Thursday, March 12, 2009

Modern-day man's inhumanity to man,


If you're not interested in Drugs Politics or Rants, you should skip this and just say "hello" in the comments. That way, you won't have to figure it all out .

I'm Going to be talking in blue today so you can tell my comments from the other quotes.

Why is it that the common person like you or I can see things so clearly, but our government officials can't? Who didn't know that America was headed into a recession? I had a friend, who has passed away now that said when someone tells you that "we live in a world economy now", what they are really telling you is "I don't give a damn about your job, I'm making a killing in the stock market". What was really happening is that the stock market investors were making a killing on cashing in on a percentage of the money leaving the country. When the moneys all gone we will be in trouble. Well, here we are surprise, surprise!

Now we are bailing out banks and trying to save investors, when we should be concentrating on real jobs, and real productivity, like growing food and building the things we need to keep America growing and strong. But no, we are printing phony money and selling it to our grandchildren to save the sorry assholes that put us into this mess. Who can we thank? Our crooked politicians, who sold-out our economy, and are still selling out our economy unless Obama gets a clue.


The politicians in State of Illinois are so crooked that a person can't even get elected unless they are a crook. So, why are we surprised when the Governor is trying to sell Obama's senate seat?

The second thing of major importance, is we little people can clearly see that our uncontrolled borders are a problem. Why is it that our politicians can't get a clue on what is happening at our borders? Our borders are so open that the Mexican crooks and thugs are coming into the United States to hide, just like the crooks and thugs used to hide in Mexico in the good old days of the wild, wild west. Our borders ore so open that the average person could easily come into the U.S. illegally with a minor amount of persistence. Why is this allowed to happen? They always say, "Follow the money, and you will find the problem". So who is buying-off our politicians this time? Or is it that nobody is trying to pay our politicians, and they just don't deem it to be a problem that they should deal with, until there is some money in it for them?

When the Enron scandal surfaced, and they went broke, it cost the state of California five billion dollars in energy costs. Enron's reason for existing was to take California energy dollars to Texas. Why didn't the U.S. government try to save California from the devastating costs that put our economy in a downward spiral? What did we do about it? We got Gray Davis recalled and Got Arnold elected, which might be fair, because Davis was stupid enough to not know that Pete Wilson got us into the Enron scandal, and Davis was not able to get us out. I've got news for you, the rest of the U.S. doesn't give a rats-ass about what happens to "California". They figure that we can solve our own problems.

Now we have a Marijuana problem in Humboldt County. To legalize, or not to legalize, that is the question. More news: the rest of the state of California doesn't give a rats-ass about us. It's going to be our problem.

So, what does the rest of the Marijuana industry look like and where are we headed? We need look no futher than Mexico. How deeply are the Mexican cartels hidden in California? Do they affect us yet? Are our cops out numbered yet? Like they are in Mexico?

I have to tell you, this Mexican Cartel thing still has me confused, but I know that there are some really smart people out there that DO have it all figured out. What happens to Mexico if we legalize Marijuana? And, if we don't legalize, will the Cartels start telling our cops what to do?

Quotes from Various sources:

Some 7,000 people have been killed in an upsurge in violence between Mexican cartels since January 2008. U.S. officials fear the violence is spreading into the southwestern United States, where there have been abductions and execution-style murders tied to the drug trade.

About 90 percent of all cocaine consumed in the United States comes through Mexico. It also is a major source of heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana in the United States, according to Homeland Security officials.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/joeBiden/idUSN11269402

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of soldiers to fight drug gangs across the country since taking office in 2006. Despite the effort, more than 6,000 people were killed last year in drug violence.
Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-03-08-voa7.cfm

Thanks to American drug users, Mexico's drug cartels have enough money to support a 100,000-man army of soldiers
Source: http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4247568

The conflict goes back a ways: MEXICO CITY — One of Mexico's biggest drug cartels has launched a brazen recruiting campaign, putting up fliers and banners promising good pay, free cars and better food to army soldiers who join the cartel's elite band of hit men.

