Which Democrat Is More Likely To Hold Trump Accountable-- And Who Will Let Bygones Be Bygones?

Preet Bharara, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York-- and if you're watching Billionaires you don't know how important that position is-- predicted in an interview with the Daily Beast that... well... um...

Scott Porch: Donald Trump was pretty clearly the unindicted co-conspirator in the guilty plea that sent Michael Cohen to prison. I won’t ask you what people in the know may have told you, but how likely likely is it that the Southern District or the State of New York will indict Trump after he leaves office?

Preet Bharara: I don’t know. My former office clearly endorses and believes the fact-- as Michael Cohen admitted in open court-- that he engaged in the conduct he pleaded guilty to at the direction of Individual 1. Individual 1 is the president. Depending on what the other circumstances are, I believe there’s a reasonable likelihood that they would follow through on that. There’s a difference, though, between accepting a guilty plea from Michael Cohen and going to trial on the strength of that same witness after he’s gone to prison for lying.

Porch: Do you expect that the Justice Department’s characterization of the Mueller Report won’t actually have much of an effect on how the various investigations of Donald Trump and the Trump campaign will proceed?

Bharara: It will be harder to shut down other investigations where the attorney general doesn’t have a tight leash on them. In the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of Virginia, the D.C. District and other courts, I would expect things will unfold in the natural course.

The natural order? Not if Trump-- or Pence-- is president? How about Bernie? How about Biden? Have you thought much about the difference between the top two Democratic candidates? Bernie has always been a progressive. Biden has always been not a progressive. Biden made it clear from the very beginning of his career that he took extraordinary steps to make sure no one would think he was a progressive. But are their records predictive of how they would behave as president. Maybe yes, maybe no-- but it's all we have-- two guys who have been around a long time with long records. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out which one would hold Trump accountable and which one would let him skate "in the name of national unity" or some bullshit like that.

On Tuesday, The Baffler published an essay by Dave Denison about the candidate that time forgot-- a candidate lost to history and to himself: Twentieth-Century Man, who will call, with no fondness whatsoever, Status Quo Joe. "It would be hard," wrote Denison, "to find a more out-of-step-with-the-times candidate than Joe Biden. In a moment when two of the most important movements at the heart of the Democratic coalition-- the Black Lives Matter protests and the #MeToo upsurge-- suggest the need for someone with a strong record on racial justice and respect for women, up stands Joe Biden."

Here is Biden, who speaks of his formative days admiring the civil rights movement in the 1960s, but at a gut level spoke for the white ethnic urbanites who protested school busing and integration. Here is Biden, who wants credit for pushing the Violence Against Women Act in the 1990s, but at a gut level could not quite find a way to give Anita Hill the same respect and credence he gave Clarence Thomas in those atrocious 1991 hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee that he chaired. Biden was so concerned at that time with appearing to be fair and even-handed to the Republicans that he allowed them to coordinate sustained attacks on Hill, which then allowed Thomas to belligerently shout his way onto a Supreme Court seat-- and, not incidentally, provide the model that was followed to the letter by Brett Kavanaugh and his railing Republicans more than twenty-five years later.

Biden now steps up to lead a party that needs the energies of activist women and that is always in danger of telling activist youth they have no real place in Democratic Party politics, unless they fall in line and follow instructions. And before he even got to his official launch, he had to answer uncomfortable questions about his habits of putting his hands on women and girls without any sense of propriety. Even in minor stylistic ways, Biden shows himself to be a relic. On the day he formally announced his candidacy, the opening lines of his announcement email were “America is an idea. Based on a founding principle that all men are created equal.” He doesn’t realize that eighteenth-century “all men” constructions sound especially jarring now to vast numbers of people under the age of, maybe, seventy?

What about the time last year when Joe was on his book tour and he got to talking at a Los Angeles Times–sponsored event about the political struggles of the 1960s? “And so, the younger generation now tells me how tough things are. Give me a break,” Biden said. “No, no, I have no empathy for it. Give me a break. Because here’s the deal, guys. We decided we were going to change the world. And we did.” He doesn’t realize how much anger there is among today’s “younger generation” toward Baby Boomers? He thinks sounding like a clueless old grampy with “no empathy” is the way to win the youth vote?

