Month: February 2013

Medical Cannabis Companies May be the First Casualty of Washington’s Cannabis Legalization

Washington’s legalization of Cannabis has been seen as a boon for many liberty minded folks. Unfortunately the legalization of cannabis has opened the door for the Washington state government to tax sales of the plant and license sellers. This leaves an interesting question unanswered, how will state controlled cannabis compete with mostly unregulated medical cannabis:

As Washington moves to legalize marijuana, there are fresh concerns that a parallel market for pot will continue to flourish. It’s not quite a black market. Let’s call it a “grey” market – for medical marijuana. The question now: how will highly taxed and regulated pot compete with largely unregulated medical marijuana?

In all likelihood it won’t:

In Washington, medical marijuana – or MMJ as it’s often called — is loosely regulated. That won’t change when Washington’s new pot legalization law is fully implemented. Initiative 502 was silent on medical marijuana.

You might think a hands-off approach would please the industry – who likes regulations? But medical marijuana growers worry about operating in the grey.

“Without any change you’re going to see the medical marijuana community produce and sell a large quantity of cannabis, because possessing it is no longer illegal,” says the Washington Cannabis Association’s Chris Kealy.

And, he says, they’ll sell it for less. He points to government estimates that predict legal pot under I-502 will go for about $12 a gram.

“The current marketplace in MMJ world is between $8 to $10 — and that is likely to go down.”

This will create an interesting conundrum. The state wants tax money and licensing fees for cannabis but face competition from medical cannabis growers. Whenever the state encountered competition is moves to squash it, meaning the days of medical cannabis growers in Washington may be numbered. In a rather sad but ironic twist medical cannabis companies may become the first casualty of Washington state’s legalization of cannabis. This is also why I prefer decriminalization over legalization, when something is decriminalized it still prevents the state from turning it into a taxable good and therefore prevents the state from making anything more than half-hearted moves against producers.

Why Voting Doesn’t Rid Us of Bad Politicians

As the current gun rights battle wages on many gun owners are urging their fellows to remind the politicians what happens when they vote for gun control. The underlying threat is that any politician that votes for gun control will find themselves voted out of office next election cycle. This threat sounds good on paper but in the grand scheme of things it’s difficult, if not impossible, to get a politician removed from office based on any single issue. We live in a world where only a small minority of voters care about any single issue. Earlier I said that there were three factions in the current gun rights debate: gun rights advocates, gun control advocates, and everybody else who couldn’t care less. The last faction, the one made up by those who couldn’t care less, is by far the largest faction. Their votes aren’t going to change based on how a politician votes in regards to gun rights. In fact the faction of those who couldn’t care less is the biggest faction in any issue debate. Whether the issue being considered is monetary policy, foreign relations, same-sex marriages, or abortion is irrelevant, most people aren’t going to change their vote based on any single issue. Because of this a politician can afford to piss of any single issue group and not worry about their seat during the next election.

Gun rights advocates need to keep this in mind during this political debate. Telling a politician that their seat is in jeopardy if they vote for gun control is an empty threat. This is why gun owners should be developing a backup plan, one that can be done outside of the political system, if the recent slew of gun control bills pass. When election season comes up the gun control debate alone won’t be enough to get the current politicians out of office. If gun owners are lucky the politicians who vote for gun control will also vote in such a way that enough issue groups get angry and work together to oust them, but I wouldn’t bet my guns on it.

Chaska Police Chief to Hold Several Public Gun Control Discussions

This is a heads up for anybody wanting to attend a gun control “discussion” for shits and giggles. Chaska Police Chief Scott Knight, a renowned advocate of disarming all non-state individuals, will be holding the first of three gun control “discussions”:

A public discussion of the causes and remedies of gun violence in America begins Tuesday, Feb. 5 as part of the ongoing series “First Tuesday Dialogues: Examining critical public issues locally and globally.”

[…]

The series then turns to a face-to-face debate between proponents and opponents of increased gun control legislation. The series then concludes with a broader overview of the problem of violence, guns, self-protection, and law, led by a professor of ethics.

