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anonym

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[WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times
#14043705 - 02/28/11 05:30 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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The Editorial Board of Washington State's biggest newspaper recently came out in full favor of legalization and received huge praise. Shortly thereafter, they were contacted by the Drug Czar requesting a meeting for Friday, March 4th.
Quote:
White House Requests Meeting with Seattle Times to Bully Against Pro-Pot Editorials Posted by Dominic Holden on Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 12:31 PM
The Stranger has learned that immediately after the Seattle Times ran an editorial last week supporting a bill to tax and regulate marijuana, the newspaper got a phone call from Washington, D.C. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy director Gil Kerlikowske wanted to fly to Seattle to speak personally with the paper's full editorial board.
The meeting is scheduled for next Friday, an apparent attempt by the federal government to pressure the state's largest newspaper to oppose marijuana legalization. Or at least turn down the volume on its new-found bullhorn to legalize pot.
Bruce Ramsey, the Seattle Times editorial writer who wrote the unbylined piece, says the White House called right “right after our editorial ran, so I drew the obvious conclusion… he didn’t like our editorial.”
“MARIJUANA should be legalized, regulated and taxed,” the newspaper wrote on February 18. “The push to repeal federal prohibition should come from the states, and it should begin with the state of Washington."
This isn't the first time the Obama Administration has campaigned to keep pot illegal. Kerlikowske, who is also Seattle's former police chief, also traveled to California last fall to campaign against Prop 19, a measure to decriminalize marijuana and authorize jurisdictions to tax and regulate it.
Is the Seattle Times the more reticent to speak up? Apparently not. It ran another pro-pot editorial in today’s paper.
Kerlikowske's office has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Original article: here
Petition to request this meeting be broadcast via live video stream: here
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Smitington
Unidentified Flying Object


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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: anonym]
#14044238 - 02/28/11 06:35 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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How exactly can the government influence the paper? I'm pretty confused here. Unless they threaten them, which would be a clear violation of freedom of speech, it seems like the editorial staff has already made up their mind, and I don't see what a meeting is going to accomplish.
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mukhail
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: Smitington]
#14044334 - 02/28/11 06:49 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Smitington said: How exactly can the government influence the paper? I'm pretty confused here. Unless they threaten them, which would be a clear violation of freedom of speech, it seems like the editorial staff has already made up their mind, and I don't see what a meeting is going to accomplish.
Ever seen Men in Black?
I bet he has that blinker thingy
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guest1
Mycena




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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: mukhail]
#14044584 - 02/28/11 07:21 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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You do what we say! You no decide anything! 
OBEY!! OBEY!! OBEY!! OBEY!! OBEY!!
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Smitington
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: guest1]
#14044591 - 02/28/11 07:22 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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I'm kind of curious if there are any motives that are not anti-prohibition at work here.
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Edited by Smitington (02/28/11 07:22 PM)
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bdingalu
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: Smitington]
#14044601 - 02/28/11 07:23 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Smitington said: How exactly can the government influence the paper? I'm pretty confused here. Unless they threaten them, which would be a clear violation of freedom of speech, it seems like the editorial staff has already made up their mind, and I don't see what a meeting is going to accomplish.
They can influence the paper with money, legal protection, or threats as well.
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Smitington
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: bdingalu]
#14044658 - 02/28/11 07:31 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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Well, it is already public knowledge that the paper is in support, and it is public knowledge that the drug czar has called a meeting. It would seem that any change in the paper's attitude following this meeting would result in outrage, directed toward the government and the paper.
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PNW FunGuy
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: mukhail]
#14044765 - 02/28/11 07:44 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
mukhail said:
Quote:
Smitington said: How exactly can the government influence the paper? I'm pretty confused here. Unless they threaten them, which would be a clear violation of freedom of speech, it seems like the editorial staff has already made up their mind, and I don't see what a meeting is going to accomplish.
Ever seen Men in Black?
I bet he has that blinker thingy
-------------------- "The edge, there is no honest way to explain it, because the only ones who know where it is are the ones who have gone over." Dr. HST, the true king of fun - RIP
  Federal Bureau of Keeping Juice Special Agent Fun Guy.
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bryguy27007
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: PNW FunGuy]
#14045171 - 02/28/11 08:49 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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Whoa, I want to know what comes of this meeting. That is really strange, and kind of cool.
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Magick
Thinker


