Bile was kind enough to forward me an email stating that A.804: The New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act was going to be heard by the Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee. The email suggested using this link to send an email (or letter) to the members of the committee. Now I thought short and fleetingly about whether or not I should send a letter. I ended up typing something up, but I’m not sure if it would help or hurt the cause. That’s where you guys come in. Based on this letter, which may or may not be emailed tomorrow morning, what do you think, help or hurt?

I am composing this letter to give you my opinion on the “NJ Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act”. I will be forthright. I think it is an egregious breach of my civil liberties that I am not allowed to do whatever I like with my body. I also think that for the majority of people marijuana has very limited medical use. Obtaining a government issued license (registry identification card) to use marijuana would highlight the infringement of my rights. This begs the questions, why am I writing you to support this act?

People’s opinions do not change overnight. It takes time for people to fully understand something. Society is slowly discovering the true effects of marijuana, both positive and negative. Any legislation that would make people more familiar with the actual effects of marijuana as opposed to the propaganda produced by the government could cause a shift in public opinion. For these reasons I think you should help pass this act.

I understand that for some of you this is exactly the opposite of what you wanted to hear. One of the major arguments I hear opposing medical marijuana is that it will cause people to think marijuana use is acceptable. My response to that is simple. It is. There are eleven of you on this committee. Though you may never admit it, chances are six of you have tried marijuana. Obviously you lived through the experience. I can think of far more lethal plants that are currently legal, Atropa Belladonna comes to mind. Passing this act could help the public to realize that our current policy of incarcerating people for choosing to use a drug that is relatively harmless is futile.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have any questions or would like to speak to me in person I would be happy to oblige you. I live in Trenton so I can actually bike down to the state house. My address and phone number are attached.

Blog of Bile PS: Oh and for the record, my opinion changes overnight, but I’m a weirdo.

Pig Book 2008

http://www.cagw.org/…

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released the 2008 Congressional Pig Book, the latest installment in an 18-year exposé of pork-barrel spending.

“When Congress adopted earmark reforms last year, there was hope that the number and cost of earmarks would be cut in half.  By any measure, that has not occurred,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.

In fiscal year 2008, Congress stuffed 11,610 projects (the second highest total ever) worth $17.2 billion into the 12 appropriations bills.  That is a 337 percent increase over the 2,658 projects in fiscal year 2007, and a 30 percent increase over the $13.2 billion total in fiscal year 2007.  Alaska led the nation with $556 in pork per capita ($380 million total), followed by Hawaii with $221 ($283 million) and North Dakota with $208 ($133 million).  CAGW has identified $271 billion in total pork since 1991.

For the first time, the names of members of Congress were added to the projects.  The top three porkers were members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, beginning with Ranking Member Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) with $892 million; Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) with $469 million; and Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) with $465 million.

The Pig Book Summary profiles the most egregious examples, breaks down pork per capita by state, and presents the annual Oinker Awards.  All 11,610 projects are listed in a searchable database on CAGW’s website www.cagw.org.   Examples of pork in the 2008 Pig Book include:

 $3 million for The First Tee;
$1,950,000 for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service;
$460,752 for hops research;
$211,509 for olive fruit fly research in Paris, France;
$196,000 for the renovation and transformation of the historic Post Office in Las Vegas;
$188,000 for the Lobster Institute in Maine; and
$148,950 for the Montana Sheep Institute.

“Americans do not send their hard-earned tax dollars to Washington so that Sen. Daniel Inouye can bring home $173 million in defense pork and receive the Pacific Fleeced Award or get sapped by $4.8 million going to wood utilization research, on which the government has spent $91 million since 1985,” concluded Schatz.

Only the 2nd highest pork year? Come on Congress… next year go for gold. Not like you have to tax us directly for much of it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon’s biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.

Auditors said the Defense Department showed few signs of improvement since the GAO began issuing its annual assessments of selected weapons systems six years ago. “It’s not getting any better by any means,” said Michael Sullivan, director of the GAO’s acquisition and sourcing team. “It’s taking longer and costing more.”

Chris Isleib, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a written statement, “We’d like to look at what GAO has said, and then at the appropriate time make an informed comment.”

What do you expect from a system without real competition or limit on spending? Besides not needing the weapons to kill more brown people at all, I’m sure that $295m could have been better spent by the taxpayers who are currently having a hard time paying for inflated subsidized food and war induced high gasoline prices.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

According to a report by Tallahassee’s News Channel 7, the Florida Education Association may sue to shut down that state’s scholarship tax credit program. Under this program, businesses can donate to non-profit scholarship funds that subsidize tuition for low-income kids at the private schools of their families’ choosing. In return, the businesses can claim dollar for dollar tax credits up to a certain limit.

