That can't really be changed are major issues, and things which can be changed for the better, should be ignored...

Oh, well, like Shrub, we ourselves will be dead so, don't matter.

Legalization is not one of the things I work on, but I'm fine with plenty of other Dems doing so. I think it will have a useful ripple-on effect in terms of emptying overcrowded prisons, saving states a ton of money wasted on 'the war on drugs', and keep a lot of reckless young people out of jail. It will also hopefully get some younger voters out to the polls. So I think legalization would actually fall under two of the categories you claim are important to you - social justice and investment in human potential. (since so many more people of color wind up in prison for pot)

I think it's stupid to break existing laws, but I'm fine with people wanting to change or remove those laws entirely, for the reasons noted above.

I think even those who don't smoke can understand the waste in 'blood and treasure' and see that it needs to end.

One of the reasons I don't focus on it personally is that I think the country is getting there quickly already, thanks to the existing activists. So I'd rather stay focused on issues in which we still as a country aren't anywhere near turning things around, doing the retail work of simply getting the people with whom I interact to recognize the way in which electing corporate-owned politicians works to impoverish almost all of us, in the hopes that they will likewise influence others around them.

1) It's illegal status has devastated the young male populations of people of color; it has established a cold-steel pipe line for other commodities beyond pot (other drugs, money transfers and people); it has distorted foreign policy from Vietnam through the current immigration crisis; it cultivated a disrespect for the law and constructed a huge private-prison industry which sucks away dwindling resources from needed public works.

2) The Democratic Party needs every vote it can get. Instead of listening the the pro-pot rumblings of populists rightists within the Tea Party, Democrats should take the lead on legalization, and shore up its eroding base among younger people and the elderly (we are all marijuana patients, sooner or later).

You can leave the politically masochistic "gun issue" out of any list of priorities. It's just more prohibition.

Think about how many people with felony drug arrests are denied the right to vote in so many states, and how they are more disproportionately those of color and not the elites. It's another mechanism of voter suppression that needs to be brought down. If the Democratic Party takes the lead on legalization of marijuana and reducing our "drug" prison population, those people that are "freed" will vote for us!

Also, we need to get the vote out particularly with young people. Just saw stats this week that in off years, those in the youngest age voting group (18-24) here in Oregon have only a 40% turnout rate, when normally we as a state with vote by mail are near the top of states in voter turnout ranging from 70+ to 80+ overall. We need to engage young people to vote this election to build momentum for a new presidency in 2016 that we need to have control to make the necessary FDR-style changes this country so sorely needs. Reach out to the young people around you, and point out how we need to take steps to build towards that in this coming election. Supporting and prioritizing their issues (also things like reducing student debt, etc. too) is what is needed.

which tend to be minorities. Given how dependent our coalition is upon minorities, morality aside, this issue is important.

morally a good idea AND an electoral winner. And incredibly frustrating when Dem politicians drag their feet and oppose issues that poll extremely well with the actual electorate.

Irrational laws, that make millions of other law abiding citizens criminals, seriously damage our society. It should be a top priority to eliminate those laws and any others that are clearly counterproductive.

that obstructs it will lose votes. So not supporting reform is politically stupid.

Phone unlocking is a minor but important issue. Currently it is not significant politically. However, over the long term, the issue of digital rights is A HUGE issue.

probably because I have a landline, not a cell phone.

What exactly is the issue with unlocking, and how is it a political issue?

that will only work when connected through their network (they can roam other vendor networks.) Essentially they are retaining control over the hardware they allegedly "sold" you. (And frequently you are continually buying the phone long after you've paid for it, as the purchase price is rolled into the monthly subscription fee, and doesn't stop even after the unit is paid for.) You can't take your perfectly good phone and subscribe to a different wireless network, you have to buy a new damn phone. The law Obama signed abolishes that nonsense. it's your damn phone. Tip of the iceberg, and a small step, but one in the right direction.

I can see why that would annoy customers, but I'd think that making 'unlocked' phones would be a selling point. Or are the phones simply a loss leader, and it's the service on which they make all their money?

