How libertarians and liberals help the anti-pot lobby

How libertarians and liberals help the anti-pot lobby

by digby

One of the most pernicious laws ever passed in this country was the one that allowed police agencies to reap the benefits of the asset forfeiture laws. In an age of low taxation they've pretty much made cops into bounty hunters. There have been many examples of innocent people having their property wrongfully confiscated, including this famous case.

This story by Lee Fang at the Republic Report shows that the concept of police agencies "self-financing" through the drug war has become institutionalized in more ways than one. And the lobbyists who work for them are getting rich:
John Lovell is a lobbyist who makes a lot of money from making sure you can’t smoke a joint. That’s his job. He’s a lobbyist for the police unions in Sacramento, and he is a driving force behind grabbing Federal dollars to shut down the California marijuana industry...
In 2010, California considered Prop 19, a measure to legalize marijuana and tax it as alcohol. The proposition gained more votes than Meg Whitman, the former eBay executive and Republican gubernatorial nominee that year, but failed to pass. Opponents of the initiative ran ads, organized rallies, and spread conspiracy theories about billionaire George Soros to confuse voters.

Lovell managed the opposition campaign against Prop 19. He told Time Magazine that he was pushing against the initiative because, “the last thing we need is yet another mind-altering substance to be legalized.”

But Republic Report reviewed lobbying contracts during the Prop 19 fight, and found that Lovell’s firm was paid over $386,350 from a wide array of police unions, including the California Police Chiefs Association.

While Lovell may contend that he sincerely opposes the idea of marijuana legalization, he has constructed an entire business model predicated on pot prohibition.
There's more at the link. They also lobbied for stimulus money --- and you don't even want to think about what they got in the post 9/11 blank check paranoia. Police unions have a lot to answer for for using tactics like this to gain membership.

However, I have to caution that the libertarians who are upset about this need to think through the effects of their own policies as well. By agitating for low taxes and small government they inadvertently concentrate government functions in the areas of policing and the military. And where ever the money all goes, also grows. I think they might want to consider whether authoritarianism might be better mitigated through more dispersed government power than focused exclusively on the policing and warmaking capabilities. Just a thought.

After all, here's the Liberty King himself at the South Carolina debate:
"I want to cut military money, I don't want to cut defense money. I want to bring the troops home, I'd probably have MORE BASES here at home. We were closing them down in the 1990's and building them overseas, that's how we got into trouble so we would save a lot more money and have a STRONGER national defense, and that's what we should do, but to say that we'd be weaker is absolutely wrong."
Does that seem like a good idea to anyone? What do you suppose these soldiers are going to do?

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