US Attorney Eyes Going After Media Running Pot Ads

By JULIE WATSON Associated Press

SAN DIEGO October 14, 2011 (AP)

The chief federal prosecutor in San Diego is contemplating expanding a federal crackdown on the medical marijuana industry by going after newspapers, radio stations and other outlets that run advertisements for California's pot dispensaries, her office told The Associated Press on Thursday.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy made the comments initially to California Watch, a project of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Journalism. They come a week after she and three other U.S. attorneys in California vowed to close medical marijuana businesses they deem questionable and single out people who rent buildings or land to the industry.

"I'm not just seeing print advertising," Duffy told California Watch. "I'm actually hearing radio and seeing TV advertising. It's gone mainstream. Not only is it inappropriate — one has to wonder what kind of message we're sending to our children — it's against the law."

Duffy wasn't available Thursday to speak to the AP but her office confirmed the comments published by California Watch.

The federal government will determine whether the media crackdown is necessary as the results of last week's actions unfold, Duffy's spokeswoman Debra Hartman said. She cited a federal law that prohibits people from placing ads that have the purpose of buying or selling a controlled substance.

"If I own a newspaper ... or I own a TV station, and I'm going to take in your money to place these ads, I'm the person who is placing these ads," Duffy said, according to California Watch. "I am willing to read (the law) expansively and if a court wants to more narrowly define it, that would be up to the court."

Duffy declined to give further details on the plan under consideration or say whether a media crackdown would involve the state's other U.S. attorneys. But a spokesman for the Sacramento U.S. attorney told the Bakersfield Californian that there were no plans to go after advertising.

Duffy's comments are creating a buzz in the media industry, California Newspaper Publishers Association executive director Tom Newton said. As it stands now, advertisers are responsible for the contents of their ads in newspapers, he said.

"If they are false, misleading or fall below the line in other legal ways, advertisers are responsible," he said. "Newspapers don't have the staff or time to vet every claim in every ad that they run."

Duffy, whose district encompasses San Diego and Imperial counties, and the U.S. attorneys in three other California districts sent written warnings last week to landlords leasing property to dozens of warehouses and agricultural parcels where marijuana is being grown and for retail spaces where it is sold, telling them to evict their tenants or face criminal charges or seizure of their assets.

The attorneys say the state's law legalizing medical marijuana was intended to allow it to be supplied to seriously ill people on a nonprofit basis. But the law has been abused by people who are just looking to get rich, they say.

The action comes only months after the Obama administration tightened its stance on the issue.

Media owners were waiting to see what happens before reacting publicly, Newton said.
"I think everybody needs to take a breath here and really think about the implications of this issue and whether or not this is a reasonable effort and use of the limited resources of the U.S. attorney's office," Newton said.

The Great San Diego Blackout of 2011

A Preview of Things to Come?

by RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN

 

It looks like everyone survived the Great San Diego Black-Out of 2011.

I didn’t even notice there was a black-out at first, other than the printer going off while I was trying to print protest books against San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.   A group of us formed up post-Fukushima, and we’re going places and raising awareness.  And we need books — lots of books!  People are pretty ignorant about the dangers, even post-Fukushima. There’s a lot of information being kept from the public and misinformation being presented to them.

San Onofre didn’t help at all to keep the power on when the grid went down.

Instead, they had to shut down themselves!  Supposedly this was because “they had no place to send the power.”  That’s how the spokesperson for the plant describes it.

But I would say it was because they had no offsite power coming INTO the plant!  That’s what probably really shut the plant down.

But one way or the other, here’s the obvious thing:  San Onofre is not helping.

San Onofre is presumably currently operating on Emergency Diesel Generators as I write this — and generating ZERO power to help alleviate the situation.

Thanks for your help, SONGS — NOT!

About one and a half million homes — five million people — were without power for at least six to eight hours yesterday and today, and many of them are still without power.

There WAS a seven-car pile-up on I-5 (the main freeway that runs near San Onofre), which shut it down in both directions, and I-5 was shut down heading out of San Diego elsewhere at the same time — it was a mess!

But I was prepared — or so I thought.  When the printer went out, my UPS beeped and the front panel lit up.

Those were my clues that five million of us were in the dark.  I paid little attention, being in the middle of writing a newsletter about what an atom is, an alpha particle, a beta particle, a gamma ray, a half-life, and so on.

But then the UPS beeped again, and the print job was clearly not running (the printer pauses now and then anyway, for some reason), so I went upstairs and checked the printer, and it was completely off and the on/off switch wouldn’t do anything.

So then I started to grasp that there was a blackout, and shut down the computer so that I wouldn’t drain the UPS battery just in case I needed it.

I tried to count up all the ways I wasn’t prepared for real trouble — like, a meltdown at San Onofre because of the “Station Black-Out” conditions (the same as occurred at Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami, but minus the earthquake (which actually started the inexorable sequence that led to meltdown of the three reactors in Japan) and minus the tsunami (which is blamed for the meltdowns, but apparently was NOT responsible — it was the earthquake).

We have earthquakes here, too.  Bad ones.  Right near San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Small-scale distributed renewable energy is a much safer way to power the grid.  In an emergency, nuclear power is unlikely to be there to help at all!  We’ve seen this now, time and again.

And the traffic!  Oh, the traffic!  Because the traffic lights were out everywhere, it took my wife more than an hour to get home, normally a 12 minute drive in clear traffic and a 20 minute drive at rush hour.  The 60 or so trollies in the city of San Diego all stopped at the same time, and only a couple of trains ran, so if you missed them, you missed them.

Could we evacuate five million people if San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station melted down?  No!  Can San Onofre melt down?

