Today’s dispensation of confusion from this Administration commuted the sentences of 46 drug pushing criminals. Serious drug pushers. So far, he has commuted the sentences of 90 criminals. Practically all of these criminals were pushing enormous amounts of cocaine, with other drugs taking secondary importance in their arsenals of human destruction. The rationalization for this misguided Presidential disposition was worded as, “These men and women were not hardened criminal, but the overwhelming majority were sentenced to at least 20 years, 14 of them had been sentenced to life, for nonviolent drug offenses.”
The President of The United States perceives these down-liners in billionaire drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman’s international distribution network as “nonviolent” drug offenders. Guzman has two things to be grateful for this week, apparently. And most of these 46 thugs had guns and many were pushing in school zones. It requires a disturbing mental exercise to perceive serious Drug Pushers, any drug pushers actually, as being “nonviolent.” Drugs have become prevalent on each and every street of our continent. Kids in primary school are not only provided access, but are the beneficiaries of this Presidential attitude as hard drugs are pushed on them. By whom? The Pusher. Where the rubber meets the road, the pusher pushes the toxic amalgams that ravage the human body and desecrate the brain.
I also don’t differentiate here between the pusher we all see on so many of our street corners, or distributing using the automobiles they call “rice-rockets” and the supposed friend who turns a friend onto a drug. It’s rare that someone gets up suddenly one day and says, “I’m in the mood to do some heroin today.” That just doesn’t happen. That’s not how drug use expands. Use grows maliciously and with intent. Self-serving friends make money from friends, and “friends” are easy picking since there are few behavioral forces more powerful than peer pressure. Perhaps such malicious and malignant individuals don’t really fit the definition of “friend.” Of course Hollywood does its best to desensitize us to hard drugs — how else are these poor guys in the slums going to earn a living. A pusher by any other name . . .
Pushing drugs is a violent act. It is as violent as murder. It is contagious and it’s disfigurement of society is permanent. It destroys families. It destroys neighbourhoods. There is no room in our society for drug pushers and their upline. Get caught, and you might as well have committed your third murder. And yet, progressives believe they’ll be rehabilitated, just like their killer friends down the lane, or the child molesters in the next cell. History says, not a chance.
Nonviolent? Really? That’s insane.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.
I will be glad when Choom Boy is out of office. Yes he won twice, but there is no accounting for the stupidity of voters. Money does work when you look for votes.
. . . And from the WHOLE OF THE MEDIA: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
None of it knows where it stands on this. Where is the moral fibre? Where is the common sense?
Mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent offenders are a dumb idea. They don’t render justice blind. They render justice stupid.
There’s been a federal 5-year mandatory minimum if you’re found guilty of having 100 marijuana plants. Weight doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if the entire lot adds up to less than an ounce of material.
@Greg:
How much crack does anyone have to sell to your kids before you think it’s serious?
@DrJohn: #4
One expert on the front lines recently told a family member that over 90% of the marijuana purchased on the street is laced with hard drugs. It makes the pusher’s job easier. Today’s marijuana is very different from the marijuana the hippies remember from the 60s. Not only was it not laced, it also had 20% the potency of the current crops on street corners.
The leniency on the part of these progressivity drinkers is nothing short of insane — all for the cause of ideology.
@James Raider:
They died on January 20, 2009.
@James Raider, #5:
That’s one of the dangers of driving a natural product onto the black market. The same problems with dangerous adulteration happened during the days of alcohol prohibition. Countless people were blinded, suffered paralysis, or died from methanol poisoning. There were 750 fatalities in New York alone.
One of the more recent problems resulting from marijuana prohibition has been dangerous synthetic products.
Marijuana itself? There are no recorded cases of any marijuana overdose deaths. Deaths attributable to medical issues related to marijuana use might be as high as two, although opinions are divided even on those.
Statistically, marijuana is far less dangerous than aspirin. Over the counter NSAIDS, including aspirin, kill 7,600 Americans per year and result in 10 times that many hospitalization.