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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: bryguy27007]
#14046473 - 03/01/11 12:55 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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Perhaps we should write Bruce Ramsey an email/letter explaining why he should assert his right to free speech and the freedom of press, and to not accept any kind of bribes or threats coming from the East.
It is extremely important that Mr. Ramsey understands these concepts, for they will be directly challenged.
In fact, he should publish everything Mr. Kerlikowske has to say. There should not be meetings behind closed doors in politics, nor should there be undisclosed information in media.
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Odd_Nonposter
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: Magick]
#14049011 - 03/01/11 03:01 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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Petition signed. There is NO reason for a government official to influence the press in any way unless the facts presented are total fabrication.
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fall
Stranger


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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: Odd_Nonposter]
#14055207 - 03/02/11 03:09 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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If they wanted to pull some shit we probably wouldn't know they wanted to meet the board, and they probably also wouldn't tell a news agency they don't have control over if this was some 1st amendment violating act by the government.
Maybe he wants to debate legalization, do an interview, etc.? Whys it have to be a conspiracy?
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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: anonym]
#14068469 - 03/04/11 09:43 PM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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Here's how the meeting went ...
An Hour with the Drug Czar March 4, 2011 - Seattle Times By Bruce Ramsey
The Editorial Board’s meeting with Gil Kerlikowske turned into a big deal. Kerlikowske, the former police chief here in Seattle, is now director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In other words, he’s the “Drug Czar” -- a title he made fun of in our meeting when he responded to a question by saying, “If I knew the answer, I’d be more than a czar. I’d be king.”
In the paper of Sunday, Feb 20, The Times published an editorial arguing that marijuana be legalized, regulated, taxed and sold by the state of Washington. Two days later we received a request from Kerlikowske’s office that he wanted to talk to us; he could pay a visit March 4 at 2:45 p.m. Sure, we said.
Clearly this was because of our editorial. I recalled a year ago, when I wrote a column saying that legalization was coming, and that I favored it, that I received a call from Kerlikowske's office for the first (and only) time. The Director would like to talk with me, the woman said. Would I be available at 3:00 the following afternoon? Yes, I said, I would. I wondered if he was going to chew on my ear, but in the event he missed the call, and instead sent me a copy of a speech he had given to police chiefs in San Jose.
This time around, the word got out, probably through me, that he had asked to speak to the Times Editorial Board. Dominic Holden of The Stranger called me and asked me about it and put out a report on their blog, The Slog. Holden quoted me accurately, but his headline framed Kerlikowske’s visit as an attempt to “bully” The Seattle Times. It was a stretch to call it that. Holden wrote that it was “an apparent attempt by the federal government to pressure the state's largest newspaper to oppose marijuana legalization. Or at least turn down the volume on its new-found bullhorn to legalize pot.”
NORML, The National Organization to Reform the Marijuana Laws, picked up the story from The Slog. Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, portrayed Kerlikowske’s visit as an effort to “squelch” our mainstream-media voice.
I started getting emails. Here was one from a woman in New Mexico:
“Please, give Mr. Kerlikowske hell for all of us. To want to actually come down to censure (and censor) your paper - your editorial opinion is downright unconstitutional and un-American.”
And this morning there were picketers from Sensible Washington, the group that ran the marijuana legalization initiative last year, and are running one, Initiative 1149, this year. They were picketing The Times in favor of our editorial stance and against Kerlikowske. Some of the signs portrayed his visit as an attack on the freedom of the press.
I couldn't think of anything Kerlikowske could do to squelch the freedom of The Seattle Times, and I never interpreted his visit that way. The folks that did were well-meaning, and regarding cannabis legalization I agree with them. But Kerlikowske was not bullying us, or threatening us, or attacking our freedom to air our opinions. As it turned out, he was cordial and almost laid-back. At one point he steered the conversation to prescription drug abuse, which had nothing to do with our editorial. When we asked him about legal marijuana he did disagree with us, but so gently that some of the attendees wondered why he had come at all.