Well no, the sale price is rolled into your monthly payments over two years. There is no subsidy. You've more than paid the full retail price at the end of you contract, at which point your only options were to either continue to pay for the phone you had already fully paid for or start the whole process over again with a new phone. The hardware vendors love this of course, as do the phone companies, but the consumer is getting screwed.

They sell other people's hardware and software with the "add on" of a lock feature that prevents you from using any other phone except the ones they sell. In other countries you buy a phone from anyone and put in a "sim card" and voila the phone works on the network the sim card is set up for. You are only paying the phone company for the use of their network and the negligible cost of the sim card and that is it. Here, through corrupt practices you were basically being "rent farmed" by the phone companies.

There are many areas where the carrier you have doesn't get good coverage. I just moved some place where CREDO (which sits on Sprint network) didn't have good coverage. They sent me a "repeater" device which uses my Frontier-based internet connection to give me better cell phone reception. Net Neutrality foes try to make it sound like they shouldn't be bound by "common carrier" laws that had been set up to govern the way phone networks/wiring was set up. But with the move from landline to cell phones, and now perhaps from cell towers to the internet as a means of transmission, then the original reasons that were used to justify "common carrier" regulation for phone services will be in direct conflict with new lack of common carrier status for internet services as more and more phone carriers move towards the internet to carry phone traffic down the road. And they might like being able to move their phone traffic to that "less regulated" sphere so that they can make more money off of phone service as well as their internet services.

So, yes, these digital issues ARE important. But the fundamental issues that need to be prioritized as the root cause of the corruption that screws with laws like these are those governing campaign financing and a move to public campaign financing, electronic voting and other forms of voter suppression, getting rid of activist court legislation that created "corporate personhood" and "money is speech" notions in our laws now, and putting in place systems like instant runoff voting to help empower people to speak their minds as they vote and support candidates and issues not backed by huge corporate interest money dollars, without the fear of empowering bad plurality candidates through spoiler effects.

I say that marijuana legalization is also important as it engages the young voters that we need to get a movement started for these other more fundamental and important issues that need to be dealt with in the coming four years or so.

...the question isn't "do you care", it's "do you care enough".

That the do-nothing Congress had accomplished something major transcending the partisan gridlock, that something was actually traveling to the President to sign, which he will sign, meaning that everybody had managed to work the way they are supposed to work. Yeah, if it's a widely unobjectionable thing.

that things of that scale, embedded in the accomplishments of FDR, LBJ, and TRUMAN, they would be listed under "Addenda."

Cannabis legalization "and" cell phone blocking"??? These are equivalent topics to you, at least enough to lump them together in this OP?

Your cluelessness should be embarrassing but that may require a level of self-awareness I don't see demonstrated anywhere in your post.

Here's a clue: the drug war is the lynchpin (that word was chosen carefully) of the war on poor people and minorities through a corrupt justice system that locks up African American males at a rate of 10-1 to whites when both communities have nearly identical level of use. Cannabis enforcement drives the fucking madhouse of the private prison industry. It also has fueled the explosive expansion of the abusive and private youth "treatment" industry, which is one of the biggest shams in recent American history.

Legalization of cannabis is not only a winning issue, it's the right thing to do. Cannabis legalization IS civil rights, social justice, civil liberties and investment in human potential.

would be for a sweeping cultural and consciousness revolution. Your equating my views with wingnut drug wars is wrong. Nope, the wonderful medicinal uses and the civil/social/etc. ramifications of pot (I don't need to elevate it to scientific nomenclature) are always given short shrift in the arguments in favor of the recreational.

Maybe not so less major for the thousands of people who lost their freedom and are now nothing short of slaves to the prison-industrial complex.

How do you propose to get the votes in Congress to approve any amendments, and how do you propose to get 38 states to ratify those amendments? You can focus on the unattainable and unachieveable or focus on things you can actually do. It's usually better to do the latter.

Every little bit helps, but moreso focusing on the big picture and not over-staying with the pot-eaters, uh, I mean the LOTUS eaters.

If so, you're a hypocrite (just saying).