Biden’s comment wasn’t directly about the student debt problem, but it was interpreted that way. And why not? His record on finance and debt matters is one of the worst parts of his long career in the Senate. He has been so consistently a shill for the financial industry that he has been blinded to one of the most dramatic and obvious structural changes in American life. Those students of the 1960s and 1970s he speaks about were the last generation to enjoy affordable college educations. The ones he has “no empathy” for lost something essential to middle-class stability. Saddled with debt and caught in the vise-grips of a predatory loan industry, college graduates spend years digging out-- in a way nobody Biden’s age ever had to do.

And of course all that is part of a wider problem that both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have been speaking about for decades—the way the financial industry is allowed to prey on people in dire straits. Biden joined with Republicans in the 1990s in efforts to toughen up the bankruptcy laws, based on the idea that too many middle-class people were irresponsibly running up credit-card debt and then declaring bankruptcy. Warren was then popping up as a Harvard Law professor who understood what the big banks were up to, and joined opponents who stymied Biden and the bank lobbyists for years.

In May of 2002, Warren wrote in a New York Times op-ed:

More than 90 percent of women who file for bankruptcy have been hit by some combination of unemployment, medical bills and divorce. Women are more likely than men to seek bankruptcy in the aftermath of a divorce or a medical problem, though both men and women cite job problems as the biggest difficulty.

It took until 2005, but Biden and the banks finally won and President George W. Bush signed their long-sought bill into law. As Theodoric Meyer wrote this spring in Politico explaining the Biden-Warren battle, the bill would likely have failed if Biden hadn’t led enough Democrats to the financial lobbyists’ side. Of course, the explanation was the usual one for Washington politics: the banking giant MBNA (absorbed in 2005 by Bank of America) was based in Biden’s home state of Delaware. And MBNA was the third-largest company in issuing credit cards, Meyer noted. Further:

Its executives and employees were some of Biden’s biggest campaign contributors, giving more than $200,000 over the course of his career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. One of Biden’s sons, Hunter, worked at MBNA after graduating from law school and later consulted for the company after a stint in the Commerce Department. The Bidens’ ties to the company ran so deep that Obama campaign officials told the New York Times in 2008 that they were “one of the most sensitive issues they examined while vetting the senator for a spot on the ticket.” Biden was seen as so close to the company that he felt it necessary to tell the Washington Post at one point that he was “not the senator from MBNA.”

...[Biden is] trying to get you to know him the way his family and friends know him: as the guy who is warm and fair to everyone, including the nation’s top billionaires and the fellas down at the union hall. You are supposed to like him because he’s some salt-of-the-earth guy, though he’s been in the most privileged club in America since he was thirty years old. More so than ever, he seems to be a man out of context, looking backward, trying to catch up with the present, chasing only the future he imagined in 1964-- a man out of time.

Last week, the Harvard Political Review ran a different kind of look at Bernie than what you may be used to reading. But's it's valuable if you want to compare these two old white men. "As the baby boomer cohort continues to shrink" wrote Lexi Mealey, "millennials are beginning to rise into the political ranks, especially on the left. With the 2020 presidential election fast approaching, the Democratic Party has increasingly turned its attention to courting these young voters in its fight to take back the White House. Yet in order to capitalize on the increasing power of young voters, Democratic candidates will need to change their strategies. Distrustful of baby boomer representatives, as well as of the media and older voters, young Americans want a candidate who stands on principle, regardless of how it impacts his electability, and who can engage them through technology. In 2020, young Americans are looking for a candidate who is like them where it counts."

As parties become increasingly polarized, Democratic Party leadership seems focused on finding a candidate who can win. Moving into the 2020 primary season, the question on many left-leaning minds is not which candidate stands on the best policies but rather, who can beat Donald Trump.