Like many powerful people, he was careful what he said, responding to some questions without answering them as they were cast. For example, my first question to him related the costs of marijuana prohibition, and ended with the question of whether they were “worth it” (which I think of as “the Madeleine Albright question”). He didn’t answer it.
Later, when I asked him whether the War on Drugs was a success, he did a double-take: Didn’t I know that one of his first acts as Drug Czar was to declare the War on Drugs over? Hadn’t I seen that?
No. I thought the War on Drugs was still on.
“The War on Drugs is over,” he said. “We’ve stopped looking at it as a criminal justice issue alone.”
“Alone” is the key word in that statement. The Obama administration’s “middle position” on drugs that leans toward treatment but requires penalties also, he said, because about half the users who go into treatment “have to be encouraged.”
We asked Kerlikowse about the regime in Seattle, which voted in 2003 to make adult marijuana possession the lowest police priority, and last year, under City Attorney Pete Holmes, to stop prosecutions of simple possession cases.
Kerlikowske reminded us that he and then-City Attorney Tom Carr had opposed the 2003 initiative. “It didn’t change anything,” he said. “Marijuana possession cases among adults were not a particularly high priority for police resources anyhow.”
Not a particularly high priority--but still, the public vote in Seattle, and the subsequent turning out of Carr in favor of Holmes, did matter. Would Carr have tolerated Seattle's first Cannabis Farmer's Market, which took place last week? I'm not so sure. But Holmes did.
Kerlikowske offered several arguments against legalization. At one point he cited the RAND Corp. study as debunking the idea that a state would make money by selling cannabis through the liquor stores. I haven’t read the study, but the summary of it tells me the study was about how much legalizing marijuana in one state would affect the revenues of the Mexican drug cartels. It said it wouldn’t affect them a lot because they have other states and other drugs. But judging from the press release, the study does assume that if a state legalized cannabis, the Mexican drug cartels would lose the cannabis trade in that state. In other words, it assumes the very thing Kerlikowske doubted.
At other points in our conversation, Kerlikowske argued against legalization because it would increase usage by a dramatic amount. But if it did that, the state would be making money off it, would it not? (I not sure it would increase use by a dramatic amount, but I think it would increase it some, but that the possible negative effects would be hugely outweighed by the reducton in financial and human costs of prohibition.)
The big question of the hour was about federal response if the Washington Legislature did pass Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson’s legalization bill, H.B. 1550. Kerlikowske reminded us that the feds had agreed not to interfere with medical marijuana in those states that had passed laws allowing it (even though he thought medical marijuana was “an attempt to make it legal…by calling it medicine”). But what if the state law legalized it for general adult use?
“I can’t answer that,” he said. “That would be up to the Department of Justice.”
Really it would be up to one man: Barack Obama. Of course, he's the man who appointed Gil Kerlikowske.
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Magick
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Re: [WA] Drug Czar to meet with The Seattle Times [Re: veggie]
#14090476 - 03/09/11 12:52 AM (12 years, 10 months ago) |
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I still don't think Gil had the right to try and skew the newspaper in one direction or another - it is extremely important in this country that the media remains untouched by political agendas, because both are extremely sensitive to corruption.
Gil is a very smart man, I think everybody should know and understand that - unfortunately he is also a puppet of our current government, and if he says or does something which is against the views of the American government, he does have the possibility of getting canned. Thus he has to be really careful about what he says, because he knows that he is in between a rock and a hard place.
Regarding the drug war - I feel that it is not truly over. In Mexico, just across the border, people are getting murdered on a daily basis in order to get drugs into America, and this is a direct result of anti-drug laws. That in my book is war in itself. On top of that, if you're arrested for drugs you're still going to get a criminal record, have federal funding cut for college/etc, and be denied many other privileges and even rights just because of your choice to use a substance which the American government deems illicit. On top of that, there is still a war on our right to put whatever we want into our own bodies - that is our choice and not the Federal government's, and is the whole reason the drug war is failing in the first place - you simply cannot stop a person from exerting their basic human right of putting into their bodies what they see fit! The drug war will be over when this essential human right is recognized.
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