There are three events scheduled:

Feb. 5: Chief Scott Knight gives factual information and a law enforcement perspective on “The Epidemic of Gun Violence in America.”

Feb. 19: A debate between a representative of the National Rifle Association and an advocate for greater gun control.

March 5: A professor of ethics leads a discussion of the various ethical perspectives by which people of faith and good conscience approach the conundrum of violence, liberty, and the role of law in society.

Mr. Knight is almost certainly going to use the first event as a pulpit to advocate for more gun control. I’m not sure what the other two debates will amount to but they will likely end up being used as platforms to advocate for more gun control as well. If you’re bored or feel your presence can actually sway people to oppose gun control feel free to head to these events.

All three events will be held at the Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, Minnesota. A map to the location can be found here and the Facebook event page can be found here.

Things Have Only Gotten Worse in Chicago

Even though Chicago has some of the most repressive gun control laws on the books the city’s murder rate continues to top the nation’s charts. In fact the murder rate in Chicago is worse today then it was during the reign of Al Capone:

In this I-Team report, Chicago’s rising murder rate in a new context, how the numbers of shooting deaths compare to the city’s most notorious crime era, the one that has tarnished Chicago’s reputation around the world for a century.

The surprising stats show the city is worse off now in the category of murder than at the height of the era that has driven Chicago’s reputation for almost a century, Capone’s “gangland” Chicago.

Let’s compare two months: January 1929, leading up to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and last month, January 2013. Forty-two people were killed in Chicago last month, the most in January since 2002, and far worse than the city’s most notorious crime era at the end of the Roaring Twenties. January 1929 there were 26 killings.

Gun control obviously hasn’t solved the problem. Knowing this most people would be forced to admit the cause of the high murder rate is something besides guns. Then again the city’s politicians know this just as well as everybody else. In their minds gun control isn’t about guns or murder rates, it’s about disarming the people they expropriate from.

How the United States Handles Downgrades to Its Sovereign Debt Rating

What happens when a credit rating agency downgrades the United States federal government’s sovereign debt rating? The United States sues your ass:

Standard & Poor’s says it is to be sued by the US government over the credit ratings agency’s assessment of mortgage bonds before the financial crisis.

The lawsuit will not only be brought on by the United States government but will also take place in a United States court, making for an interesting conflict of interest that will go almost entirely ignored by most people. On top of that, even if the case ends up in Standard and Poor’s favor, the damage has already been done:

Shares in S&P’s owner, the US publishing and media group McGraw Hill, fell 14% on Wall Street on Monday following the announcement…

On top of that people seem to believe that Standard and Poor’s isn’t the only target of the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) wrath:

while those in fellow ratings agency Moody’s fell 10% – indicating the market expects that they may be next in the justice department’s sights.

While Moody’s didn’t downgrade the United States debt rating they did change their outlook to “negative,” which makes them another likely target of the DoJ’s wrath. Today’s lesson is that you can’t criticize the United States government without inciting its wrath.

R.T. Rybak’s Proposal to Advance Gun Control

When Minneapolis’s mayor, R.T. Rybak, isn’t trying to control everybody’s lives… scratch that, he’s always trying to control everybody’s lives. In his crusade against gun rights Rybak has come up with a new strategy, he’s going to make gun manufacturers commit business suicide in order to get contracts with the Minneapolis Police Department:

Mayor R.T. Rybak has introduced a way for cities to gain leverage in their efforts to pass stricter gun control laws across the country.

Rybak told members of the City Council’s Public Safety and Civil Rights Committee that he and mayors from approximately 60 cities are taking a closer look at the companies that manufacture the guns and ammunition that cities buy for police officers.

He said over the past eight years the city has spent nearly $800,000 on guns and ammunition. Rybak, who supports stricter gun control laws, wants to work with firearms manufacturers to reduce gun-related crime and violence. He wants to know if those companies also are lobbying against tighter gun laws.