Though this approach may seem like savvy strategy in the short term, candidates seeking to garner the youth vote may benefit more from following trends in youth political attitudes than trends in electability. A poll organized by the Harvard Public Opinion Project indicated that 82 percent of millennial respondents believe that it is more important for a candidate to share his political views than to be an electable politician. Across all demographics, youth support for candidates who share their political perspectives never falls below 75 percent of respondents. Regardless of political views or personal experiences, millennial voters care more about candidates who share their beliefs than those who they believe can win in a general election, favoring principle over political strategy.

Putting policy before electability will only become more imperative for political candidates as millennials move towards becoming the largest voting block in the country. This is especially true for Democrats, who tend to receive the majority of millennial support. In the 2016 presidential election, 55 percent of millennials voted for Clinton, while only 37 percent voted for Trump. Even for Republicans, though, youth represent an increasingly important electoral demographic. While millennials had the lowest voter turnout rate in 2016, this trend is set to change, with 63 percent of millennial respondents in the HPOP poll indicating that they will definitely vote in the 2020 election. Already, millennial voting power has been increasing in every election since the peak of baby boomer voting power in 2004.

To communicate their policy positions to millennial voters, candidates should stay away from mainstream media outlets. HPOP data shows that only 14 percent of young people trust the media to do the right thing, though Democrats are twice as likely to trust the media when compared to Republicans at 23 percent to 10 percent. Even appealing to the most established news networks may not be an effective way of reaching young voters, as Business Insider reports that only 17 percent of all people who watch television news are millennials.

This does not mean that all media outreach is lost on millennials. Young voters are still consuming political news through a different digital medium. Business Insider reported that 23 percent of millennials get their news primarily from social media and 43.4 percent get their news from smartphones. Such trends indicate that a 2020 hopeful should focus on social media strategy, rather than mainstream media rollouts. An engaging website, a great podcast, and a strong Instagram presence will do more to garner the support of young voters than a televised town hall.

Frequent and direct social media engagement with young voters will also help candidates seeking the millennial vote to create a sense of trust. Yet building this trust is not an easy task. HPOP polling indicates that only 18 percent of young people feel that baby boomer voters care about them and only 16 percent feel that baby boomer elected officials care about them. It therefore seems unlikely that gaining endorsements from senior party members or former politicians will have the same effect on young voters today as it has in past elections.

Given that many of the prominent Democratic presidential candidates for 2020 are baby boomer elected officials, these hopefuls should focus on direct engagement and forward-looking policy solutions to bridge a generational lack of trust. Young voters want political officials who care about them and their interests moving forward. The burden is on each candidate to prove him or herself up to this task.

Despite millennials’ large distrust of baby boomers, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) garnered the most support from millennials of all 2020 presidential candidates in the HPOP poll, with 31 percent of respondents selecting him as their favorite candidate from the 2020 Democratic field.

So, why Bernie? Polling results indicate that Sanders’s name recognition as a former presidential hopeful and established public trust may be helping him overcome the massive age gap between himself and young voters. Yet these factors alone cannot explain the outpouring of support for Sanders. Former Vice President Joe Biden has just as much, if not more, name recognition as Sanders, and is popular for his work with Barack Obama, who left office with a favorability rating of 73 percent among millennials. Nonetheless, Biden trails Sanders by 11 percent among millennial voters.

What sets Sanders apart from Biden and other Democratic hopefuls in part is his ability to communicate his forward-thinking policy solutions to young Democratic voters directly through social media. Sanders boasts 9.2 million followers on his personal Twitter account. Even Biden pales in comparison, with just 3.4 million followers. Sanders’s Twitter is focused on his policies. Rather than constantly tweeting about recent campaign appearances, Sanders is tweeting endearing videos of youth activism, support for national unity against the “billionaire class,” and an introduction to his new podcast. On most days, Sanders tweets upwards of 10 times, demonstrating a desire to listen to and engage with young supporters.

It is clear that Sanders is overcoming the age gap with millennial voters by making concerted efforts at relatability. He speaks the language of tech-savvy millennials and understands the kind of policy-driven content they want to see. Most importantly, Sanders is overcoming distrust in baby boomers by setting himself apart from the rest of his cohort. Sanders openly speaks out against baby boomer-era projects, such as nuclear proliferation and foreign wars. He expresses genuine care for the future, even if it is a future that he will not likely experience himself, prioritizing policies like affordable housing, education, support for unions, and infrastructure development.

Democratic candidates who aim to capture the youth vote should focus on similar future-first policies to set themselves apart from their predecessors, who are largely distrusted by young voters. Millennials are seeking candidates who will be their political advocates and allies, holding strong to their political convictions rather than pandering to seem more electable. For Democratic candidates to win the youth vote in 2020 and beyond, it is clear that hopefuls should be like Bernie: relatable, communicative, and invested in the future.

Are Independent Voters The Future Of The American Political System?

Preet and Tim, better than garden variety Democrats

In 2016 Gallup reported that 42% of Americans identify as independens compared with 29% who say they are Democrats and 26% who say they are Republicans. That's pretty overblown but, no one doubts that the two major parties have called into a bad odor and the number of independents has grown. I've seen countless congressional campaigns that claim between 30-35% of voters in their districts are independents, even if there's a distinct lean among many of them none direction or another. At best, an independent is a voter who votes for candidates on issues rather than on the basis of partisanship. At worst, it's someone too lazy to understand what each party stands for. Right after the Gallup survey came out, Philip Bump at the Washington Post took it apart.

He does acknowledge, though, that "Since 2004, the number of what we'll call 'pure' independents-- which is to say, those who aren't leaning in one direction or the other-- has increased slightly."

Bernie has been an independent for his whole political career-- as a congressional candidate (and for several cycles as a congressional incumbent) running against not just Republicans, but Democrats as well. After he was an Independent Vermont congressman, establishment Democrats would run their crappy conservatives against him until Governor Howard Dean finally put a stop to it.

I'd love to see more independents-- plausible independents-- running for office. Down in south Florida (FL-23) progressive Democrat Tim Canova is running as an independent against one of the worst and most crooked Democrats in the country, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who connived with the political machine top steal the 2016 Democratic primary from Tim last time. Yes, yes, I know plenty of total morons have bought into Wasserman Schultz's propaganda that this is just a conspiracy theory and denigrate Tim for it. But, fact is, this week Tim won his law suit against Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes for violating state and federal laws by destroying all of the original paper ballots cast in the primary against machine boss Wasserman Schultz.

The independent movement in New York may get a big boost in New York State if Preet Bharara decides to run for Attorney General as an independent, to replace Eric Schneiderman. Sheldon Silver, a machine boss as venal as Wasserman Schultz was just convicted on bribery charges Bharara originally brought against him and if he decides to run, he'd like to do so free of ties to the two grotesquely corrupt New York political parties.

“Running as an independent, that would be the first defining message of his campaign,” said William Cunningham, an aide to three former New York governors and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Being attorney general is an easy fit for a former U.S. attorney.”

Bharara’s name was floated as possible attorney general almost instantly after Eric Schneiderman quit as New York state’s top cop on May 7, following allegations of abuse by four women. Bharara, 49, served almost eight years as U.S. attorney in New York, where he spearheaded an historic crackdown on insider trading and targeted corruption in state government, before he was summarily fired by President Donald Trump on March 11, 2017.

...Schneiderman’s replacement will play a big role in challenges to Trump’s policies ranging from protection of the environment to safeguarding rights of undocumented immigrants. The office also enforces state laws regulating Wall Street, non-profits and charities. Barbara Underwood, a Democrat who served as state solicitor general, is temporarily heading the office pending an appointment to be made by the Democratic-controlled state legislature.

Bharara has prosecuted both Democrats and Republicans and been criticized by leaders in both political parties. He’s also made it a bit of a habit to troll Trump on Twitter, telling the president Oct. 31, 2017: “Keep up the tweeting. Seriously, keep it up,” in response to a series of Trump tweets that followed the indictment of his former campaign Chairman Paul Manafort.

Bharara, who appears regularly on CNN as a commentator, has the resume to campaign successfully as an independent, said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant who helped pull off the last upset in an election for state attorney general when Eliot Spitzer won the office in 1998.

“He has a great argument to make as a candidate: ‘I’m the only one who’s taken on corruption and sent politicians to jail.”’ Sheinkopf said.

