Progressive Voter Guide to Drug Issues

**Ferre**

Read the report here:

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/102058/progressive_voter_guide_to_drug_issues/?page=entire

DdC

Feeding the Red Meat of Hate

It's Immoral To Not Vote 'Yes' on One By Constance York
CN Source: Michigan Journal October 14, 2008 Michigan

Anti-Drug Group Joins Fight Against Med Marijuana By Dawson Bell
CN Source: Detroit Free Press October 14, 2008 Lansing, MI

US Deputy Drug Czar Says Proposal 1 is About Dope By Ted Roelofs
CN Source: Grand Rapids Press October 13, 2008 Grand Rapids, MI

U.S. 'Drug Czar' Criticizes Prop 1 in Lansing
Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said during a Lansing stop that the passage of Proposal 1 would result in more teens abusing marijuana and the expansion of the drug trade in Michigan.

OiNkDeCePtion Is Flying Blind

Marijuana Drug Czar Distorts Report

The proposal "gives people who are addicted a way to say I have a medical problem" and get more of the drug, Walters said.

"Marijuana does not lead to physical dependency, although some evidence indicates that the heavy, long-term users may develop a psychological dependence on the drug"
-- The Shafer Commission of 1970

Walters, a Lansing native, compared Michigan's prospects to what has happened in California since 1996, when the state passed a medical marijuana bill.

Distortion 1: Drug Use Post-Prohibition

As a result, Walters said, numerous "pot shops," places where the drug is easily available, have opened up in places such as San Francisco, and teens have found sympathetic doctors to write prescriptions for them.

Distortion 10: Young People and Drugs

Walters said that unlike opiate medications, such as morphine, medical marijuana there is largely unregulated. The potency of the drug can vary widely, and there aren't uniform production standards in place.

Distortion 11: Marijuana Potency
Pot Potency? Boomers' blissfully unfazed by mere facts.

Plus, he said, a pharmaceutical synthetic form of marijuana named Marinol is already on the market.

Bud Beats Mairdinol for Pain

"We don't tell people the best we can do for them is make them intoxicated, To say, we need to smoke a weed to make people high because that's the best we can do for them is an abomination." Walters said.

Groups Endorsing RxGanja

Granny Storm Crow's MMJ List

Vote Rigging and Suppression Ahead of the 2008 Election by Greg Palast

Sarah Palin’s Radical Right-Wing Pals
Max Blumenthal on Her Ties to the Pro-Secessionist Alaskan Independence Party

McCain's Red Meat of HateFormer McCain Supporter Accuses the Senator of "Deliberately Feeding the Most Unhinged Elements of Our Society the Red Meat of Hate"

Why Are McCain Backers So Angry? by Robert Parry

Judge Orders Michigan to Restore Names of 1,400 Purged Voters to Rolls

Anheuser-Busch, Bottled Water Lobby Sponsor Presidential Debate

GOP Voter Challenges
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner on Voter Rights, Faulty Electronic Voting Machines, Voter Fraud and GOP Voter Challenges

Voter Purging Process
Shrouded in Secrecy, Prone to Error and Vulnerable to Manipulation

Incarceration Now!
NPR’s On The Media Interviews Amy Goodman
Around 800 people were arrested during the four day Republican National Convention earlier this month. Dozens were reporters, and one was Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, who argues the arrests have a chilling effect on journalists.

4500+ votes lost in one NC county
Message #75496 posted by pisshead80 (Info) November 05, 2004

All across the country

Troy King Advocates BREAKING the Law!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
I just got a call from my colleagues, who are spending this week registering people currently in jail who have been convicted of minor drug possession, to vote in the upcoming election. They told me that my good friend Attorney General Troy King has taken to the airwaves to condemn this historic effort calling it one of the worst things he has ever seen.

Kirk Tousaw, Another NDP Candidate in BC, Forced to Resign

The federal New Democrats lost another B.C. candidate Friday, the second to quit in a matter of days. Vancouver-Quadra candidate Kirk Tousaw, a civil liberties lawyer and former campaign manager for the B.C. Marijuana Party, resigned Friday afternoon. Tousaw has been a long-time advocate for the legalization of marijuana and once appeared on Pot TV, a website run by party leader Marc Emery. He is also chair of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association's drug policy committee. full story

Dana Larsen Forced to Resign as NDP Candidate in Canadian Federal Election

Dana Larsen was asked on Wednesday, September 16th to resign as the New Democratic Party candidate in the West Vancouver/Sunshine Coast/Sea To Sky Country riding. The resignation was requested by NDP head office following a Globe & Mail newspaper interview conducted Wednesday in which the reporter asked about coca plant seedlings being sold at Vancouver Seed Bank, which Dana helped open but no longer owns or works for. full story

Backing NDP Can Stop Tories: Candidate

Black Box Voting
America's Elections Watchdog Group

Diebold takes down blackboxvoting.org???
US election fraud? Perish the thought!
By Egan Orion: Wednesday, 24 September 2003

Who's Editing Wikipedia
Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign

Diebold's Political Machine March 5, 2004
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Voting Machine Controversy by Julie Carr Smyth
August 28, 2003 by the Cleveland Plain Dealer
Diebold Voting Machine Owner Committed To Give Votes To Bush in 2004

Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

Diebold in the News
A Partial List of Documented Failures

Lost Homes, Lost Votes
Are Republicans Trying to Block Foreclosed Homeowners from Voting in Michigan?

The Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign have filed a federal lawsuit to block a controversial voter suppression tactic in Michigan. The Michigan Messenger reported this week that the chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of a Republican effort to challenge some voters on Election Day. full story

Historic 2008 Election
Could See Unprecedented Attempts to Bar African American Voters
As we continue on the subject of voter suppression and race, we turn to Queens College political science professor and bestselling author Andrew Hacker. In the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, Hacker writes,“Obstacles to getting blacks to vote have always been formidable, but this year there will be barriers—some new, some long-standing—that previous campaigns have not had to face.” ull storyf

PREJUDICE: MARIJUANA AND JIM CROW LAWS

DdC · Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 4:58 am Post subject:

"As long as I count the votes,
what are you going to do about it?"
-- Boss Tweed

Busheney lied about Iraq,
Walters Lies about everything.
Banksters lie and steal the treasury.
DARE lies to the kids.
Judges lie to the Jury.
The media spreads lies to the people.
But they'd never rig the vote in the US of A?

Early Voting Sees Reports of Voter Intimidation, Machine Malfunctions

Early voting has begun, and problems are already emerging at the polls. In West Virginia, voters using touchscreen machines have claimed their votes were switched from Democrat to Republican. In North Carolina, a group of McCain supporters heckled a group of mostly black supporters of Barack Obama. In Ohio, Republicans are being accused of trying to scare newly registered voters by filing lawsuits that question their eligibility. We speak to NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, author of Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy. [includes rush transcript]

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Of the variously altered, mutilated ballots, yes. Ballots with stickers placed over the square that people had blacked in for Kerry/Edwards; somebody else blacks in Bush/Cheney. Thousands and thousands of ballots that were pre-marked before they were distributed, so that people would mark different boxes on them, and then they would be invalidated.

Vote Rigging,Suppression,Purging,Manipulation

Ex-GOP operative tells cautionary tale about 'how to rig an election'

Machine Problems Plague 1st Day Of Early Voting
While voters could continue to cast ballots and put them in the emergency bin, they were uncomfortable not seeing their vote registered.

DdC

Lawsuits, Machine Malfunctions and Missing Absentee Ballots
Among Voting Rights Issues Facing Jittery Election

Court Backs Penn. Voter Rights Suit on Electronic Machines

Arrest of Neo-Nazis in Obama Assassination Plot
a Reminder of Enduring White Supremacist Culture in US

Is a potential Barack Obama presidency bringing white supremacist subculture out of the shadows? Following the arrest of two neo-Nazis for plotting to assassinate Obama, we speak to investigative journalist James Ridgeway, author of Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads and the Rise of a New White Culture.
(continued... includes rush transcript)

Poll: 59% of Early Voters Backing Obama

Election 2008

Five-Hour Election Night Special
and Two-Hour “Morning After” Special

* November 4th
7 PM- 12 AM ET
* November 5th
8 AM- 10 AM ET

Click for more information

Urban legend: Americans voted for change in 2006 by Mark Yannone

Too busy to vote

In reality most Americans were doing something else on election day. In fact, of the fraction who are eligible to vote, only about 39.7 percent did so. The other 124 million Americans who were eligible to vote had something better to do.

Can Dems Reclaim the South? (Excerpted)
Once Solidly GOP, Virginia and NC Emerging as Battleground States

What we’re seeing is a train wreck, where an easily anticipated record turnout across the South, people turning out in record numbers, registering in record numbers, but for some reason, it seems election officials in many of these key Southern states have still been unprepared for the deluge of voters.

This was a reform that a lot of people really pushed for, because they were worried about the long lines. Some people may remember, in 2004, there was a lot of speculation, and some pretty hard evidence, that in a state like Ohio, long lines could have really made the difference.

One estimate has it that up to 129,000 voters in the state of Ohio just walked away, because the lines were too long in places like Cleveland and other major metro areas. And that was a state that’s decided by a few tens of thousand voters less than that. So, this is a sort of thing that can change an election. People don’t understand that long lines and long waits, that’s a voting rights issue.

In Florida in 2005, a Republican-controlled legislature pushed through legislation limiting the number of early voting sites and the hours that they could operate in that state. And a lot of people are saying that that is the reason why we’re seeing the long lines today. So this is a question of policy.

You can avoid these kind of problems if you have the right policy in place to accommodate the voters. And that’s why it took an executive order, the governor of Florida, Crist, Charlie Crist, saying it was a state of emergency; you needed that to change it in the state of Florida. And now you’re looking at other states.

The same issue is happening in Georgia. And right now the secretary of state and the governor are saying that—they’re throwing their hands up in the air and saying they can’t do anything.
--Chris Kromm, Executive Director of the Institute for Southern Studies and publisher of the journal Southern Exposure.
He writes for the blog Facing South

Feeding the Red Meat of Hate

Republicans Trying to Block Votes 9.19.8

Vote Rigging,Suppression,Purging,Manipulation