"We don't feed you Maruchan soups," said one banner in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, referring to a brand of ramen noodles.

The recruiting by the Gulf Cartel reflects how Mexico's fight against traffickers increasingly resembles a real war, nearly 17 months after President Felipe Calderón ordered the army into drug hot spots.

"Army and police-force conflicts with heavily armed narcotics cartels have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat," the U.S. Embassy said last week in a travel warning to Americans.

Fliers urging soldiers to defect began appearing earlier this month in the border city of Reynosa. They were pasted on telephone poles over government posters that offered rewards to drug informants.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-24-mexicocartels_N.htm

Forbes magazine's latest list of the world's billionaires includes Mexico's most wanted man - Joaquin Guzman.
The 54-year-old, who is said to be the head of one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels, is 701st on the list with an estimated fortune of $1bn Forbes magazine's latest list of the world's billionaires includes Mexico's most wanted man - Joaquin Guzman.
The 54-year-old, who is said to be the head of one of Mexico's most powerful drug cartels, is 701st on the list with an estimated fortune of $1bn

In 1989, Colombia's Pablo Escobar was ranked the 7th richest man in the world, with $25bn (£18bn) to his name.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7938904.stm

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- Mexican drug cartels are increasingly active inside the United States, producing homegrown marijuana and gaining new urban footholds, officials say.
Narcotics officials say that the four major cartels are avoiding tougher border enforcement efforts by growing more pot within the United States. Combined with what they have been able to smuggle into the country, the gangs have been able to maintain marijuana supply lines that have barely suffered a dent while flows of other kinds of illegal drugs have been pinched, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Monday.
The four largest Mexican cartels -- the Federation, the Tijuana Cartel, the Juarez Cartel and the Gulf Cartel -- now operate in 195 U.S. cities, up from about 50 cities in 2006, a Justice Department report indicates. One reason is that marijuana sales have been a steady and lucrative business for them, virtually unrelated to the ups and downs of other drugs.
"Marijuana is the king crop," Special Agent Rafael Reyes of the Drug Enforcement Administration told the Times. "It consistently sustains its marketability and profitability."
Mexican drug traffickers have also moved into hydroponic marijuana production -- cannabis grown indoors without soil and using sunlamps, officials said.
Source: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/02/Mexican_cartels_move_into_US_pot_growing/UPI-99021233580269/




20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice rant Ernie! With some very valid points.

Anonymous said...

I think the borders should be shut down and the reason they'er not, it is votes coming across for the politicians.
I don't think legalizing pot will make a big difference money wise as it seems the demand is too great. If the government wants their tax money from these people maybe they should consider a federal sales tax instead of the IRS ripoff we have now.

Oregon

Indie said...

That's a nice leaf. OK you've given me a lot to think about.

Anonymous said...

and just think, all this mayhem is just because drugs are illegal. Legalize them all and soooooo much crime is just gone. Less people will be users because there won't be pushers. No more murders, no more torture.

Ernie Branscomb said...

“all this mayhem is just because drugs are illegal. Legalize them all and soooooo much crime is just gone.”

I think that the problem goes much deeper than that. It should be decided whether Marijuana is harmful to society or not, then deal with it accordingly. What is the expected result of legalization? Will Marijuana use become rampant? Will it lead to more harmful drug use? We have come to think of it as “medicine” and we use it as medicine, but I think that some of us over medicate. How would they establish a standard by which a person would be considered impaired? How would drivers be judged?

If they legalized murder, it would solve an enormous crime problem. We would be able to eliminate that annoying neighbor with the bratty kids. Some people will consider murder that otherwise would follow the law. And, if murder is only legalized here, will people flood to here to participate in murder, like the growers flocked to us when they found out that Humboldt County’s welfare was good and the local judge was turning every body accused of drug crimes loose?

Anonymous said...