@Greg:
This is Gullible Greggie’s brain on pot.
@retire05, #8:
Check the numbers yourself. What I said is accurate.
Marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug. It doesn’t meet any of the three Schedule 1 criteria.
Tobacco, on the other hand, meets all three, and kills around 450,000 Americans each and every year. It follows that several perfectly legal corporations are the biggest pushers of deadly addictive substances in the nation. They’d like nothing better than seeing your kids light up.
Reasonable people don’t find this sort of thing acceptable. I also find it hard to fathom how anyone holding even remotely libertarian views can approve of the government telling people that they can’t grow or posses a plant.
Greg these people are the ones who believed Reefer Madness was reality.
And they also believe what “experts” tell them that a lot of pot is laced with really bad drugs, of course we actually never see those drug lab results.
These are also the same people who have no problem drinking distilled alcohol
@retire05: #8
Marijuana is surfacing as a principal culprit in the explosion in mental disorders. There is still very little understood about the 500 cannabinoids and their impact on the brain.
Research is only now beginning to tell us that it triggers disorders to awaken — disorders that might have lain dormant throughout an individual’s life. Some people are not so susceptible, but apparently, many in society are affected, and some of the disorders are serious, such as Schizophrenia.
When I was young I felt quite strongly that Marijuana was innocuous. That is no longer the case. The evidence is overwhelming and growing that it is the root cause of many mental disorders currently destroying lives and families all over America.
Education is a bitch.
@old guy: Choom Gang, dope pushers…… and someone would wonder why he would pardon a whole gang of dopers. Oh my.
@Greg: Do you realize that those dope pushers wouldn’t be getting sentences if they weren’t doing something illegal. I’d say 1 yr for first offense, 5 for second, 20 for 3rd and life for anymore. Anyone that thinks that selling dope is non violent has been doing too much dope and their mind has melted.
@DrJohn: Sounds as if Greg may be ready to dispense it to them himself. After all, it’s not harmful.
@Greg:
Would those two be just as meaningless if they were your children? After all, they are ‘someone’s ‘ children.
@Greg:
better get off that hard stuff greg. Pot puts 5 times as much tar into lungs as cigs do. It causes at least as much cancer as tobacco does, likely up to 5 times as much.
Libs gotta have that dope.
@James Raider:
the real problem is that by the time they get that education, their brain is fried.
I don’t believe there has been an explosion in mental disorders. What has increased dramatically is their diagnosis, and public awareness of the seriously mentally ill because of a dramatic decrease in their institutionalization.
An Alarming Increase in Mental Illness?
I don’t believe there’s evidence that marijuana causes mental disorders, either. If it did there should be no difficulty established solid evidence, owing to it’s widespread illegal use for years. States that have legalized recreational and medicinal use have thus far experienced no resultant increases in acute health problems. (There have been increased ER visits in Colorado for specific cannabis-related problems like panic attacks. Some people shouldn’t use cannabis, just as some people shouldn’t use alcohol.)
People with mental disorders have a tendency to self medicate, consequently there are higher incidences of substance abuse among people who have mental disorders. That doesn’t mean marijuana will increase mental disorders among people who have no predisposition to begin with.
Young people shouldn’t be using drugs or alcohol, period.
@Redteam:
People who smoke marijuana probably aren’t in the habit of consuming the equivalent of a pack a day. Health conscious cannabis users no longer need to smoke it to consume it, of course. That’s one of the benefits of decriminalization. In addition to the tax revenue.
FTA:
So, how is it the only detractor has conflated this story with pot use?
Pot and cocaine are two different birds.
I have seen plenty of regular people go from married, employed, saving for the kids’ college, etc., to separated, out on the streets, lost every dime, starting to steal just because they thought they could handle their cocaine use….and it turned out they couldn’t.
Cocaine dealers have the nasty habit of taking everything you have without remorse.
Your kid’s college funds, your wife’s engagement ring, your sound system, anything.
That these guys were violent offenders on top of cocaine dealers is exactly why they should have stayed locked up.