The election calendar would work to Bharara’s advantage. Major party candidates seeking a statewide nomination must collect petition signatures from June 5 to July 24. Independents have from July 10 to August 21, which would give Bharara time to know the competition and test how much voter-support he could attract.

Was Preet Bharara About To Charge Tom Price With Stock Swindling When Trump Fired Him?

There was a lot of mystery and a lot of speculation around Trump and Sessions going back on their word and firing U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara this week. A lot of speculation. What was he investigating that spooked Trump enough to fire him after asking him to stay on his job? Silly people postulated that it was because Bharara is close with Schumer and that Trump and Schumer had a falling out. That's so stupid it isn't worth spending the time I just spent the time writing it. But yesterday Robert Faturechi, writing for ProPublica, seems to have gotten to the bottom of the mess. And it was something that isn't all that surprising-- the well known crooked dealings of the Trump Regime's HHS Secretary, Tom Price.

The Price scandal is hardly new. The Senate questioned him-- ineffectively about it-- and there was a lot of press as well. The NY Times' David Leonhardt dubbed him Dr. Personal Enrichment, while ripping apart his nomination. He pointed out that statistics and surveys show that the most highly paid sector of medical doctors, orthopedists-- like Price-- "suffer from a professional culture that does not live up to medicine’s highest ideals. Too many orthopedists are rich and think it’s an injustice that they’re not richer. This culture helped shape Dr. Tom Price, the orthopedic surgeon and Georgia congressman who is Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services." Anyone who's followed Price's career well knows it's been entirely based on rapaciousness and unadulterated greed and selfishness. As rich as Price is-- over $10 million rich-- "he hasn’t been content to make money in the standard ways. He has also pushed, and crossed, ethical boundaries. Again and again, Price has mingled his power as a congressman with his desire to make money."

Last March, Price announced his opposition to a sensible Medicare proposal to limit the money doctors could make from drugs they prescribe their patients. The proposal was meant to reduce doctors’ financial incentives to prescribe expensive drugs. (And, yes, if you’re bothered that your doctor has any stake in choosing one drug over another, you should be.)

One week after Price came out against the proposal, he bought stocks in six pharmaceutical companies that would benefit from its defeat, as Time Magazine reported. At the time, those same companies were lobbying Congress to block the change. They succeeded.

It’s a pattern, too. Price has put the interests of drug companies above those of taxpayers and patients-- and invested in those drug companies on the side.

Last year, he also bought shares in Zimmer Biomet, a maker of hip and knee implants. Six days later, according to CNN, he introduced a bill that would that have directly helped Zimmer.

In his defense, a spokesman for Price has said that his broker bought the Zimmer stock and Price didn’t find out until later. That’s certainly possible, but still not acceptable. Members of Congress bear responsibility for their personal stock transactions, period.

A third episode may be the worst. Price accepted a special offer from an Australian drug company to buy discounted shares, as the Wall Street Journal and Kaiser Health News reported.

He told the Senate that the offer was open to all investors, although fewer than 20 Americans actually received an invitation to buy at the discounted price. The stock has since jumped in value, and Price underreported the worth of his investment in his nomination filings. It was a “clerical error,” he says.

Even without any larger context, his actions are disqualifying. He’s repeatedly placed personal enrichment above the credibility of Congress. The behavior is substantially worse than giving money to an illegal immigrant (which defeated a George W. Bush nominee) or failing to pay nanny taxes (which scuttled a Bill Clinton nominee).

But of course there is a larger context. Price has devoted much of his political career opposing expansion of health insurance. His preferred replacement of Obamacare would reduce health care benefits for sicker, poorer and older Americans.

His views have a long history within the medical profession. For decades, doctors used their political clout to help block universal health insurance. They offered many rationales, but money was the main reason. Many doctors feared that a less laissez-faire health care system would reduce their pay.

It’s to the great credit of today’s doctors that they have moved their lobbying groups away from that position and helped extend insurance to some 20 million people. They understand that some principles matter more than a paycheck.

Or at least many of them do.

Yes, some-- but not ole Tom Price. And Bharara had launched an investigation in Price's shady stock transactions. Bharara was following up on a law that prohibits members of Congress using nonpublic information for personal profit. A ProPublica source says that "the investigation of Price’s trades was underway when Trump fired Bharara.

In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Price traded more than $300,000 worth of shares in health companies over a recent four-year period, while taking actions that could have affected those companies. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, chaired the powerful House Budget Committee and sat on the Ways and Means Committee’s health panel.

In one case, Price was one of just a handful of American investors allowed to buy discounted stock in Innate Immunotherapeutics-- a tiny Australian company working on an experimental multiple sclerosis drug. The company hoped to be granted “investigational new drug” status from the Food and Drug Administration, a designation that expedites the approval process.

Members of congress often try to apply pressure on the FDA. As ProPublica has reported, Price’s office has taken up the causes of health care companies, and in one case urged a government agency to remove a damaging drug study on behalf of a pharmaceutical company whose CEO donated to Price’s campaign.

Innate Immunotherapeutics’ CEO Simon Wilkinson told ProPublica that he and his company have not had any contact with American law enforcement agencies and have no knowledge of authorities looking at Price’s stock trades.

Another transaction that drew scrutiny was a 2016 purchase of between $1,001 and $15,000 in shares of medical device manufacturer Zimmer Biomet. CNN reported that days after Price bought the stock, he introduced legislation to delay a regulation that would have hurt Zimmer Biomet.

Price has said that trade was made without his knowledge by his broker.

In a third case, reported by Time magazine, Price invested thousands of dollars in six pharmaceutical companies before leading a legislative and public relations effort that eventually killed proposed regulations that would have harmed those companies.

Louise Slaughter, a Democratic congress member from New York who sponsored the STOCK Act, wrote in January to the SEC asking that the agency investigate Price’s stock trades. “The fact that these trades were made and in many cases timed to achieve significant earnings or avoid losses would lead a reasonable person to question whether the transactions were triggered by insider knowledge,” she wrote.

What federal authorities are looking at, including whether they are examining any of those transactions, is not known.

Along with the Price matter, Bharara’s former office is investigating allegations relating to Fox News, and has been urged by watchdog groups to look into payments Trump has received from foreign governments through his Manhattan-based business. Bharara’s former deputy, Joon Kim, is now in charge of the office, but Trump is expected to nominate his replacement within weeks.

Trump Is Being Pulled In Opposite Directions On The Marijuana Question

The big news out of the Justice Department this weekend, of course, is the sudden decision by the Regime to fire all 46 Obama-DOJ Prosecutors, including Preet Bharara, the country's most effective corruption fighter. This was especially odd because both Trump and Sessions had asked him to stay on and he had agreed to do so. Did Trump just realize out of the blue that his seat of corruption in Trump Tower is part of Bharara's jurisdiction.

Recently Jeff Sessions-- who once famously explained that he thought the KKK were a bunch of fine guys until he realized they were a bunch of pot heads-- has been chomping at the bit to go after legalized marijuana businesses. "States, you know, can pass whatever laws they choose," Sessions drawled, "but I’m not sure we’re going to be better, healthier nation if we have marijuana being sold at every corner grocery store…we’ll have to work our way through that."

He said he's dubious about marijuana, and he made those remarks after Spicer told reporters that the Department of Justice would use the federal law banning marijuana to crack down on recreational pot sales while allowing states to regulate the drug for medical use. Recreational marijuana use is legal in Washington, Colorado, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Alaska (+ Washington, DC).

Legalization backers were quick to criticize Sessions for suggesting that pot might be sold “at every corner grocery store.”

“No states allow this,” said Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, a pro-legalization group.

As a presidential candidate, Trump said that he would leave the question of legalization to individual states. But his choice of Sessions in November set off immediate panic among legalization backers.

Sessions, a longtime opponent of legalization as a former Republican senator from Alabama, caused a stir last year when he said at a Senate hearing that “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

At his confirmation hearing in January, Sessions gave conflicting signals on what he would do. In Washington state, where voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, the uncertainty has many politicians worred about a possible crackdown.

