So now that we know that the DEA is not merely a paramilitary force, but also a rogue intelligence agency that is in the business of lying to judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, can we please disband them? As an agency the DEA is one of the most (maybe even the most) destructive forces in this country.
What do you mean "now"? If you have ever done any illegal drug in your life you most likely have heard of this happening. Fucking duh, guys.
They're not quite "in the business of lying", but they certainly will hold back the truth if it makes them look bad (see: marijuana) and they have been known to bend the rules to get people behind bars. It's happened, and continues to happen as long as most people in this country don't give a shit about the war on drugs as a major atrocity.
I wouldn't blame just Republicans for drugs not being legal and the DEA being intact. Democrats get campaign contributions from police unions, private prisons, alcohol companies, pharmaceutical companies, and prison guard unions too.
The fact of the matter is that our politicians don't work for us they work for corporate interests. Also, before someone says we should elect politicians, please realize that the problem isn't the politicians. It's the American people. Americans are dumber than a box of rocks. They love their low prices they get at Walmart and don't realize how much we subsidize the company's employees via welfare programs because they refuse to pay them a living wage.
The baby boomers (and possibly my generation) will have to die off before cannabis and other drugs are legalized.
The problem is not the American people. If a system requires nearly the entire populace to be as active (intellectually and financially) as every individual vested interest just to be successful, then it is a bad system. Its easy to call people dumb as rocks when they aren't rich and need to spend their time working really difficult jobs, and then choose low prices and tv for the leisure they have left as opposed to researching the complex web of interests that define the political actions of this country. The reality is that even the people that are "well informed" have wildly different beliefs about what is going on.
The government represents an entity capable of on the one hand restricting just about anything, and on the other hand propping up other things. It is thus a completely natural and logical result that thousands of vested interests will start vying for its favor. Now all of a sudden the entire population needs to go on defense for each of these issues. Its madness and completely unsustainable. You happen to care about and understand drug legalization, but I guarantee you that there are hundreds of other issues you aren't even aware of that are equally bad. Does that make you a bad person or dumb? Of course not.
"If a system requires nearly the entire populace to be as active (intellectually and financially) as every individual vested interest just to be successful, then it is a bad system."
We can't even get half of the country to make informed decisions. Americans are definitely the problem. They vote every couple of years to elect rich politicians that don't give a fuck about them. And they vote based off of arbitrary reasons. They find out we are being constantly spied on and they just don't care. Just like they didn't care when Japanese Americans were thrown into camps during WW2. Just like they didn't care when we were lied into Vietnam and then again into Iraq to make a few people richer. Americans are complacent.
Americans are the worst citizens, except when compared to the people of other countries, who are around as apathetic as we are, if not worse. You see this even in Switzerland's mostly direct democracy. It might even be human nature to not care about big pictures and only worry about immediate needs/comfort.
Blame evolution I guess. Thankfully, a few people look forward...they just aren't in the majority.
With drugs it's even worse than that: otherwise intelligent and well meaning people have been brainwashed into thinking that we have to be protected from these dangerous drugs.
Lot's of people will say legalize pot but not the "hard stuff" (only because they want legal pot for themselves).
I'm not sure "brainwashed" or anything like it is right, or at least the one's I've discussed this with who were beyond thinking were terrified about their children. I pointed out the choices of liberty or a drug war, which they did not deny, and they preferred the latter.
Brainwashed is the right word. Have you seen any of thr old drug propaganda videos? Check them out on YouTue. Also look up and watch Referrer Madness. In D.A.R.E my brothers kid learned that LSD stays in your system forever and drips acid down your brainstem, among a whole slew of other non-factual information.
These were people around my age or a bit younger, pre-D.A.R.E (which was started in 1983), and Reefer Madness was considered camp at best by my time.
Never heard any outrageous things like that LSD stuff (can't say for sure about the people I talked to), but it was very well established by then, without any lies needed, that hard drugs are very bad news (by that time psychedelics weren't a big concern, they were long out of fashion).