In a heartbeat.  It’s useless, wrong, and crazy to continue risking the enormous death and destruction that would accompany an serious accident at San Onofre.  Trapped as we are with only a few roads out of the area, San Onofre actually cuts in half the main evacuation route needed in case of an accident at the plant!  That is, the plant itself is located so close to the freeway that ANY accident at the plant will close I-5 immediately, and probably I-15 as well.

Meanwhile, the plant itself has been on restrictions and tightened inspections for years now because of worker apathy, anxiety, and audacious arrogance:  They faked safety inspections, fire inspections, security inspections, and medical claims, work records, time sheets, and, of course, worker’s own complaints were filed in the “circular” file or actually given to the supervisor about whom the complaint was filed — the LAST person who should be seeing the complaint!

Now, these guys are all scared the power plant WILL actually be shut down!  They put on a brave face, but scratch the surface, and you find out they are being told not to talk to the public, not to talk to reporters, not to talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission unless they absolutely have too — and WHY are they so scared?

They’re afraid they’ll lose their jobs.  Get thrown out in the bad economy just like so many of the rest of us.

 Never mind that they could be building solar and wind turbine power supplies instead.  Never mind that they are generating 500 pounds of high-level nuclear waste every day that they don’t know how to store or how to get rid of. (The most toxic stuff on earth, and, thanks to Fukushima, the most toxic stuff in your lungs and the rest of your body right now.)

Never mind that there is no way to evacuate San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles ….

Never mind the lives that would be lost if there was a meltdown, or a spent fuel pool fire, or a dry cask fire, or all three, due to an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a power black-out, or all three.

Never mind all that — they are afraid they’ll lose their jobs.

Poverty's Penalty

(When you are so poor you can barely afford to pay for food for your family and gas for your car so that you can drive to interviews, things like your insurance can lapse. I know in Texas, our mass transit system isn't as effective as other states--it is said you have to drive everywhere--so driving is paramount, even if your coverage lapses. If your insurance lapses before your inspection expires, they won't inspect your car. If you are driving to your interview and get pulled over by the police for an expired inspection, they'll discover you don't have insurance and arrest you on the spot. That is an example of the "poverty penalty." You have to drive to your job interview to get the job to pay you the money to get your car legal. But you are penalized for it. You pay more to be poor. But in California, if you're on welfare, you don't even get your 4th Amendment rights anymore!--jef)

***

by Christopher Brauchli | Monday, September 6, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

". . .[W]ith liberty and justice for all." 

~The Pledge of Allegiance

Opinions from Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal are of interest to a variety of people. Lawyers read them in order to learn what the law is with respect to issues that have been ruled on by the Courts in the Circuits in which they live. The poor, who live within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, read them to learn how their constitutional rights differ from those of the well off. They were reminded of this in August by the same court that had tutored them three years earlier in the case of Rochio Sanchez v. County of San Diego.

Sanchez was decided by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in April 2007 and the U.S. Supreme Court announced in November of that year that it would not review the court's decision. The case stands for the proposition that it is OK to search people's homes without a warrant. Before my readers rush to add strong locks to all their doors I must reassure them. The case has no applicability to my readers. Their homes are protected by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that bans unreasonable searches and seizures. The people in California whose homes are not protected by the Fourth Amendment are those on welfare.

In 1997, the San Diego District Attorney came up with "Project 100%." Under the program those wanting to participate in the county welfare program must consent to unannounced visits from members of the Public Affairs Fraud Division who walk through the house looking in drawers, medicine cabinets, etc. to make sure no crimes are being committed. The practical consequences are that welfare recipients are forced to trade the protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment for welfare benefits. That is not, of course, how the judge who wrote for the majority sees it. It is how Judge Harry Pregerson, writing for the dissenters, sees it. He said: "This case is nothing less than an attack on the poor. San Diego's program strips these individuals of their rights of privacy. . . . This is especially atrocious in light of the fact that we do not require similar intrusions into the homes and lives of others who receive government entitlements. The government does not search through the closets and medicine cabinets of farmers receiving subsides."

The poor have now learned of yet another way in which the protection given many by the Fourth Amendment does not benefit them. It has to do with curtilage. That is the area around the home and includes such things as porches, driveways, front walks, etc. For 4th Amendment purposes curtilage was treated the same as the inside of the house. A warrant was needed to search the curtilage. The case of U.S. v. Pineda-Moreno in which a final decision was made in August changed that.

Pineda-Moreno addressed the question of whether the police can come onto a driveway at night without a warrant and attach a tracking device to the resident's car. The answer given by the 9th Circuit court is that it's OK. Judge Kozinski, one of the dissenters in the earlier case wrote a dissent this time around.

He began saying: " Having previously decimated the protections the Fourth Amendment accords to the home itself. . . . Our court now proceeds to dismantle the zone of privacy we enjoy in the home's curtilage . . . . 1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last." He observed that the majority justified its holding by saying that delivery people, children, etc. could use the driveway and sidewalk to get to the front door and, therefore, the resident had no expectation of privacy there. He observed that people with gated houses, electric fences, etc. were unaffected by the ruling since the general public cannot get near their curtilage. Addressing the insensitivity of the majority to the plight of the poor he said: "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist. No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges. . . . The everyday problems of people who live in poverty are not close to our hearts and minds because that's not how we and our friends live. Yet poor people are entitled to privacy, even if they can't afford all the gadgets of the wealthy for ensuring it. . . . [T]he constitution doesn't prefer the rich over the poor. . . . The panel's breezy opinion is troubling on a number of grounds, not least among them its unselfconscious cultural elitism. . . . Today's decision is but one more step down the gloomy path the current Judiciary has chosen to follow with regard to the liberties protected by the Fourth Amendment. Sadly, I predict that there will be many more such decisions to come." Sadly, given the proclivities of today's Supreme Court, he's probably right.