Democratic Senator Caught On Video With $70,000 In Drug Money
It’ll probably give him a bump in the polls back in Oregon. (Note: Please read this story before putting it on Facebook.)
06/30/2016 07:53 am ET

Ryan Grim Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a high-profile supporter of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, has been caught on video with $70,000 in drug money. The footage, provided exclusively to The Huffington Post, also captures Rep. Earl Blumenauer, another Oregon Democrat, as well as a prominent local businessman, Tyson Haworth.

The video, however, was not a sting operation run by the Drug Enforcement Administration or FBI. Instead, it’s an effort to highlight a gaping and dangerous hole in national cannabis policy, if such a thing even exists.

Under federal law, marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance, meaning it is deemed to be highly dangerous with zero medical benefit. Even in states that have legalized cannabis, such as Oregon, possessing it remains a federal crime, as is possessing any revenue derived from dealings related to it.

That puts businesspeople like Tyson Haworth, an owner of Oregon’s Finest and sofresh farms, in tricky territory on a number of fronts. The most glaring danger, highlighted by the video, is that $70,000 in cash sitting on the table in front of Merkley, Haworth and Blumenauer. It’s money that Haworth owes in local taxes, but he can’t cut a check, because banks can’t legally work with drug dealers. Banks tend to take that law seriously when rejecting mom-and-pop pot shops, but somehow manage to look the other way for Mexican drug cartels that funnel billions through those same banks.
crimsonandclovermedia.com

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Its been painless for us.

It went like this:

1. No true Democrat supports TTP
2. The President support TTP
3. So?

So? was alerted on.

Of course I can't read the results.

I used the results from the old system to measure my response to evolving values here, which was one of the admin's purposes of instituting the jury system to begin with. With this one I am in the air.

I support not cutting Democrats, but I also know the TTP is contentious to Democrats and progressives. And in your new rules you say that constructive criticism is no grounds for hiding or banning. So this presents a dilemma: is the statement "No true Democrat supports TTP" hidable on its face, or is not supporting TTP mean someone is not a supportive Democrat?

My vote was leave it alone, that the comment was close to line line but not hidable. In light of my questions above I now think my vote vote should have been "Close, but hide anyway."

I take my jury duty very seriously, and I truly appreciate my privilege in being allowed to be a member. But being in the dark is not helpful.

Maybe simply a sanctioning on reprinting jury results would have answered a lot of your concerns on keeping a controversy going?

GOP Operative Lashes Out At Party, Calls Trump ‘Cheeto Jesus’ In Epic Tweetstorm
Rick Wilson says the RNC is “covered in stench” for not pushing back against the businessman.
06/16/2016 08:34 am ET

Willa Frej Reporter, The Huffington Post


Rick Wilson, GOP presidential consultant and active member of the Never Trump movement, has just unleashed his latest tirade against Donald Trump on Twitter, calling the presumptive Republican nominee “Cheeto Jesus.” And he’s bashed the Republican National Committee in the process.

Wilson said in the tweets posted Thursday that the RNC is covered in Trump’s “stench,” given that they’re ultimately responsible for their party’s candidate.

That’s despite Trump’s camp being displeased with the RNC for not throwing overwhelming support behind the candidate, according to Politico. A campaign official said that they wouldn’t be taking much advice from RNC chairman Reince Priebus.

Many in the Republican Party were upset over Trump’s response to Sunday’s Orlando massacre, after he congratulated himself for being “right on Islamic terrorism.”

Check out last night’s tweetstorm: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-operative-lashes-out-at-party-calls-trump-cheeto-jesus-in-epic-tweetstorm_us_57626d13e4b05e4be860ec59

He referred to the real estate mogul as a “cancer,” an “epic douche canoe” and a “statist” with “a little delicious hint of fascism in the mix” on CNN.