Public school employee unions have left this program alone since its enactment in 2001, despite having successfully sued to kill a much smaller school voucher program two years ago. So why the sudden talk about filing suit? Let’s go to the Chanel 7 report by Mike Vasilinda:

The teachers [i.e., the Florida Education Association, ed.] successfully challenged the voucher program that was centered around failing schools. They’ve turned a blind eye to the corporate voucher [i.e., scholarship tax credit, ed.] program, but they [through FEA attorney Ron Myer] say if it’s to triple over the next five years, they may go to court.

Keep in mind that scholarship organizations must allocate all donations to scholarships as they receive them, they can’t carry over more than 25% of donations from one year to the next, and the maximum scholarship value is fixed at $3,750 (far below per pupil spending in the public schools). So the only way the total value of scholarship donations could triple would be for triple the number of low-income families to ask for them.

So the Florida Education Association is saying that if too many poor parents want to escape the public schools and get their kids into independent schools, it will shut them and this whole program down.

That is evil.

School unions need to be dissolved. Government employees should absolutely not be allowed to form unions. They manipulate the system just as badly as large corporations. They have their own lobbyists and take advantage of their vantage position to benefit themselves at the cost of the taxpayers. These teachers don’t care about the kids. They care about their wallet’s thickness under the guise of “helping the children.” It doesn’t take much research to see that government monopoly education has failed.

• 10:00AM Sharon Harris from Advocates for Self-Government gave the opening speech this morning. She talked about how the liberty movement needs to start working toward honing our delivery of the freedom message. Libertarians, especially those who are active in the movement, tend to be more abstract thinkers. More logical progression of ideas whereas the majority of people are more emotional “think with the heart” types. We talk about abstract rights and wrongs and less practical examples but we need practical real world examples for those who aren’t generally like us.
• Chris Lawless informs us the hotel doesn’t want us to open carry.
• We ran into Glen Jacobs very briefly. He is better known as Kane from the WWE. He’s fairly well known as a libertarian and recently publicly supported Ron Paul for President. I believe he is also a member of the FSP. We unfortunately didn’t get an opportunity to get a photo with him but if he’s still around tomorrow or Sunday we surely will.
• 12PMish xyz and I checkin to the hotel and while walking out to the car we see the John McCain’s campaign bus. While walking in we discuss stopping Mr. McCain and telling him that after his argument with Romney over whether or not water boarding is torture we decided to try it out ourselves and agreed with him that it indeed torture. As we walk through the automatic doors into the lobby and are talking about this I nearly run into McCain as my head is turned talking to xyz behind me. I got out of the way in time however and diverted my knocking over of a 72y/o presidential candidate which would have been picked up on the camera which was following him.
• 1:00PM xyz and myself attend Gardner Goldsmith’s presentation on immigration. I listen to his radio show so little was new but it’s very enjoyable to interact with fellow Liberty Forum attendees in asking questions and whatnot. Robert Schulz of We the People Foundation also gave a very good lecture I heard. xyz and I did however get a chance to talk with him while waiting in line for dinner.
• 2:30PM I attended Don Gorman’s lecture on Becoming an Effective Activist but it effectively was a sales pitch for the FSP and how easy it is to participate in politics and protest in NH. xyz attended Peter Bagge’s presentation on his work for Reason Magazine and his art in general.
• 4:00PM Thomas Eddlem gave a lecture on how the current administration has been disobeying the Constitution. Particularly the 4th, 6th, and 8th Amendments. He however blew things out of proportion a bit in describing how it could be used against the average citizen. While it’s certainly an issue to say that it’s just as probable that I would be locked up and the key thrown away without trial is the same as some guy picked up who has the same name as a known terrorist and himself has a criminal record is ridiculous.
• Chatted with another Libertarian Party presidential candidate: Michael P. Jingozian. Reminded him that I believe he was invited to the Manhattan LP’s Annual Convention. He said he forgot to look into whether he could attend and took some contact info. We’ll see.
• Nearly had dinner with Gardner but it turned out the table we picked already was filled besides the two chairs we picked. However, those who had reserved those seats were people we had previously had discussions with during the cocktail hour. Including Ed Hudgins from The Atlas Society. Talked about hard money.
  
• The keynote speaker for the evening was Bernard von NotHaus of the Liberty Dollar. He came out dressed as the ghost of a Revolutionary solder, Capt. Roughseas, who was sent by the Founding fathers informing us to take care of this fiat money system that’s corrupted the US. Complete with sabre. It was a bit odd but generally entertaining. Nothing that probably more than half of them in attendance hadn’t heard before.

Dave Ridley’s Ridley Reports from the first night: