Obama’s War on Pot

Originally published at craschworks. You can comment here or there.

Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. “I’m not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue,” he vowed, promising an end to the Bush administration’s high-profile raids on providers of medical pot, which is legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia.

But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana. With more than 100 raids on pot dispensaries during his first three years, Obama is now on pace to exceed Bush’s record for medical-marijuana busts. “There’s no question that Obama’s the worst president on medical marijuana,” says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “He’s gone from first to worst.”

via Obama’s War on Pot | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

The birth of monkey prostitution

Originally published at craschworks. You can comment here or there.

Then there is the stealing. Santos has observed that the monkeys never deliberately save any money, but they do sometimes purloin a token or two during an experiment. All seven monkeys live in a communal main chamber of about 750 cubic feet. For experiments, one capuchin at a time is let into a smaller testing chamber next door. Once, a capuchin in the testing chamber picked up an entire tray of tokens, flung them into the main chamber and then scurried in after them — a combination jailbreak and bank heist — which led to a chaotic scene in which the human researchers had to rush into the main chamber and offer food bribes for the tokens, a reinforcement that in effect encouraged more stealing.

Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys’ true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)

via Monkey Business – New York Times.

Tell the Senate to Legalize Crowdfunded Securities with Full-page Ad in Politico — LoudSauce

Originally published at craschworks. You can comment here or there.

Should non-millionaires be able to invest small amounts in local businesses or other ventures that they believe in, without the ventures having to spend tens of thousands (or more) on state or federal securities compliance? We believe so, provided that the offerings can be seen and discussed openly, and have other requirements and limitations to prevent fraud. Without costing anything, such a regulatory change would create meaningful jobs, spur innovation, and fuel the economy.

But this is currently illegal thanks to securities laws written in the 1930s, when ordinary people had no way to check the claims of fraudsters armed with smooth telephone voices and fancy printed letterhead with New York City addresses.

Bipartisan efforts to modernize these laws and introduce a “crowdfunding exemption” have been progressing rapidly over the past year. H.R.2930, the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, overwhelmingly passed the House (407-17) last November, with White House support. Now it and two other crowdfunding bills (S.1791 and S.1970) are stalled in the Senate. Sources there say that the Senate needs to see that public interest in these proposals exists, before they will venture to consider them.

To demonstrate public interest (as well as the power of crowdfunding), we are launching a campaign to take out a full page ad in the Washington D.C. newspaper Politico, which is distributed in printed form to Congressional staffers and other DC types.

The House has already spoken, and the White House has told us that they are ready to sign – we now just have to push some demonstrable public interest in the Senate’s face.

via Tell the Senate to Legalize Crowdfunded Securities with Full-page Ad in Politico — LoudSauce.