November 6, 2013

Having voted to legalize marijuana, Coloradans now vote to tax it.

Heavily.

Well, of course. You legalize it so you can tax it. To repurpose an old Obama-and-marijuana quote: That was the point.



Obama's appearance arrives at 0:57, after which a commenter (Howard Fineman) opines: "One of the reasons Barack Obama is so popular, especially among younger people, is that he seems so real, he seems to acknowledge the reality of things. It's kind of almost like a dog whistle kind of thing. Older people can't hear it. Younger people hear it. And that's one of the things that they hear. He seems to be willing to be honest."

I need some medical marijuana for my hearing. I'm old. I was old back in 2006 when that clip came out. Yes, I voted for him, but not because I believed he was a new kind of honest. And now, in 2013, watching that, what I hear — on the sound wavelengths that penetrate my old head — is the word "seems," screeching out of Fineman's word montage: He seems so real... he seems to acknowledge... He seems to be willing to be honest.

"Seems" and "willing."

Willing... like: Okay, I'll go along with this looking-honest bullshit for you folks for a while. So follow me, little puppies. I've got a new kind of reality kind of thing to kind of like show you. Can you, like, you know, hear it, kids?

And I got a big laugh out of Kathleen Parker, at the very end saying, "The thing people can't stand is the lies." I then rewatched the clip and lingered over the part where they showed Bill Clinton saying he "experimented" with marijuana and "didn't like it" and "didn't inhale." I found that very refreshing.

That's the kind of honesty I like right now. It was a lie, and you knew it was a lie when he told it. There was none of this feeling of oh, wow, look at the reality, man. What felt real was: There's a politician that will smile and lie straight to our faces. He's a liar.

Those were the days.

48 comments:

MadisonMan said...

And Coloradoo has already spent the tax income!

It's a WIN WIN WIN for everyone!

Meade said...

Ha ha ha. I wonder if it's even funnier if I get high.

rhhardin said...

You spot liars faster if you know some economics.

He's saying what can't work will work.

But women are applauding.

Women are responsible for the lies by making them effective.

YoungHegelian said...

So liberals are actually going to discover that there was more freedom "outside the lines" than there will be when they bring their pet vices out of the shadows. Now, it's just one more cash cow for the relentless maw of the state. For schools. Always for the children. Always, you understand.

Tell me, do you think that once prostitution gets legalized that the girls will still be able to put "No Black Guys, Please" in their ads?

Henry said...

Nicely done.

Bob Boyd said...

"It's kind of almost like a dog whistle kind of thing. Older people can't hear it. Younger people hear it."

Older people can hear it just fine. But because they are older, they've just learned not to respond like a dog, not come running to please a master in hopes of a pat on the head.
Also they are not so easily impressed. You smoked pot? Wow!

paminwi said...

Too many effing women want someone/the government to take care of them Good golly, thank goodness, I had a father who said, stand on your on two feet and that way you control your own future.

And, oh, yeah, we did not grow up "rich". Just were taught to be self sufficient. Thanks, dad!

(Especially for all those summers working in a factory that really taught me unions suck and that there is such a bigger world out there!)

RecChief said...

in a policy analysis seminar class, I wrote a paper on how to end the 'war on drugs'. It involved legalizing drugs and taxing them. kind of on the idea of how liquor was controlled by my state from the end of prohibition to just recently. tax receipts would go to rehab programs via legislation to keep that money fenced in. I thought it was a good idea to reduce gang influence and drive bys, but the tradeoff would be a much larger government structure with the attendant opportunities for graft and corruption as well as another government 'industry'. not sure I would write the same paper today.

Tank said...

What is the nexus between smoking pot and education such that people who smoke pot should pay a disproportionate share of the "school construction" costs?

What an odd thing it is that, if people want to drink a little, smoke some weed, gamble, they must be punished.

Now Colorado has a clear monetary incentive to promote increased pot smoking. If pot smoking decreases, the children will suffer.

Shouting Thomas said...

He's the Diversity hire. Making white people feel good about hiring a black guy is the job of the Diversity hire.

The first lie is that the Diversity hire is supposed to do any work, or have a set of skills. All the other lies grow out of the first lie.

Legalizing and taxing pot is the sensible thing to do.

tim in vermont said...

What really turned me on Clinton was that I believed his lies, unreservedly, then when I saw that they were lies, it was not so much what he had done, but that he was able to so thoroughly convince me with a lie. After that, I hated the man.

Obama's lies are transparent to anybody who takes the time to think about what he says, so I don't hate him the same way, I just find it really frustrating that he gets away with it so easily. The old "I am surrounded by idiots!" syndrome.

Strelnikov said...