Other than that I understand why the other changes are being made. I think making the "accused" unnamed is a good idea, though I wonder if that will affect a juries ability to read the comment being judged in context to the rest of the thread around it.

From other things you've said about comments made by jurors, its seems that Admin has used comments to detect bias in some jurors that caused those jurors to be given less jury duty.

AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Results of your alert

Mail Message
On Wed Jun 8, 2016, 07:43 AM you sent an alert on the following post:

All the misty eyed blather over a woman getting the nom is BS. She is owned by Wall Street.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512155988

REASON FOR ALERT

This post is disruptive, hurtful, rude, insensitive, over-the-top, or otherwise inappropriate.

YOUR COMMENTS

Like Skinner says: is this helpful?

JURY RESULTS

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this alert at Wed Jun 8, 2016, 07:49 AM, and voted 3-4 to LEAVE IT ALONE.

Juror #1 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #2 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #3 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #4 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: Misinformed and plain wrong -- but not abusive.
Juror #5 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: if we hid everything that isn't "helpful" this site would be relatively empty. IMO.
Juror #6 voted to LEAVE IT ALONE
Explanation: No explanation given
Juror #7 voted to HIDE IT
Explanation: No explanation given

Thank you.


I support Bernie and I alerted on this. I know you're giving them another week to get it out of their system, and I believe the jury system works for everything except the primary zone infractions, but its hard to keep the faith sometimes.

Kinda makes me look forward to to tommorrow's surgery and one week stay.

America Marked Memorial Day Weekend with a Deluge of Mass Shootings

http://www.vice.com/read/america-marked-memorial-day-weekend-with-a-deluge-of-mass-shootings

By Mark Hay
June 3, 2016

Over the past seven days, America witnessed nine mass shootings that left one dead and 43 wounded. These attacks bring the US mass shooting body count so far in 2016 to 112 dead and 443 injured. Meanwhile, Europe suffered zero mass shootings last week, holding the continent's body count in such attacks this year steady at 20 dead and 66 injured.

All of the recent mass shootings in the United States came over the long Memorial Day weekend, with three of them directly linked to holiday cookouts. Only one of these attacks received significant attention: military veteran Dionisio Garza III's random rampage on Sunday in Houston, Texas, during which he allegedly fired off more 200 rounds starting at 10:15 AM, killing a 56-year-old man and wounding a Good Samaritan who tried to intervene, along with two responding deputies, and three bystanders before being gunned down by a SWAT shooter. However, the weekend's bloodshed started hours earlier, at 12:30 AM in Trenton, New Jersey, when at least one shooter injured six people en route to a cookout. Two-and-a-half hours later, a shooting in an Indianapolis parking garage injured four more. Then, at about 6 AM, a street altercation in Las Vegas led to a shootout that injured yet another four individuals. Finally, at about 12:25 PM in Zillah, Washington, people believed to have bene hunting birds accidentally wounded five orchard workers when firing through a grove of trees.

The carnage carried over to Monday, Memorial Day proper, with two drive-by shootings at cookouts in Baltimore, Maryland, and Sacramento, California, both of which left five injured. The violence trickled into the wee hours of Tuesday morning as well; at about 12:30 AM, an attack on a girl's house party in Fort Wayne, Indiana, left four teens injured. About an hour later, a street shooting in Chicago injured four more.

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It's possible that the holiday even played a role in Garza's rampage. Associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center Deborah Azrael told VICE back in February that large, random attacks like his are actually less common on weekends than most mass shootings. But they do tend to occur when shooters know people will be gathered in public spaces.

This doesn't mean that a warm summer guarantees a bloody Fourth of July or Labor Day. There's still a degree of randomness in mass shootings. We had a bloodier week than this one, for example, at the end of April, with 13 mass shootings—including the Piketon, Ohio, massacre—leaving 15 dead and 44 injured. Yet that week was cooler than this one, with not a holiday in sight and a fair chunk of the violence occurring on weekdays rather than weekends.

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