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How state marijuana legalization became a boon for corruption
In the past decade, 15 states have legalized a regulated marijuana market for adults over 21, and another 17 have legalized medical marijuana. But in their rush to limit the numbers of licensed vendors and give local municipalities control of where to locate dispensaries, they created something else: A market for local corruption.
Almost all the states that legalized pot either require the approval of local officials – as in Massachusetts -- or impose a statewide limit on the number of licenses, chosen by a politically appointed oversight board, or both. These practices effectively put million-dollar decisions in the hands of relatively small-time political figures – the mayors and councilors of small towns and cities, along with the friends and supporters of politicians who appoint them to boards. And these strictures have given rise to the exact type of corruption that got [Jasiel] Correia in trouble with federal prosecutors. They have also created a culture in which would-be cannabis entrepreneurs feel obliged to make large campaign contributions or hire politically connected lobbyists.
For some entrepreneurs, the payments can seem worth the ticket to cannabis riches.
For some politicians, the lure of a bribe or favor can be irresistible.
[...] It's not just local officials. Allegations of corruption have reached the state level in numerous marijuana programs, especially ones in which a small group of commissioners are charged with dispensing limited numbers of licenses. Former Maryland state Del. Cheryl Glenn was sentenced to two years in prison in July for taking bribes in exchange for introducing and voting on legislation to benefit medical marijuana companies. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson's administration is the target of law enforcement and legislative probes into the rollout of its medical marijuana program.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday December 28 2020, @10:23AM (27 children)
Exactly right. Trying to tie corruption to cannabis is just waving a flag for the War-on-Drugs advocates. Fact is: corruption is wrong, and everywhere the government has regulatory authority, there is a risk of corruption.
It isn't just local politicians. The higher up the food chain you go, the more...impressive the corruption becomes. Look at NASA and the SLS: Cost-plus contracts to develop a system that is now massively late, massively over budget, and in no danger of being finished any time soon. It's all about spreading out those yummy federal dollars, some of which conveniently find their way back into the pockets of the responsible Congresscritters.
Be sure that there are also plenty of federal bureaucrats on the take, directly or indirectly. How many former government bureaucrats now have cushy, well-paid jobs at Lockheed/Boeing? If you are O-6/GS-15 or higher, working with the big contractors, of course there is a job waiting for you when you leave government service. It is understood, of course, that you will help keep the money flowing in the meantime.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @10:50AM (25 children)
Congresscritters get less than $200,000 per year. That's not even FAANG software developer pay, despite greater power and responsibility. When you think they should be paid less because they are awful people, just remember that low pay attracts corruption and thus gives us awful people.
It's easier to compare numbers with the president. He gets about $400,000 per year. That is less than 0.1% of what Elon Musk gets. We simply aren't paying the market rate for somebody qualified to do the job, not counting corruption. Note that Elon Musk doesn't control tariffs, nuclear weapons, millions of employees, and federal regulations that affect the entire economy. Looking at the S&P 500 companies, the average CEO pay is $16,000,000. That is 40 times what the US president gets.
Little countries like Ireland and Switzerland pay more. If you adjust for GDP, every country in the world pays more. (for those with GDP data available, not counting the Vatican) The USA is literally at the bottom.
Singapore gets it right. Pay is based on the median of the nation's 1000 highest earners. (those represent the alternate employment for somebody of that skill level)
You can wish for a selfless volunteer, but that isn't reality. Lots of terrible people will gladly pretend to be living on the low pay while their family members get miraculous investments and do-nothing jobs. Sometimes those family members even provide the "selfless volunteer" with a little financial help, like a 50% cut, but that's just family helping family.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @11:50AM (5 children)
got to add in their lifetime benefits, even if serving a single erm.
still the scale should be tipped the other way. no individual is worth ten plus million in salary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @12:09PM (1 child)
You say "no individual is worth ten plus million in salary", but who are you to judge and why do you care? Cutting pay due to envy/jealousy doesn't make corruption go away.
To me, getting a non-corrupt member of congress is worth ten plus million in salary. That is value to me. There is no point judging the value of the individual who might be the member of congress. I want to outbid corporations so that I have a hope of getting somebody who intends to be non-corrupt. If that takes $200,000,000 per year for a senator, so be it. That is a small price to pay for non-corrupt government.
Let's do $200,000,000 for senators, $45,000,000 for the house representatives, $2,000,000,000 for supreme court justices, $20,000,000,000 for the president, and $300,000,000 for the VP.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @06:55PM
That bidding metaphor relies on the premise that only the one who gets the goods pays.
Since your "bid" is coming out of your taxes no matter whether you get my loyalty or not, why wouldn't I take the salary AND sell my loyalty to the corps anyway?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @12:43PM (2 children)
You have to remember that fiat currency is not something finite. We can, and do, make as much as we need. As long as the bottom keeps rising, the top doesn't matter. When the top rises and the bottom falls, proportionate measures need to be taken.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday December 28 2020, @05:40PM (1 child)
Double the number of dollars in circulation and you halve the value of each. It's zero sum.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @05:41AM
The key is "in circulation". Smart rich people don't tend to put much money into circulation, they invest it (and what is the effect of investing in government bonds on monetary value?). This, combined with a significant lag in terms of inflationary effects, makes increasing the money supply not a big deal. A few hundred million in salaries wouldn't even be a rounding error in terms of GDP.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday December 28 2020, @12:38PM (4 children)
Must be a nice world you live in, where 200k is the average pay for a software developer. According to Glassdoor, the US average is around 77k. If you're getting $200k, you are either very senior, living somewhere very expensive, or doing very well for yourself. Or some combination of those.