> We can't even get half of the country to make informed decisions. Americans are definitely the problem. They vote every couple of years to elect rich politicians that don't give a fuck about them. And they vote based off of arbitrary reasons.
Why would it be any different? The chance of their vote changing anything is one in several million. It would be irrational for them to spend much time, if any, learning about the consequences of their vote, because most likely there will be none.
The federal government is going to step in and start confiscating grow-ops in Colorado and Washington State. They will bust people doors down and most likely injure or kill a few. It's going to happen. The powers at the federal level are just too great.
It will be interesting to see what happens; the federal agencies are between a rock and a hard place. While the initiatives passed at around 55%, the polls for the feds to respect state law are over 70%. If they go after the industry as a whole, they would end up losing a lot of political capital among the "law and order" voters who otherwise support the drug war.
Note that the medical operations have dealt with a handful of nasty busts under Holder/Obama, but don't seem to be closing up shop or going underground. Drive down the right streets in Denver, and you'll pass literally a dozen legal pot shops operating in the open, neon signs and all.
I don't think the federal government is interested in getting into what would essentially be a pissing contest. They will just ignore the problem and let things be, because that is their prerogative (state jurisdiction!) and they have nothing to gain, only resentment, for getting involved.
Why aren't federal drug laws don't change because many of the other states won't let them. A lot of southern states are not so open about drugs. This isn't the federal government vs. a few states, its more like many states against many states; there is just a general disagreement in our culture like there was/is about gay marriage.
If I were to think of enthusiastic drug warriors who've managed to get their preferred policies implemented I'd probably put Joe Biden at the top of the list and I don't tend to think of him as being a Reaganite, though of course YMMV.
Yes, but ALEC-affiliated legislators tend to trot out the Gipper when they're on the stump rather than talking about how many lobbyists they're friends with. Money talks but ultimately it's the votes that count.
It's actually the cult of law enforcement that we have to worry about.
Also- consider whether or not your mainlining of the 2 team ideological spectrum is a result of efforts to keep you the citizen from really pursuing meaningful change. You're right to blame the s/republicans/democrats.
This is news.ycombinator.com, right? Can someone please explain to me how this comment is not [dead], as it ought to be, within 10 seconds of its posting?
I'd also have to question how it's even possible that any thinking human being, aware of even the barest modicum of facts, can continue to maintain that the police state is exclusively the domain of the GOP.
Jesus Christ, what has HN become?
Edit: Disregard this, I just checked the parent's karma score. Popularity goes a very long way in relegating petty things like posting guidelines and reason into the dustbin of irrelevance.
You may not like the reference, but: Nixon (a Republican) started the "drug war". Nancy Reagan with her "just say no" campaign was totally anti-drug. But in general: most of the Republicans are opposed to MJ legalization; but you will find a non-trivial number of Democrats who support it. So the sentiment is correct, to a certain degree.
Nixon was the first to whom which the phrase "War on Drugs" was used, but it had been going on for many decades previously and had ... heated up quite a bit, certainly in terms of consumption and press about that, in the period of the cultural '60s prior to his assuming office in 1969. You might say "LSD Madness" was a major meme back then, and heroin was the big evil hard drug that caused the most fear.
This is largely from direct observation back then, e.g. in 3rd grade a bit before "War on Drugs" was coined I had to write a thorough workbook detailing all the major drugs being abused then, why they were bad for you, etc.
And, errr, here you posit "total - non-trivial number < most" (if I'm not too tired to express that); on its face it's just an impression you have. Very possibly a correct one, but then again you admit there are anti-War on Drugs Republicans. And in theory one of them could do a Nixon in China ... but we all know how a lot of Democrats would reply, no matter what their personal preferences were.
> And, errr, here you posit "total - non-trivial number < most"
I would posit that you have a significantly higher percentage of pro-legalization Democrats than Republicans. Most opposition to legalization comes from Republicans.
Note: This looks like some obscure blogspot blog. Not so. Who Is Ioz was actively read by all major political bloggers circa 2006-2011. Glenn Greenwald (of recent Edward Snowden fame) commented there a few times.