'So follow me, little puppies.'

And you did. Well done.

Anonymous said...

As A Fiscal Conservative I Have Decided That From This Point Forward I Will Only Vote for the Most Liberal of Available Candidates and the Most Progressive of Initiatives. I Will Be Consistent and Steadfast in My Endeavors and Will Not Waver. Minimum Wage of Twenty-five Dollars? I Vote Yes, Unless There is an Initiative That Stipulates Thirty. Food Stamps for Legal Marijuana: I Shall Gladly Check That Box. If It Is For The Children My Only Regret is That I Can't Vote 'Triple-Yes'.

There Will Never Be Smaller Government: at Best We Will Have a Government That Gets Larger in Slightly Slower Increments, for a Short Period of Time Here or There, if at All. There Will Always Be More Debt, Never Less: Again, Sometimes Faster, Sometimes Slower, But Always More.

I Will Do My Best to Help Push the Gas Pedal to the Floor on the School Bus Approaching the Cliff. Many Say There is No Cliff, We Can Always Print More Money or Raise More Taxes. Maybe the Cliff isn't as High as the Pessimists Say, a Speed Bump, Really. Regardless, My Estimate is That I Will Be Off the School Bus Before Reaching That Point. Faster, School Bus, Faster!

I Will Be Doing This For the Great-Great-Children, Mind You. Let's Face it, the Current Crop of Children Will Be Okay, Mostly: Lowered expectations, Less prosperous, But Will Still Have an iPhone. These Children Will Make Do By Taking Away from the Grand-Children. The Great-Grand-Children Will Then Come of Age Knowing That Lowered Expectations is the True Human Condition: Any Prosperity of the Past Was But an Illusion. Maybe Soylent Green, Maybe Not, But Subsidized Marijuana Should Hide Most of the Pain. The Mortally Wounded Elephant Should Stumble to the Ground at This Point.

Then -- Finally -- the Great-Great-Children Can Start Again, Fresh From the Wreckage, Unshackled By the Past. Perhaps They Can Begin again with the Smallest of Governments, Maybe Write a Constitution that Provides Their Rights.

So: For the Great-Great-Children, I say "Faster, School Bus, Faster!"

Shouting Thomas said...

From the standpoint of the consumer, this is still a great deal.

I've read that an ounce of high grade pot retails for $150 in Colorado. Even with the 25% taxes, that's still only $187.50.

That same ounce sells for in excess of $600 in NY state. So, it's a bargain. And the weights and measure, I'd guess, are regulated.

One of the problems of buying on the black market is that the pusher man ropes in his customer by selling a fat ounce the first time, then he reduces the amount in each subsequent purchase, until he's cheating his customer.

Anonymous said...

I Will Gladly Accept Your Vote.

Anonymous said...

"Great-Great-Children" should be "Great-Great-Grand-Children". I Was in a Flurry.

pm317 said...

Excellent, better late than never. Some of us wrote like this in 2007-2008.

Bob Ellison said...

I worry about the lacing problem. According to Wikipedia, pot is laced relatively less often than other drugs. But the black market makes everything game, because they're already illegal. In Colorado, maybe the quality and purity of marijuana will go up over time. But lacing it with PCP, say, could make some folks a lot of money in the short term, and where is the FDA?

Meade said...

"I Was in a Flurry."

Sure you were. Admit it, max: you were high as a kite.

mccullough said...

Since pot will be taxed, illegal pot will still flourish.

Moose said...

Funny - sin taxes are pretty effective in driving down usage of the items being taxed. Could it work on pot usage? And what will this do to illegal pot sales? Ah, the wonders of unintended consequences!

Meade said...

"One of the problems of buying on the black market is that the pusher man ropes in his customer by selling a fat ounce the first time, then he reduces the amount in each subsequent purchase, until he's cheating his customer."

A perfect metaphor for Obama the politician/pusherman.

madAsHell said...

I need some medical marijuana for my hearing.

....is there anything that reefers won't fix??

Heartless Aztec said...

"Those were the days my friend we thought they'd never end..."

Paul said...

Yea Obama is real... all to real for the young folk that will be paying MY way in life.

He is a real scary Marxist.

As for the pot law and taxes... well they had to vote for it in order to tax it.

Meade said...

If you like your ounce, you can keep your ounce.

Bob Ellison said...

Eucalyptus smoke smells just like marijuana smoke. An ammoral, enterprising marketeer in Colorado would buy eucalyptus leaves (plentiful in the southwest), grind them up, and either sell them plain (as cheap pot, not the excellent stuff described by Ricky Fitts in American Beauty and laced with PCP, Ecstasy, or other deadly things.

This is just business, you see.

chickelit said...