(I believe: ) Prohibition (of alcohol) was wrong; repeal was correct.

If it's possible to be a responsible drinker without being an alcoholic then it's equally possible to use cannabis recreationally in a responsible manner.

of a paradigm shift that is far too subtle for media to pick up on, so the public conversation revolves only around the conclusions as though they had accidentally sprung into being.

Or maybe I just need more coffee.

aren't that loyal on the rest of the agenda.

Doesn't pot legalization tie directly into major problems like our very racist profit driven justice system? It's a crime with disproportionally severe punishment that is used to fill corporate owned prisons with minorities.

Drug exporting countries have always said that if the U.S. didn't ASK for drugs, they wouldn't SEND them. Total Supply & Demand. We're already fairly alcohol and drug addled. So legalization means cash crop growing our own, no? Fine.

Last edited Sun Jul 27, 2014, 03:01 PM - Edit history (1)

All of these issues are closely related to the drug war and in particular marijuana prohibition as main drivers of the prison-industrial complex and the New Jim Crow. An interest in these values demands that one support legalization. What is social justice, what are rights and liberties, what room is left for human potential when a teenager in a black neighborhood can be subjected to an illegal search, be found with an ounce of marijuana, and end up as a forced laborer in the prison system for a dozen years on charges of conspiracy?

The drug war furthermore funds an epic distortion of all politics comparable to the effect of money in politics generally. Not just in the United States but all over Latin America. There are narco-states and death squads because pot is illegal in the U.S., fer chrissakes. It is the central factor in money laundering all around the world. All of the big banks take part in this business.

it's OUR demand that causes those things. So legalization means, what: Growing our own, reaping taxes, fine. What about (instead of the "drug wars&quot the cash is spent on rehab, prevention through consciousness raising, investment in human potential being OTHER outlets.

We just stop worrying about marijuana, since it's beloved by millions of people and obviously incomparably less harmful in a) its average effect on users and b) its overall social effects than alcohol, tobacco, and many legal pharmaceuticals?

Even if you see the people affected as a minority, the violation of their rights is unconstitutional, often extreme, and intolerable in a republic supposedly under rule of law.

aren't a major item for you?

That is what the drug war is and it needs to end.

See, my democratic party looks out for the poor, the disadvantaged and the systematically abused.

can make you rich.

the lottery.

but if you are of color, especially black, drug laws decimate your community. which makes them very hard to ignore as an important part of the democratic party priorities

in applying the drug laws. There's a difference between decriminalization, which many municipalities (including my own) have adopted, and legalization. The former is to address bad criminal law and bad application of criminal law. The latter is for stoners to enjoy themselves. It's an entirely different issue.

I'm not taking a position on legalization (i'm sort of okay with it, though I haven't smoked pot since the early 1970s). But I agree with the OP that it is, like, item 274 on the list of things this country needs to address.

laws as part of their oppression of poor and minority youth. Entire States decriminalized in the 1970's, but when the stuff is still illegal, it still creates a black market, a crime network and a platform for abuse of communities by both law enforcement and criminals neither of whom should have any part in an adult's purchase and use of cannabis any more than it does for an adult's purchase and use of alcohol.
Even in legal Seattle the people most often being cited for public use offenses are minority males, although other groups commit that infraction more often.

So the the real issue is racism. And we know that.

Unless you think being in jail for smoking grass is justice.

There is plenty of room for all the issues that need to be addressed.

As with the destruction in Mexico and Colombia, where the insane U.S. drug war policy playing a big role.

This is a huge issue, easily one of the most important, for many reasons.

cannabis law reform.

should be supported. Free puppies and kittens for everyone!

On the legalization of pot, I tend to see that as more of a social issue, but a bit of a sticky one at that. I also agree that it is not necessarily an issue for Democrats because Libertarians and some Republicans and independents will support the idea.

Personally I voted for medicinal marijuana in Oregon when it passed many years ago. In 2012 there was a legalization measure that got voted down that I voted against. Though I generally support the idea, the measure was poorly written. They are trying again this year and I'm considering voting for it.