The blog was not much discussed, as it was considered too radical (or too lucid), but Ioz correctly predicted that Obama would entrench Bush's policies, rather than reverse them.
I have no idea who Ioz is, or what he's doing now.
Reagan would be ashamed of what has been done and said in his name. I also suspect he would admit that the war on drugs has been a costly failure and express regrets that he escalated it.
(And I'd love to see the faces of many members of his cult when he showed up and set then straight.)
Reagan was a stubborn guy when he was active in politics, what makes you think he would have mellowed out in old/dead age? Might as well claim George Washington was really anti slavery and regretted owning slaves.
Well it's kind of silly to speculate, but I think if he could see all the abuses that have resulted from the drug war he might have some regrets. He certainly changed his mind/policy on other issues, so I'd like to think a woken from the grave (pre-dementia) Reagan would be shocked into such an admission.
Given that in 1978 he wrote an editorial opposing the anti-gay Briggs Initiative (California) and arguably hosted the first gay couple to sleep in the White House, I think modern social conservatives would be in for a few surprises from a mellowed out/dead Reagan.
I don't believe Reagan was ever anti-gay, being an actor in Hollywood and all, and so this doesn't represent much of a change in position.
We could imagine Wallace having regrets for being a racist, because he expressed them in his lifetime. But actually, Wallace was a populist, and overt racism was out of vogue even in Alabama by the late 70s.
Even if stubborn, Reagan was similarly a conservative populist: what do the people say they want, and give it to them. So his war on drugs was geared toward public opinion at the time, and he was right: a lot of Americans hate drugs. But unlike racism going out of vogue, drugs are still considered evil by most (conservative) Americans; what pressure would there be for Reagan to change his opinion now?
I brought up gay rights to support my other point that today's conservatives have read a lot in to Reagan that was never there.
I suppose his, or any President's expressed views on the drug war would be much more influenced by public opinion while holding office than as an ex-President. It was after leaving office that George Shultz became the first prominent Republican to call for drug legalization. People's opinions are slowly changing and there is overwhelming evidence that the drug war is failing and inimical to so many other values that conservatives (especially libertarian-leaning conservatives, which Reagan arguably was) There's certainly a big contradiction between where we have gotten to now and a man who promised to "get government off our backs" -- isn't there?
But, as I said, it's a little silly to speculate and thinking about his positions over the years I can't come up with any major changes, so you have a point. I know what I would like to see, though.
Seriously; can't find the classic picture of him with a surfboard, but as I recall he was the first President to have been divorced, and that was an issue in the 1980 election. When James Watt did his Beach Boys kerfuffle one thing that reversed it was Reagan and Nancy being fans of the band.
I remember the Beach Boys kerfuffle. It resulted in the best letter to the editor (you know, printed in an actual newspaper) that I ever read. It was one sentence:
As a sex-crazed, commie drug-fiend I resent Secretary Watt's implication that I listen to the Beach Boys.
Heh; no comment on the "sex-crazed" ^_^, which I think is orthogonal anyway, but I'm the opposite of a "commie drug-fiend", so that must explain why I too like them.
I think it's unfair to blame Reagan for this. Remember, the US was formed when a bunch of people left England because the laws weren't strict enough. Things like the DEA and PRISM is why our country exists!
I honestly don't see how "parallel construction" isn't considered "fruit of the poisoned tree" in considering evidence.
This whole "SOD" thing explains how minor traffic infringements end up as major drug busts so often. Perhaps it also explains why possession of kiddy porn is so often among the auxilliary charges on major criminals. The NSA dragnet catches it, and the DEA SOD tips off local police to it, or maybe the DEA uses "parallel construction" to be able to charge someone with drug crimes.
They are not supposed to know, the government is attempting to cover up it's crimes again[1] until it can work out immunity and monetary compensation for the actors involved[2].
Edit: To the user below, this is various arms of the government passing around information amongst it's branches to avoid accountability and exposure as much as possible. Rather monolithic.
Government is not monolithic in the sense that (at least in the US) its sheer size and complexity prevents all the actors involved from correlating their actions and ideologies into a single conspiratorial entity like swallows in flight. Not even in regards to tyranny and violence.
Large and complex systems can coordinate in a decentralised way to form a monolithic entity. Local interactions can lead to global convergence. Swallows in flight is a good example - each swallow only pays attention to the others nearby, yet the whole flock is coordinated. I'm not saying that is how it is in the US government. However, the closer the agencies work together, the more monolithic the government is likely to be (otherwise they wouldn't be able to cooperate).
It's not so much that I'm popular as that I've had this conversation numerous times before, and I sometimes get lazy about laying out my arguments over again, like now. In brief, I direct you to the second graph at this link as an explanation of why I link Reagan's name with prohibition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...
I didn't mention Nixon because for all his rhetoric his policies were pretty pragmatic, and he considered drug abuse at least partly a public health issue (as evidenced by his decisions). Reagan ran as a straight-up moralist and while I agree he'd probably be appalled at the militarization of police and abuses of power like this 'parallel construction' the DEA has been engaging in, this doesn't seem to have filtered through to his supporters. On the one hand he's portrayed as a selfless individual of almost god-like sagacity (I know this because I have ended up on the mailing lists of various conservative organizations, and this time of year I am the perplexed recipient of various Reagan calendars and suchlike), on the other he's almost invariably invoked in political debates in order to terminate discussion rather than broaden it.
Then why do so many people connected to government commit crimes with impunity while those with little to no connection to government get reamed by the legal system?
I think you're making a number of false or at least weakly proven assumptions here.
- That a majority of people connected with government commit crimes (unless your belief is that government is by definition a criminal enterprise, I don't think this assertion makes sense.)
- That a majority of criminals with government connections never face a penalty (the number of perp walks I've seen for mayors, senators, congressmen, etc would seem to suggest that while, yes, money and politics do go a long way in terms of abrogating justice, that sort of phenomenon isn't exclusive to politics nor is it universal.)
- That some malice of forethought exists within the legal system in regards to disproportionately punishing civilians, presumably because the judiciary is also part of the same conspiracy of corruption. I believe the unjustness of the court system has more to do with economics and race than it does whether someone is connected to politics, although certainly the politics of appearing tough on crime have an effect.
The argument that the government be 'monolithic' requires it to be both efficient and non-adversarial, neither is true. It also requires almost everyone to be amoral sociopaths, perfectly willing to go along with even the darkest and most depraved violations of civil liberties. To me, it's a step below invoking the Illuminati, it's wanting order in a system which is fundamentally chaotic for the sake of some grand narrative of good versus evil.
- The argument that the government be 'monolithic' requires it to be both efficient and non-adversarial, neither is true.
I don't think this is what everyone is worried about. It's not that the entire US government is conspiring against us. It's more that each agency has evolved ideologies and practises that, when taken as a whole, form an oppressive machine. No-one designed that machine, and no-one group controls it. It simply is a function of the increased cooperation of individual agencies who each have their own set of norms and values that fail to align with the true interests of the populous. The US government is becoming more monolithic because of a systemic problem - that is, increased incentives for agencies to cooperate and share information.
- It also requires almost everyone to be amoral sociopaths, perfectly willing to go along with even the darkest and most depraved violations of civil liberties.
This argument assumes that the people who work in the US government have the same social norms and values as the rest of the population. It seems more likely to me that each agency forms its own little closed society, that has drifted away from mainstream society due to the unique freedoms and pressures that agency experiences. The "Blue Code of Silence" is an example of this within the police. Few people are amoral sociopaths, but the vast majority of people will accept the values and norms of their peers without question.
Prisons are privatized, helped managed by the likes of SAIC[1]. FBI databases get shared amongst all the alphabet boys, including local law enforcement and private entities[2].
SAIC fills the monitoring center fused with fusion center niche with their "Domain Awareness Center[3]" being built in Oakland California. DEA uses the NSA who pulls data from all the various private/government/corporate/infiltrated databases to forge investigation paths, aka "intel laundering[4]".