When Sessions was asked at his confirmation hearing whether he would use federal resources to investigate and prosecute sick people who use medical marijuana, he replied: “I won’t commit to never enforcing federal law.”

But he also said that enforcing the law is “a problem of resources for the federal government.” And he said that Obama’s Justice Department had set out policies that are “truly valuable in evaluating cases.”

Sessions also said that Congress should set marijuana policy and the attorney general should enforce the law.

“I think one obvious concern is that the United States Congress has made the possession of marijuana in every state, and distribution of it, an illegal act... We should do our job and enforce laws effectively as we’re able,” Sessions said.

Spider's statement was "President Trump sees a big difference between use of marijuana for medical purposes and for recreational purposes. The president understands the pain and suffering that many people go through who are facing terminal disease and the comfort that some of these drugs, including medical marijuana, can bring to them. I think that when you see something like the opioid addiction crises blossoming in so many states around the country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people."

Longtime Trump political consiglieri, self-serving crackpot Roger Stone, has warned Trump not to let Sessions screen around with pot policy. As with most of what Trump himself says, his stands on marijuana change depending on the audience he's talking to and his stands vary drastically... and incoherently. Stone urged Trump to take a hands-off approach and to ignore anti-pot fanatic Jeff Sessions. He wrote that one of the many controversial decisions Trump is getting ready to make "is whether to continue the federal stand-down by the us Justice department in which DOJ does not enforce federal marijuana laws where they contradict state laws legalizing the legal use and sale of marijuana in the 37 states where it is currently legal in some form." Stone:

Canceling the order by Obama attorney general Eric Holder to stand down on Marijuana would cause a major dislocation in multiple states that are currently budgeting millions in state revenue from the taxation of marijuana and un-employing hundreds of thousands of people currently working in an industry legalized by the states. I would urge President-Elect Trump to view this as a business man; U.S. government cannot turn back the clock on federal marijuana law enforcement.

...A great many pro-marijuana organizations, publications, and Internet outlets put their support behind Donald Trump based on his positive statements about Medical Marijuana. People who have marijuana rights as their primary political issue turned to Trump, many against long time party affiliation, in hopes of greater freedom and less abuse at the hands of Federal Agencies.

If, after winning the election, Donald Trump listens to the likes of Chris Christie and Jeff Sessions he risks alienating his base and his newly won supporters in a very tangible way. Both Sessions and Christie come from ‘Old World’ War on Drugs thinking.

Criminalized Marijuana has directly lead to the persecution of countless individuals, the vast majority of whom are poor and minorities. That this was the desired result of the designers of the system of criminalization cannot be reasonable doubted.

“Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions throughout history have based their jobs security.”- Frank Herbert.

We cannot leave it to ‘Law Enforcement’ types to decide what is to be allowed and what is to be prohibited. The People must decide for themselves, and they have decided. Overwhelmingly so. They have decided they want legalized marijuana.

“If the people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”- Thomas Jefferson.

Drain the Swamp. Limit Federal Power. Reel-in out-of-control Alphabet Soup agencies. Return respect for law. These are all things Donald Trump made as major issues for his campaign platform.

“The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.”- Albert Einstein.

A precipitous move by the Trump administration to change the equation on legal marijuana in the states could in fact bring action by congress where a coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans are moving towards legislation to legalize the plant.

There's a bi-partisan bill pending before Congress, Virginia Republican Tom Garrett's H.R. 1227, the "Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017." The legislation aims to totally ending the federal prohibition of marijuana. Among the Republicans co-sponsoring it are Scott Taylor (R-VA), Don Young (R-AK) and Justin Amash (R-MI), all of whom represent districts that Trump won in November. Montana was a big Trump state, for example. He won 55.6-35.4% in that state-- with 279,240 votes. More people in Montana voted for Initiative 182-- expanding Medical Marijuana-- than voted for Trump: 284,531 Montanans. In Maine Trump didn't win but he got 357,735 votes. Question 1 on the same ballot, though, got 378,288 votes for legalizing recreational marijuana.

Meanwhile, of course, the regime is causing confusion and uncertainty in the marijuana industry. Ever watch American Psycho? I watched it for the first time last night on HBO. It reminded me of Trump.