But then Obama:
And Obama could afford it often enough to have a soft spot for its dealers to this day.
@Greg:
Well, then again, you wouldn’t, would you?
Probably. There’s a scientific term for you. How do you know those 450,000 people didn’t consume weed along with cigarettes and the weed contributed to them developing smoke-related diseases and dying? PROBABLY they would not be forthcoming with contributing factors that were illegal.
Michael Brown was wacked out on pot on his last day on earth. Could that have contributed to him bouncing a store for cigars (to be laced with drugs) and attacking a cop? After all, he was “gentle”.
The solution is pretty simple; if it’s illegal, don’t do it. If it’s illegal AND it deteriorates your body, REALLY don’t do it. Or, vote Democrat.
As to Obama, once a doper, always a doper.
@Greg: 18
I like that statement. So you’re saying if you have a mental disorder, you are likely smoking dope. Sounds about right.
@Greg:
is that what you call one of them there oxymorons?
Actually, what I said is what I was saying.
@greg:
you ever watch Cheech and Chong?
@Greg:
and that is that if you have a mental disorder, you are likely smoking dope.
@Redteam: #13
You mean like Obama? He must feel guilt for his fellow dopers since apparently Obama never got ‘caught’ when he was snorting and puffing…
because… black privledge.
The people behind all of this is: “Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law”, an advocacy group. lawyer committee.org – a liberal civil rights
racistgroup. (oh boy)Also, if you would like, see article and 87 page report, the very nature of Obama’s involvement in this. Insane.
Report is: “Unequal Justice: Mobilizing the Private Bar to fight Mass Incarceration” (uh oh)
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/articles/2015-05-acknowledging-bias-in-the-criminal-justice-system
Admittedly I did not read all 87 pages, yet. What I did read came across as predictably contradictory – excerpt from report – (2) mass incarceration results in large part from aggregate policy choices, rather than from poor personal decisions or increases in overall levels of crime, meaning solutions too will be legal and policy in nature. There is no single solution to the problem of mass incarceration. This is because there is no single cause. Many issues are subsumed under the heading of “mass incarceration,” some with deep historical roots. It is the combination of various factors working in tandem that produces the result.
There is no single cause? How about breaking the LAW??? as a single cause.
Excerpt: To be eligible for a commutation, an inmate must:
be a relatively low-level offender; have demonstrated good conduct while in prison; not have significant ties to large-scale criminal organizations, gangs, or
cartels; have no “significant criminal history” or history of violence either before prison or while incarcerated; and have served ten years in prison.
The report in my opinion is another example of excusing away criminal behavior of blacks, and even Hispanics. While hinting…racism. It cry’s out our prisons are full but it’s not the fault of criminals committing crimes….blame the system….blame anyone and anything but don’t blame the criminal…and please don’t ask for personal responsibility, because, apparently, a certain pigmentation is incapable of it.
@FAITH7: #28
Now there’s a gem.
The more we ‘excuse’ criminality, the more we have of it. And amazingly, the ‘twinkie defence’ has also worked for over twenty years in this progressive judicial system.
Sounds like a new definition of the term, ”mass incarceration.”
In past times that meant rounding up all the Jews, all the gypsies, all the homosexuals.
In modern days, but in another place, it means rounding up all the homosexuals, all the Christians, all the non-ISIS Muslims, all the Jews.
But this ”report” redefines ”mass incarceration,” to mean individuals who individually go through a legal and due process of arrest, indictment, trial, conviction and imprisonment simply because they are all of a certain race or type of criminality.
Are we going to release all the rapists who were victims of this same type of ”mass incarceration?”
What about all the murderers?
@FAITH7: It’s interesting how many Dimocrats don’t want laws enforced. Such things as sanctuary cities are Dimocrat inventions. Selling dope, according to Dims, is a non-violent crime. Wonder how many people are killed by people on drugs, selling drugs, stealing drugs, etc? But don’t tell the mother of a dead son that he died because of drugs, must have been some other reason.