'Just say no' to listening to the people

Three years on, not a single Wall Street banker has been prosecuted after a financial crisis rooted in rampant fraud brought the global economy to its knees. President Obama's Department of Justice has more dangerous miscreants to worry about: medical marijuana shop owners.

So begins an essay by Ryan Grim at Huffington Post. Seems the DOJ has vowed to shut down establishments even if they’re licensed and regulated by state and local governments. And if the DOJ doesn’t do away with those evil hippie havens, the Internal Revenue Service will. The IRS has ruled that pot clinics can’t deduct rent, salaries, the cost of their product or other operating expenses on their tax returns. As Grim points out, this almost always results in tax bills that are too big to be paid. Unpaid taxes equals padlocked doors and shuttered windows.

Right now the feds are cracking down on clinics in California. It’s not clear which of the 16 states where marijuana is legal for people with doctors' recommendations is next.

In Michigan, where I live, 63 percent of state voters approved the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act on November 4, 2008. Dispensaries started appearing throughout the state – one community leader estimates Lansing, the Capital City, is home to over 40 “marijuana stores” – and nearly 50,000 residents were certified by the state Department of Community Health to legally use marijuana to combat cancer, multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS and other serious health conditions.

This didn’t make conservatives happy, though, and the state Court of Appeals sided with the pothead-haters last August and ruled it was illegal to sell medical marijuana in Michigan no matter what the voters said. State Attorney General Bill Schuette has been one of the most vocal opponents of medical marijuana; in 2008 he served as spokesperson for a group dedicated to keeping medical marijuana illegal in the Great Lake State. (Schuette is an über-politician who represented Michigan’s “thumb” in Congress, led the Michigan Department of Agriculture, served in the state senate, sat on the Michigan Court of Appeals, and was once described as “Dan Quayle only without the smarts” by a Capital Press Corps veteran.)

I’m not writing about this issue to extol the benefits of ganja or educate people on the utility of hemp or advocate for the end of the wasteful War on Drugs or fire folks up to fight for our right to party with cannabis. I’m blogging about this because it’s a great example of why my state ranks in the “top ten among states in which state and local politicos ignore public opinion,” as was announced yesterday, and why Barack Obama, with his misordered priorities and propensity for breaking his promises, won’t be getting anything from me except my vote next November.

As former Florida congressman Alan Grayson so masterfully pointed out during a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, “Not a single person’s been indicted or convicted for destroying twenty percent of our national net worth accumulated over two centuries...Wall Street has iron control over the economic policies of this country...one party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the other party caters to them as well.”

In an Occupy Wall Street video that recently turned up in Facebook, Wall Street executives, some tuxedoed and all white, were captured drinking champagne on balconies in obvious contempt for the lower classes who protested in the streets below. What was our president’s reaction? He vowed to make it harder for those who relieve pain by firing up a doobie to get their weed.

Way to show who you really work for, Mr. President.

Sources: Huffington Post, High Times, Lansing City Pulse, Associated Press.