“If we find out they’re not partners, and if we find out they’re working against us, then we all ought to have a conversation as taxpayers about whether our dollars should be used for people who are not working to reduce gun violence,” Rybak said.

In other words gun manufacturers who refuse to support gun control may find themselves disqualified from Minneapolis Police Department contracts. This has to be one of the more pathetic attempts to promote gun control. Rybak has effectively demanded that gun manufacturers destroy their business by alienating their non-state customers in order to get or keep their state customers. I think we all remember what happened when Smith and Wesson signed on with Clinton’s gun control push:

Consumers began refusing to buy S&W products and the market became flooded with used S&W goods that people wanted no part of. Gun enthusiasts saw the company as breaking solidarity with them, as a traitor and perpetrator of gun control. Consumers severely punished the firm for its disloyalty.

Needless to say, S&W was taken completely off guard by the response.

The firm experienced an immediate sales decline of nearly 40 percent in the year after its compromise.

I can’t see many gun manufacturers making the same mistake (or in Smith and Wesson’s case, making the same mistake twice).

Emperor Obama Coming to Minneapolis to Push Gun Control

It appears that the Emperor will be in Minneapolis today to push for gun control:

The fate of his gun proposals on Capitol Hill uncertain, President Barack Obama is seeking to rally support from the public and law enforcement community for his calls to ban assault weapons and install universal background checks for gun buyers.

Obama will pitch his proposals to stem gun violence Monday in Minnesota, a Democratic-leaning state where officials have been studying ways to reduce gun-related attacks and accidents for several years. His visit to the Minneapolis Police Department’s Special Operations Center will mark the first time Obama has campaigned on his controversial proposals outside of Washington.

This seems like a complete waste of everybody’s time. The Minneapolis Police Department have a long history of authoritarianism. Obama doesn’t need to convince that department to advocate gun control, that department would love nothing more than knowing that the entire population of Minneapolis was entirely at their mercy. Likewise most of the metropolitan population is already convinced that they are better off unarmed. Thankfully we have a large enough rural population that we’ve been able to maintain some gun rights in this state. Still, Obama’s time coming to Minneapolis to advocate gun control is nothing more than an expensive act of preaching to the choir.

FBI Captures Another One of Their Own Terrorists

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is celebrating the capture of another terrorist that they created:

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 21, was given a fake bomb by undercover agents posing as Islamist militants, lawyers said.

Mohamud was arrested after he tried to use his phone to detonate the fake car bomb near a crowded square in Portland.

This is just another in the long line of so-called terrorists that were recruited and armed by the FBI. Needless to say the FBI gets credit for creating bad situations and stopping them. My job would be much easier if I received credit for making shit up as well.

Limiting the Spectrum of Acceptable Opinions

The longer this gun control debate rages on the more I’m reminded of Noam Chomsky’s quote, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” Currently the gun control debate seems to involve three acceptable opinions: guns are the problem, violent media is the problem, or mental health is the problem. During its press conference the National Rifle Association (NRA) moved to pin blame for mass shootings on violent media and the mentally ill. John Riccitiello, the head of Electronic Arts, recently made a statement opposing the idea that violent video games lead to real violence. Advocates of gun control state that addressing the mental health issue isn’t enough. What’s interesting is that each faction seems to agree on one thing, the state needs to control something more.

Those who believe guns are the problem are advocating for stricter state control over guns and gun owners. People who believe mental illness is the problem are advocating for stricter state control over the mentally ill. The final group, those who believe violent media is the problem, are advocating for stricter state control over video games and other media. All three factions are holding a very lively debate within a very narrow spectrum. It seems that the only acceptable opinion is that the state must get involved and the only disagreement is how the state should get involved. The conversation has been controlled in such a way that no matter what the result is the state will increase its power. So thorough is this control that all three sides seem poised to attack anybody with an opinion that falls outside of the narrow spectrum. Those of us outside of the spectrum are told we’re crazy, our ideas are unworkable, and that we’re not helping.

If nothing else I believe this gun control debate has shown us how pervasive the state’s influence over our lives truly is.