Uh Ernie... I don't think the murder analogy works. If pot is made legal... no more diesel messes in our creeks... no more cartel scenes... teenagers would actually have to get jobs and you could hire a kid to do yard work... hitchhiking would be normal... a BMW would be a sign that the driver is a tourist... we would probably cease to have a housing shortage and we could house the homeless in empty stores... realtors would scramble to start selling property to retired people and after a horrible lurch in our economy (food stamps would prevent starvation) we might begin to level out. The community would never be as poor as it was in ought '71, when I got here and you were making a living back then, right?
Except for one problem. How would legal pot be sold and distributed? Like cigarettes? Like booze? No one seems to look at this. Cigarettes look cool but all the do to you is make you want another and give you lung cancer. Pot actually gets you loaded. Not blotto like booze but loaded. Around here it wouldn't make a lot of difference but we are talking about legal everywhere. The whole daggone country. My imagination tends to run with this and I'm not sure I like the results. I see every Joe Sixpack in the USA picking up a pack of Bubba Kush Lites and burning one... all on the same day! Scary. Maybe we should keep it a little bit illegal and just decriminalize it.
Legalization might be the biggest social experiment of all time.
I will now pound my drum and point out what no one wants to hear. Murder (of Indians) was quite legal just over 100 years ago in our neighborhood. I can't imagine it, but an economist might say that all that slaughter was necessary to create an environment friendly to business. The same economist might suggest that logging created an environment friendly to the marijuana industry (less shade) or that without the invention of plastic pipe we would have no forest industry here at all (marijuana is a forest industry, right?). If I somehow became the marijuana czar, I would kick the price down to where diesel was no longer profitable and no one went to prison or jail for possession or sales as long as no other violent crime was involved. You would still have to deal with the cartel plantations but we could do that by employing out of work prison guards.

Rose said...

We THINK that if we legalize it so much crime will be gone.

We THOUGHT medical marijuana was compassionate use - or at least a compromise between legalization and what we had.

What we once had was people getting busted for a joint (still do in some states, look at the Olympic swimmer). What we had was people worried about getting raided if they had a couple of plants.

I don't think anyone expected the unintended consequences of 215.

The defacto legalization brought by 215 and Gallegos had consequences.

Who ever thought that it would mean people would take it to mean that they could RENT your house, rip it to shreds, tear holes in the walls, run tons of illegal electrical circuits, infest it with mold and burn it down and move away with no penalties whatsoever? And that's only half of it.

We have all been programmed to think that this is just like Prohibition, and if we would just do this or do that, like they did back then, everything will be all fine and dandy.

Put aside the programming and think about the unintended consequences. What are they? Can you see it coming? Or will it hit us too late? Or will there be none?

It has to be legalized nationally if you don't want California turning into Humboldt County, invaded by every criminal who wants to come grow and make big bucks, and damn the consequences.

If only California legalizes it will the Mexican cartels move in - not Philip Morris?

If you legalize it a whole new slew of laws will come into effect, most will resemble ag laws.

If you legalize it - what becomes the next 'must-have' item? Meth? Something else? Maybe not right away. But we aren't a society that takes something and is happy with it. You get the kids the tamagotchi, then they want the Nintendo DS, then it is the Wii - you can make a million examples like that, just look at recent elections.

And if you legalize it will the growers - assuming the price held - be WILLING to fork over 60% of their income in taxes? Pay the employee related expenses? Comply with existing business laws and those yet to be written to regulate legal growing and distribution?

The battle has been won. You are one election away from legalization.

Now what.

spyrock said...

There are NO places left where it is legal to smoke, thanks to AmeriKKKa's insane Drug War and International laws and condemnations. It is even illegal in Holland, but tolerated there.