As for members of Congress, they receive $174k, plus expenses, plus free medical care, plus lots of other benefits. You aren't supposed to go into Congress with the goal of massive wealth. The fact that entering Congress virtually guarantees that you will be a millionaire in a few years? That is a sign of deeply embedded corruption.
I'm Swiss, and this is definitely not true. The pay depends a bit on how many days the Parliament meets and how many committees you are on, but on average (including expenses) the salary ranges from CHF 130k to CHF 150k [www.ch.ch]. The typical Swiss form of corruption: most members of parliament just happen to be offered board positions in companies. The interests of those companies - purely coincidentally - happen to align with the positions put forth by the parliamentarians.
Your thesis: pay them more, and this stuff won't happen. Not going to help, because you underestimate human greed. People don't care how much some anonymous person is earning - they compare themselves to the person sitting next to them. This is well-established in psychology. Multiply salaries in Parliament/Congress by a factor of 10, and they will still seek out additional sources of income, to put one up on the person sitting across from them. In fact, you may make the situation worse: snagging an extra $50k on top of a $174k salary is significant, but on top of a $1 million salary it's peanuts - they'll want more.
tl;dr: Politics ought to be public service, not a road to riches. The fact that it is a road to riches, is a serious problem. One that we ought to seriously crack down on.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @12:59PM
Rotationally representative direct democracy is the best solution to corruption IMO. A large number of randomly selected citizens are "gathered" for every step in the legislative process and vote on the proposals. Expert advisors certainly could be corrupted, but this would be much more easily uncovered and punished than corruption by elected officials, as there would be far greater legislative interest in seeing these crimes uncovered. This is still vulnerable to media manipulation though, which may just be an unsolvable issue for social animals. Maybe putting extremely tight anti-trust regulations on media companies?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @03:57PM
Note that he didn't say "average pay". He said FAANG pay. He's not far off the mark.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:25PM
How can it not be a road to riches? If you direct $B of public money towards your favorite companies then step into a board-level position making $50k/mo for a 1hr phone chat every now and again.
It's insane to pay politicians so little. We have all but ensured that ONLY millionaires get elected to represent us. The President didn't even need his $400k salary - fuck that. The politicians need to depend on the same dog food they shovels into the swill bowl for the rest of us. Fuck living in gated communities. Fuck private security. Fuck living off your (inherited) capital gains.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @09:10PM
Note the role change the second paragraph: "It's easier to compare numbers with the president."
When comparing pay, be aware that some countries have one leader, while others have two. If the "head of state" is not the same as the "head of government", add them together.
Switzerland's head of state is the President. He gets $507,000.
Switzerland's head of government is the Federal Council. He gets $495,000.
The USA's head of both is the President. He gets $400,000.
I thing that Switzerland isn't paying enough. Just $1,002,000 is not much for a country as wealthy as Switzerland. Of course, leader pay in the United States is absurd. Calling it a "public service" doesn't mean you'll get what you want. Look, the evidence is that things aren't working. The corruption is a problem. We are not paying market rate, and so the result should be unsurprising.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @02:34PM (10 children)
So, it is your position that elected officials, at least at the federal level, should be paid like rock stars?
You might make a case that congress critters are underpaid. Maybe. But no way do they deserve salaries comparable to Elon Musk or the other rock stars of tech, entertainment, sports, or whatever.
I think we would make a better case of paying our congress critters the median income of their constituents, plus expenses. And, the expenses should be VERY closely audited.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:31PM (9 children)
Think of it like education - sure it's expensive, until you count the cost of not having it.
$500k entry level
$1m mid-level
$5m President
How bout dem apples? You do the math... 100 Senators, 400 Congressmen. It's less than a single pallet of unmarked cash helicoptered into Iraq to deliver Freedom.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @06:19PM (8 children)
Or link it to a multiple of the median salary.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @06:47PM (7 children)
This ^ , a thousand times this ^ !
Politician's salaries should depend on how much good they are doing their constituents. If Senator Joe Schmoe's district is bleeding jobs, and people are actually going to bed hungry, then Joe Schmoe shouldn't be making 1/4 million, or 1/2 million, or 5 million. He needs to wonder if he's going to eat tomorrow.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @09:36PM (6 children)
That is a good idea, but the multiplier needs to be enough that we don't get the people who were too corrupt and useless for corporate America. So here is a workable formula for paying a senator. Add up the following:
For that calculation, we can use the average of pre-tax and post-tax income. Multiply the final weighted sum by 0.45 for a representative, by 11 for a supreme court justice or vice president, or by 100 for the president. FYI, my weighting gives low-income people a slightly higher importance. The 10th percentile gets 1/3 of the weight, the 50th percentile gets 1/5 of the weight, and the 90th percentile gets only 1/15 of the weight. This encourages a modest preference for having low-income people earn more.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 28 2020, @11:33PM (5 children)
Why you want to overpay them so much? 90th percentile? Maybe. Without the multiplier. Give them an expense account, and monitor their expenses closely.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @12:02AM (4 children)
If they are already very rich and getting richer, bribes are more expensive. We should make sure it isn't cost-effective for China to bribe our politicians. China, being the second largest economy in the world, has plenty of money. We need China to see that legitimate competition is a better investment than bribery, but currently that isn't true. Bribes are dirt cheap.
