loot want us to think!!!
Flushing the 2nd Amendment down the toilet in Illinois!!!!
Flushing the 2nd Amendment down the toilet in Illinois!!!!
Países donde ser homosexual es un delito
Again, don't these piggies have any real criminals to hunt down??? Criminals that hurt people like robbers and rapists, not some harmless pair of woman or men who are in love with each other.
La Patrulla Fronteriza utilizará globos aerostáticos
Those balloons that spy on the Mexican border!!!!
General Gutierrez Rebollo, protector of drug traffickers dies in Mexico
General Gutierrez Rebollo, protector of drug traffickers dies in Mexico
Puerto Peñasco está seguro
Rocky Point is safe honest!!!! Well at least that's what our government masters in Mexico are telling us after the Mexican police used 2 Blackhawk helicopter gunship to murder 5 or so suspected drug dealers.
Priest framed for child abuse spends 18 months in prison????
Priest framed for child abuse spends 18 months in prison????
Tucson sued for favoring area contractors
Think of it as a way the members of the Tucson city council can use to give contracts to the people that give them the biggest bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions.
Marijuana makes Uruguay country of the year
Marijuana makes Uruguay country of the year
Papers Please - This ain't Nazi Germany, it's Phoenix Arizona!!!!
Jesus, you have to have a government issued photo id, and a fingerprint check by the FBI before you can visit your child’s school or help out at the school???