Ron Paul vs. Stephen Baldwin is like Mike Tyson vs. a five-year-old. No contest.
Paul’s most powerful argument relates to the costs of prohibition, particularly crime from drug cartels and the cost of locking up non-violent offenders.
Author: Gerardo Orlando (Page 43 of 169)
Things seem to be getting worse for Jim Cramer.
Friday brought more tumult for CNBC anchor Jim Cramer, when the chief executive of his online financial news site, The Street.com, resigned.
The company announced Friday that Thomas Clarke, TheStreet.com’s CEO for the past decade, would be leaving, effective immediately. He’s been temporarily replaced by Daryl Otte, a longtime director on the company’s board, who will serve as chief until the search committee, which he is leading, finds a new CEO.
Who knows the reasons behind Clarke’s decision, but the timing suggests that Cramer’s flameout is not going over well in the financial community.
This is pretty pathetic, and it highlights how bad Jim Cramer’s appearance was on The Daily Show.
A TVNewser tipster tells us MSNBC producers were asked not to incorporate the Jim Cramer/Jon Stewart interview into their shows today. In fact, the only time it came up on MSNBC was during the White House briefing, when a member of the press corps asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs if Pres. Obama watched. Gibbs wasn’t sure if the president had, but Gibbs did. “I enjoyed it thoroughly,” the Press Secretary said.
On Cramer’s network, CNBC, the subject has only come up twice today, including when master marketer/CNBC personality Donny Deutsch brought it up briefly around 1pm on “Power Lunch.” “I’m a huge Jon Stewart fan,” said Deutsch, “He does what he does he does his job. But I’m also a huge Jim Cramer fan. He sticks up for the little guy, he cares, he puts his neck out, and I respect that. I respect both those guys.”
How embarrassing. In effect, Stewart destroyed Cramer’s credibility and painted CNBC as a bunch of fools, but MSNBC honchos decided not to respond. This suggests that there might be serious consequences.
Turns out this interview was a very bad idea for Jim Cramer. Jon Stewart makes him look like a fool.
New York State might finally repeal the idiotic Rockefeller drug laws.
The Rockefeller drug laws is the term used to denote the statutes dealing with the sale and possession of “narcotic” drugs in the New York State Penal Law. The laws are named after Nelson Rockefeller, who was the state’s governor at the time the laws were adopted. Rockefeller, a staunch supporter of the bill containing the laws, signed it on May 8, 1973.
Under the Rockefeller drug laws, the penalty for selling two ounces (approximately 56 grams) or more of heroin, morphine, “raw or prepared opium,” cocaine, or cannabis, including marijuana (these latter two being included in the statute even though they are not “narcotics” from a chemical standpoint), or possessing four ounces (approximately 113 grams) or more of the same substances, was made the same as that for second-degree murder: a minimum of 15 years to life in prison, and a maximum of 25 years to life in prison. The original legislation also mandated the same penalty for committing a violent crime while under the influence of the same drugs, but this provision was subsequently omitted from the bill and was not part of the legislation Rockefeller ultimately signed. The section of the laws applying to marijuana was repealed in 1979, under the Democratic Governor Hugh Carey.
The New York Times has an editorial arguing for the repeal of the laws.
After 35 years of filling the state’s prisons with drug offenders who needed treatment and disproportionately punishing poor and minority offenders, New York is on the verge of dismantling its infamous Rockefeller drug laws. To get there, Gov. David Paterson and some prosecutors will have to drop their objections to a reasonable provision on second-time offenders.
The Assembly voted last week to restore judicial discretion and end mandatory sentencing for many nonviolent low-level drug crimes. The bill, which has been introduced in the State Senate as well, would limit the longstanding and widely discredited system under which prosecutors decide who goes to jail and for how long.
Once the measure becomes law, courts would be able to sentence many addicts to treatment instead of cramming them into prisons where addiction generally goes untreated.
Republican senators who represent prison districts have long obstructed reforms like these. The latest attempt seems likely to succeed now that Democrats control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the Legislature — if Assembly lawmakers can broker a deal with the governor and some prosecutors in the state.
The last paragraph struck me. It’s stunning that Republican politicians blocked reform of these laws just to keep prison populations high to protect prison jobs in their districts. Disgusting.
All around the country, our prisons are bursting and states are going broke. We need to stop locking up non-violent offenders and focus on violent criminals.
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