That's the key, where is it tolerated (where you won't get busted)? The answer is many places! There are places in Australia, India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Morocco, etc. In the U.S. I understand California is very laid back about it, especially SF, and places north (the Emerald Triangle, where they grow most of America's best sinsemilla). I'm told Humbolt county is the "phrendliest" place to smokers. The cops there look the other way because without the green economy, the area would be in a bad depression. So there's lots of places where smoking is tolerated, sounds like you're livin' in the wrong neck of the woods!

By the way if you can make it to Amsterdam, it will be the "high" point of your life!

As far as friendly people goes, they seem to be everywhere except big cities. But I've always found that the poorest people are usually friendliest cause as Janis sang "When you ain't got nothing, you ain't got nothing to lose." I guess most hippies qualify.

Of the places I've traveled, I'd have to say that the New Zealanders and Balinese are the most friendly people I've met. They go way out of their way for strangers.

-The Old Hippy

toleration is the key to many doors that remain locked to those that don't. somehow i don't see that happening soon. besides, all those people addicted to ativan and valium might switch to pot and put a dent in the pharmeceutical companies budget.

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't you love to see the gangs, the drug-lords, the cartels, the murderers with the rug pulled out from underneath them, looking around with no reason to kill or steal. Nowhere to get their ill-gotten gains. I would love to see that day. Legalize them all and drug problems will go away to a large degree because without pushers there WILL BE less users. We can medically help the users that are still around. The drug war doesn't work and is really only beneficial to the dealers and the cops.

Ernie, you stubbornly want to hold on to pot being a bad drug with bad consequences. It's just not. It's not benign but IT IS BEYOND QUESTION a much mellower and better drug than alcohol. My hope is people will be able to get off booze and use this milder drug that will usually make a person happier. And I speak from experience and it still blows my mind that you have all these strong anti-pot ideas and you have NEVER even tried it. Like I said in another blog how can a 64 year old non-Christian man not have ever tried it in 40 years!!! You're holding on to ideas you developed long ago when pot hit Garberville. Change man, it's good for you. Get over it already.

Ernie Branscomb said...

These are some of the most thoughtful comments that I've seen on this blogsite. I’ve seen staunch advocates of Marijuana look a little bit at the bigger picture, and I’ve seen critics of legalization look at the consequences.

I’m a realist, and I’m not really looking at whether MJ or alcohol is good or bad. Let’s say, just for grins, that all drugs are harmless. Let’s say that MJ is no more harmful than candy. (candy can rot your teeth) What I want to look at is the end result’s of what we do.

As Ben pointed out, there would be no more diesel spills. If that is true, how are we going to grow our “boutique marijuana”, that has been compared to a Napa Valley wine? As rose pointed out, that if it isn’t made legal nationally we will have a regional problem. Well, As I pointed out, the rest of the U.S. Doesn’t give a rats-ass about what happens to California, and they are not likely to vote to legalize Marijuana. California will most likely legalize MJ before the rest of the nation does. If Obama won’t enforce MJ laws on a federal level, which he has already said he won’t, California will be wide open. Humboldt County will no longer have any say at all in what happens, and, as Rose pointed out, there will be a major race between the Mexican cartels and the tobacco companies to take over the California drug trade. We will have things going on in California very similar to Mexico.

Pleading that Marijuana is harmless is the Siren song that lead the sailors to the rocks. By touting MJ as a harmless, happy, and euphoric weed, we fail to look at the industry. The industry is the cash cow of the lawless hoard.

We can’t just roll up in our fuzzy little blanket of what ever our drug of choice is and say that “I’m just so happy here, tell the rest of the world to go away.” The world won’t go away with legalization. My whole point is that the world may very well bite us in the ass if we don’t think about what we are doing.

Anonymous said...

Pleading that Marijuana is harmless is the Siren song that lead the sailors to the rocks. By touting MJ as a harmless, happy, and euphoric weed, we fail to look at the industry. The industry is the cash cow of the lawless hoard. THE INDUSTRY IS ABOUT DRUGS BEING ILLEGAL. IT'S THE ILLEGALITY THAT BRINGS THE TROUBLE WE ARE IN, NOT THE POT. I CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHY A SMART GUY LIKE YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND THAT. I THINK IT'S YOUR STUBBORN ARIES NATURE. (IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE)



The world won’t go away with legalization. My whole point is that the world may very well bite us in the ass if we don’t think about what we are doing. BITE US IN THE ASS HOW?? I DON'T GET IT.