FBI assists in private digital forensics centers[5] run by Snowden's Booz Allen Hamilton which help all levels of law enforcement in things like intellectual and copyright prosecutions[6].
Endgame Systems uses illegal exploits and data harvested from botnets against whoever for a cool million or so at the whim of the NSA/others[7] while hackers come under further prosecution and filtering for their esoteric deeds[8].
All the while SAIC[9] managed drones continue to spread across the US[10] and elsewhere.
Monolithic by choice, the whole lot.
I would honestly appreciate those affiliated with ATT, Comcast, Blue Coat, Endgame, Booz, Hunton & Williams and others to halt their profiteering endeavors. This of course should apply to all functionaries of the various arms of the world's governments that are complying in exchange for their salary as well.
The reason the "DAC" is being built in Oakland is because Diane Feinstein is the biggest war monger out there. How can she even run on a Democrat ticket surprises me.
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine
"War is the common harvest of all those who participate in the division and expenditure of public money, in all countries. It is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretence must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes."
Thomas Paine's objective was not what you think it was.
"The first step, therefore, of practical relief, would be to abolish the poor-rates entirely, and in lieu thereof, to make a remission of taxes to the poor of double the amount of the present poor-rates, viz., four millions annually out of the surplus taxes."
I think we can be more definite than that. Based on "Common Sense" and "Rights of Man" it is pretty clear that Paine was oppossed to any kind of government that was more concerned with furthering its own power than the social good.
"As Reuters reported Monday, the Special Operations Division of the DEA funnels information from overseas NSA intercepts, domestic wiretaps, informants and a large DEA database of telephone records to authorities nationwide to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.",
"While the IRS document says that SOD information may only be used for drug investigations, DEA officials said the SOD role has recently expanded to organized crime and money laundering.",
"According to the document, IRS agents are directed to use the tips to find new, \"independent\" evidence: \"Usable information regarding these leads must be developed from such independent sources as investigative files, subscriber and toll requests, physical surveillance, wire intercepts, and confidential source information.",
"Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said he was troubled that DEA agents have been \"trying to cover up a program that investigates Americans.\"",
"The DEA database, called DICE, consists largely of phone log and Internet data gathered legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide."
This is what happens when you industrialise law enforcement and incarceration. There is an incentive to prosecute and convict as many people as possible, regardless of any real evidence of a crime or the existence of a victim.
Where are the users that come in to say "I disagree with this, but consider it's validity because.."
I would love to hear a thoughtful argument for how hiding the source of an investigation, including evidence used, is just under the letter of the law. Followed up with how 'overreaches' are bound to happen but are acceptable as long as results are shown(but evidence is not).
Well, I suppose the defence would be some argument that the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine doesn't apply, because there's nothing illegal about the NSA sharing information with other agencies, and there's no obligation to share every piece of evidence in an investigation. The prosecution is required to share all exculpatory evidence with the defence, but this wouldn't be exculpatory. There is an obligation to provide probable cause in order to justify each search, seizure, warrant, arrest, etc. but this obligation was met - that would be the purpose of the parallel construction. Cases were tried based on probable cause that was shared, and so that probable cause must have been sufficient. The investigators simply did not disclose ALL the probable cause they had, (because some of it was secret).
There will be some contention over whether investigators lied or simply didn't share all evidence. This will probably lead to some slippery wordplay. For example, in the case of a "random" traffic stop that was actually targeting an individual, the word "random" could be stretched to mean "without reason" - meaning that by saying it was a "random" traffic stop, investigators were really just not giving a reason for the stop. Since no reason is required for a random traffic stop (under this new definition), that's all fine.
Perhaps the real problem here isn't that the NSA was sharing information, but that it is easy to find probable cause when properly motivated.
Good try, but these won't wash. It's hard to argue against it because the facts seem quite clear and straightforward.
1. If the origin of the investigation is revealed to be illegal, the entire investigation is thrown into question
and the resulting evidence could be suppressed.
2. Random traffic stops are illegal. There must be a reason for every stop.