We need to pull effective managers away from corporate America. Right now those people are getting millions of dollars per year. Most of them do that without bribes, unlike our politicians. Pick a random large company and ask yourself why the CEO would ever consider getting elected. The pay cut would be huge.
The word "overpay" is inappropriate. We could pay less. We could pay negative! Imagine charging people $1,292,556 per year to be a senator. Corruption would be far worse. Paying more money to reduce the corruption is not overpaying. It's deciding that corruption is bad, and accepting the only realistic way to reduce it.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 29 2020, @12:16AM (3 children)
I really don't think you understand people. You seem to be suggesting that there is no corruption in the corporate world. Rupert Murdoch, George Soros, Bill Gates, and the remaining Koch brother are all saints, right? Because they have money. Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but wealth is godly?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 29 2020, @03:16AM (2 children)
Corruption would involve willing participation in the misuse of entrusted power.
Bill Gates did some evil shit to defeat DR-DOS, Netscape, Java, OS/2, Borland, and many others. His company benefited. Corruption would be something else, like personally accepting millions of shares of Borland stock in exchange for standardizing on Borland compilers.
It's supposed to be like that with a US president. Sometimes the president does some evil shit to help America win. (hack Iran with Stuxnet, explode a Soviet gas pipeline with bad software, nuke Japan, listen to Merkel's phone, chop up an Iranian general in Iraq, etc.) That is a proper part of the job. Abusing the power of the office for personal financial gain is another matter entirely.
George Soros isn't corrupt, despite being evil like a real-life supervillain. He admits to being happiest when he was helping NAZIs hunt down his fellow Jews in World War II. These days he funds Antifa rioters, helping them with bail and helping to elect prosecutors that will let rioters go free without charges. He funds boats to ship huge numbers of Africans to disrupt European social norms and the European economy. It seems he just wants to break civilization, and he doesn't care how. It's just fun I guess. Note however, that none of this is an abuse of institutional power that he has been entrusted with. He is following the rules as far as we know, but of course I wouldn't be surprised if he were bribing senators.
When the Koch brother fights to remove restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions and on illegal aliens, he is helping his businesses. Corruption would be if he took some money from Greenpeace and then supported the Green New Deal. As with Soros, I don't see any corruption. Koch is unlikely to be accepting bribes. He might be offering bribes, but that isn't known.
Rupert Murdoch is an odd one to list. I guess the left hates him. He seems mostly fine to me. There was a scandal involving his newspaper bribing police for information. I don't know that it involved him, and anyway that is the side of corruption that isn't too relevant for a politician. We're worried about politicians taking bribes, not paying bribes.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 29 2020, @01:28PM (1 child)
I take it then that lawful evil is acceptable in a politician. I have to disagree.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @04:34AM
Most people expect their own lawyer to use every trick in the book to get a win, but get pretty pissed when the opposing side does that. Tossing out a case over some minor technicality is a valid way to win, even if it is playing dirty. That's all legal, but bribing the judge is not.
The lawyer for $1000/hour might lose. The lawyer for $100/hour might win. Normally the cheap lawyer is the crummy one though, and your chances would be worse if you hired that one.
Electing somebody is like hiring a lawyer. Heck, most of them actually are lawyers. We should get ones who will fight for us. International law is a polite fiction, so there are no limits on dealing with foreign countries. We should expect our politicians to follow our own laws though. They seem to have trouble with that.
Think how many billions of dollars, or trillions of dollars even, a simple tariff change might mean for China. It wouldn't take more than a few million per year to hire Hunter Biden as a trade policy advisor. Hunter Biden is such an expert that he can deliver valuable wisdom with just one quarterly meeting in China. If he happens to spend time there with beautiful intelligence agents who like cocaine and meth, oh well.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:15PM (1 child)
Funny how quickly they become multimillionaires on that salary, isn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:32PM
Not that "funny" any more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2020, @05:48PM
Pay them more? Bad stuff is happening because they're not paid more? Are you a shill or retarded? In the US corporate world many CEOs and bosses are paid a lot and there's PLENTY OF BAD BEHAVIOR from highly paid ones.
What's certain is they're not being PUNISHED enough even when they've done stuff wrong. Since drugs are the topic check this out: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-230696/ [rollingstone.com]
There's plenty of other examples if you bother to look.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Monday December 28 2020, @08:13PM
Corruption is quantified by its proximity to power (what, the inverse square of its distance?), approaching infinity at the top.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..