Here's another thing that's been on my mind. We have cartels, we have gangs in L.A. that control the city and murder randomly. I say bring our troops home from foreign soils and put them to work clearing up the gang problem and the cartels. If we can blast away another country why not try it on our own criminals? Are we afraid of these gangs and cartels? Yes, I think so. All this military might, (and we have more than all other countries put together...look it up.) and we can't clean up our own bad guys. I want America to put the effort there.

Legalize all drugs, pull the rug out from under the criminals. It's the only answer. They win otherwise and we keep wasting money and lives trying to "get them".

Ernie Branscomb said...

Bunny, you are my most fun commenter. When I get to the Pearly Gates, and they ask me. “What was your favorite experience in life” I’m going to tell them that “I knew Bunny”.

“Legalize all drugs, pull the rug out from under the criminals“
Bunny, I hope you really don‘t mean that. I knew a person that would take ANYTHING to get high. I saw him take a bottle of Tylenol one time. If he had any drug that he wanted he would have killed himself with an overdose just trying to get high.

Anonymous said...

That's one guy Ernie. There are thousands not like him. And I do really mean it. sorry.

Anonymous said...

Talking to marijuana smokers about legalizing pot is like talking to old folks about their surgery scars.

They never get tired of talking about every little detail, even though everybody wishes they had never brought the subject up in the first place.

(To be fair, Ernie, I'll read your article right after I take my nap. I won't be so cranky then.)

Robin Shelley said...

I'm a little behind in the reading but this is a good post, Ernie. Keep it up! I always learn so much from the blogger's "legalize marijuana" conversations. Appreciate it.

I'm inclined to agree with Rose on just about all points... except I'm not sure about the "one election away from legalization".

Ernie says:
"I’m a realist, and I’m not really looking at whether MJ or alcohol is good or bad."

Except for business... which is exactly what a smart businessman such as yourself should be doing.

and:

" ... the rest of the U.S. doesn’t give a rats-ass about what happens to California, and they are not likely to vote to legalize marijuana."

I agree that the rest of the U.S. doesn't give a rat's tail about CA... BUT, according to the latest numbers, somebody outside of CA must be buying the stuff... & a lot of it, at that... so I think quite a few non-Californians care very much for what California can do for them. Cheaper dope at the corner liquor store would be a lot more convenient & a lot less nerve-wracking than meeting somebody's pistol-packing brother-in-law behind the liquor store after midnight every third Thursday of the month with a briefcase full of money. Not having to do that just might be incentive enough to make a non-Californian doper vote for legalization.

Anonymous said...

Come'on Robin, tells us what you really think. I know at your ripe age of 30 and most of it in Laytonville you have an inside view of the goings on there.

Oregon

Cristina said...

Too bad we don't have any really OLD bloggers who can tell us what it was like before 1937, when it WAS legal.

Anonymous said...

From a really OLD blogger.

Cristina, I can't say much about 1937 but in the fall of 1939 things were great and it stayed that way till about the late 1960's and it has been down hill from there.

Oregon

Chris said...

First time Blogger here, I definitely believe this is a very interesting and contriversial topic. I love it. my question is, if America as a whole, decides to legalize marijuana with that be enough new revenue to bring us out of recession?

Ernie Branscomb said...

Chris, thank-you for being a "First Time Blogger" on my blog. I'm sorry that I've taken so long to get back to you. I've been busy.

I don't think that legalizing Marijuana will bring in very much money to the state. Nobody will pay the $14.00 / ounce that they are proposing. Most people will buy grower direct and avoid the tax.

It's a totally dumb idea... so what else is new in government?