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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: 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.