Bob Ellison said...and where is the FDA?

Lots of things look like dried leaves.

mccullough said...Since pot will be taxed, illegal pot will still flourish.

How can legalized pot be illegal? Better to call it undocumented pot.

Gabriel Hanna said...

Just before Clinton admitted to his affair with Monica I have to say that I believed his denials. Because Clinton was a lawyer and I thought a lawyer would not tell a bald lie. I thought that a lawyer would deceive by hedging, qualifying, and parsing--"it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is"--but "I did not have sex with that woman was unequivocal". So I was very surprised when he admitted it.

And my college roommate, who is very wise, said then:

"Ninety percent of us already assumed he did it and forgave him."

And that turned out to be true too.

Unknown said...

I never realized there were different varieties of honesty. I prefer to take mine straight up.

Rusty said...

Show of hands. Who didn't see this coming?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I imagine this was a highly bipartisan vote. Non-pot-smoking liberals would support it "for the children". Non-pot-smoking conservatives would support it just to stick it to pot-smoking liberals. Harmony at last.

Meade said...

"Because Clinton was a lawyer and I thought a lawyer would not tell a bald lie."

Lawyers only tell merkin lies.

Larry J said...



Tank said...
What is the nexus between smoking pot and education such that people who smoke pot should pay a disproportionate share of the "school construction" costs?

What an odd thing it is that, if people want to drink a little, smoke some weed, gamble, they must be punished.

Now Colorado has a clear monetary incentive to promote increased pot smoking. If pot smoking decreases, the children will suffer.


Don't go trying for logical consistency, Tank. There isn't any. Years ago, when I still lived in Colorado and the Californication process was not yet complete, there was a ballot initiative to sharply increase tobacco taxes to pay for children's health care. When someone asked me to sign the petition to get the measure on the ballot, I asked them why only smokers should have to pay for increased children's health care. If increased spending for children's health care was so important, why not raise the taxes on everyone to pay for it? All I got was a deer in the headlights expression. The measure did get on the ballot and passed. From that point on, Colorado had a vested interest in keeping people smoking.

I'm glad I no longer live there.

RecChief said...

Gabriel Hanna said:
"Because Clinton was a lawyer and I thought a lawyer would not tell a bald lie"


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA [DEEP BREATH] HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Lawyers get some special dispensation from human failings? remember, Clinton wasn't a practicing lawyer at that point, he was a politician, and a liberal one at that.

Rusty said...

The black market in Colorado for marijuana is about to get blacker.

Anonymous said...

How soon will the marijuana growers get a class action law suit?

Anonymous said...

Liars differ qualitatively. Bill Clinton was a mighty liar but he also had a rogue element that made him entertaining. Mr. Obama has none of that quality and is merely an unmitigated lying sack. This is his death knell. He is a lying sack that is no fun.

chickelit said...

Archie advises: Liars differ qualitatively. Bill Clinton was a mighty liar but he also had a rogue element that made him entertaining. Mr. Obama has none of that quality and is merely an unmitigated lying sack. This is his death knell. He is a lying sack that is no fun.

Archie makes a point I've never read before. Lately, POTUS has all the charm of his mother.

Elliott A said...

Bill Clinton actually told the truth about inhaling. He didn't like it. So, his regular marijuana usage was in the form of brownies which he ingested frequently. The original question asked if he "smoked" pot. They should have asked if he "used" pot. A much harder question for a sharp lawyer to parse.

SGT Ted said...

This will just help incentivize the continuation of a marijuana black market to avoid the taxes. It will also help promote people just growing their own. It is real easy to grow.

Anonymous said...

I imagine pot smokers will live near the border, if they can, and communities just over the line in surrounding states are going to start not enforcing MJ laws against dealers.

pm317 said...

Yep Archie is correct in that BC is fun and highly intellectual and O is a midget compared to BC.

RAS743 said...

Archie: Really, you think POS BC was "entertaining"? I guess I'm from the school of opinion that O and PC are both lying sacks and both deserve all the humiliation that can be heaped upon them. A scumbag is a scumbag; don't sugar coat it. But that's just old judgmental me.

Rusty said...

elkh1 said...
How soon will the marijuana growers get a class action law suit?

It would be useless. Taxation is one of the police powers of the State. Those that administer the state rarely act to decrease revenues.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

Tax it into submission. Clever.

The next step is to pass a tax on breathing (i.e. survivor penalty). Well, there is Obamacare. I wonder what other tricks are hiding up his sleeve.

jr565 said...

If they tax it it will just lead to a black market for it all over again. Also if they regulate it, and it turns out that people are cutting it with angel dust, it will lead producers to be sued Again, driving it back to the underground.