Dear Peter

Marijuana Policy Project Strategic Plan 2011 - Build support for the first-ever bill to de-federalize all marijuana laws

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 01/24/2011 - 22:37.

Marijuana Policy Project 2011 Strategic Plan

As you can see in the strategic plan below, this year is an ambitious and bold one for MPP

LOBBY STATE LEGISLATURES

  • Enact medical-marijuana laws in Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, and New York. (If we don’t succeed in some of these states in 2011, the progress we make will bolster our efforts in these states in 2012.)
  • Expand Vermont’s existing medical-marijuana law by authorizing the sale of medical marijuana through dispensaries.
  • Enact marijuana-decriminalization laws in Rhode Island and Vermont.
  • Assist our allies in Hawaii, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, and Washington state to protect and expand these five states’ existing medical-marijuana laws.
  • Implement the new medical-marijuana laws in Arizona and the District of Columbia.
  • Assist our allies in Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin with building support for medical-marijuana legislation, with the hope of passing bills in some of these states in 2013.

LAUNCH STATEWIDE INITIATIVES FOR THE NOVEMBER 2012 BALLOT

I'm Pleased to Introduce to Real NEO Hemp I Scream - and to Reintroduce Hemp Innovator and Case Alumnus Agua Das

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 01/24/2011 - 02:25.

Hemp I Scream Product Line

It is funny how things work out.

I went to the Hemp Industry Association conference looking for hemp-based energy solutions, to help address our pollution crisis in Northeast Ohio, and I found a delicious, healthful hemp dessert, too - Hemp I Scream.

As I learned more about the inventor of Hemp I Scream - the founder of Hemp Sources, Inc. - Agua Das, I discovered he is a world leader in hemp innovation, including for energy - "Agua was the first person to make hemp bio-diesel fuel in the modern hemp era in 1993; made from virgin hemp oil he pressed himself."

As I got to know Das better, I learned he studied engineering at Case, and still has good feelings for the school and Northeast Ohio. He lived on Hessler, and was involved in starting up the Street Fair, in the beginning... we know some of the same people still there, from way back.

So the expert with the energy solutions we need in Northeast Ohio studied engineering in Northeast Ohio... and makes awesome desserts, too. Nice coincidences.

Perhaps the best way to eliminate bad climate science is to discredit bad lead poisoning scientists... starting with Dr. Schoen

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 01/20/2011 - 03:46.


Dr. Edgar J. Schoen

As the son of a physician, who grew up socializing with physicians and their families, I've always seen doctors - scientists - as regular human beings, who burn hot dogs, crash cars, fall down, make mistakes, and fade away. This makes me very aware of the fallibility of doctors and their diagnoses, to the core.

Lessons learned - not all scientists are created equal - all scientists are flawed - be an informed consumer and make certain all your science decisions are based on the best scientific data and scientists possible - always get a second opinion... more if the decision in truly important.

Having spent several years studying and addressing the lead poisoning crisis in Northeast Ohio and worldwide, as a subcommittee co-chair of the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council, and seeing lead poisoning from inside the healthcare and human services industries, as the parent of lead poisoning victims, I have become informed about the poor quality of healthcare industry attention to lead poisoning in America - historically and now - nationwide and especially in highest incidence regions like Northeast Ohio. The poor quality of healthcare response to lead poisoning is intentional and designed into government by the healthcare industry through corruption of scientists who are bad.

What MLK Would Tell Pot Activists

Submitted by Lory Kohn on Mon, 01/17/2011 - 00:00.

Martin Luther King Jr.
What if MLK took what he learned from civil rights and applied it to herbal rights?

The odd notion of ye olde dispensary sandwiched between the barbershop and the pizzeria took a hit this Election Day, when rural Loveland, Colorado voted to abolish its existing medical marijuana businesses. The ban is symptomatic of regulatory tussles playing out in every medical marijuana state. Yet advocacy groups accepted the result without a whimper. No candlelight vigils. Not one person carrying a sign.

Principles of Environmental Justice - 1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and...

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 01/07/2011 - 13:35.

Principles of Environmental Justice

(Printable PDF version)

Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental Justice. Since then, The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice.

PREAMBLE

WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:

1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.

10,000s of cannabis entrepreneurs and stakeholders, nurturing $ billions in new GREEN, taxable economic opportunity for America

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 12/27/2010 - 00:36.

Fisheye view of KushCon2 Marijuana Industry Convention in Denver, Colorado, December 17-19, 2010
Fisheye view of KushCon2 Marijuana Industry Convention in Denver, Colorado, December 17-19, 2010

December 17 - 19, 2010, the Colorado Convention Center hosted the world's largest marijuana lifestyles convention TO-DATE - KushCon2 - offering those active in the legal global marijuana industries a place to meet, collaborate, learn and grow their new-economy enterprises, together. In one convention hall, in one weekend, mingled 10,000s of cannabis entrepreneurs and their stakeholders - nurturing $ billions in new GREEN, taxable economic opportunity for America - and their truly Green Revolution is just taking off.

Meet America's Greenest Revolutionaries ever... Mom and Pop Mainstreet, Small Town, Middle America!

#1 Criteria for Choosing the Next CEO of CMSD: He/She MUST Make Cleveland #1 in the World in Educating Lead Poisoned Children

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 05:00.

The new science about lead's effect on the brain may force policymakers to re-examine some social issues through a new prism. For example, if lead can cause aggressive behavior, learning disabilities and hyperactivity, might it not also be a contributing factor in poor educational performance among low-income blacks, who suffer the most lead poisoning? - Newsweek, 1991

Where Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eugene Sanders, and CMSD overall, have been completely ineffective, and so failed, is in their Strange Ignorance of The Role of Lead Poisoning in Failing Schools. Sanders is not alone in responsibility for this tragedy, as leadership of Northeast Ohio in general has been so incompetent as to make Cleveland the lead poisoning capital of America and the developed world.

Perhaps our politicians even hired Sanders with the specific direction to ignore the realities of lead poisoning here, as "there exists a body of medical research which demonstrates that politicians themselves are responsible for a conveyor-belt of tragedy that produces precisely those symptoms attributed to "failing schools.""

The good news for the future of Cleveland and education and students here is Eugene Sanders has announced he shall resign, as of February 01, 2011, meaning we may now select a CEO who may lift CMSD students off the "conveyor-belt of tragedy" caused by lead poisoning that literally guarantees the direct hardship of around 30% of CMSD students, guaranteeing the failure of CMSD and Cleveland.... greatly harming the economic competitiveness and sustainability of the state of Ohio.

My Message to Washington DC about Working Class Issues With CRA, CDCs and Urban Planning In real NEO

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 12/09/2010 - 11:18.

My Message to Washington DC about Working Class Issues With CRA, CDCs and Urban Planning In real NEO

My posting on CRA - Expand the Community Reinvestment Act to Bring Trillions MORE Dollars in Safe and Sound Investments to America's Neighborhoods - has had enough time online to offer some important insight.

First of all, from comments, CRA is a confusing issue and even liberal community development advocates associate CRA with urban development ills - projecting frustrations with local political corruption and planning failure upon all Federal urban renewal efforts, lumping in CRA (and organizations like NCRC). In fact, these citizens do not understand where CRA fits in and are misplacing their anger - missing an opportunity to support what may help.

Those responsible for educating citizens about CRA and credit issues - the councilpeople and CDCs - are the ones causing the harm and frustration for working class citizens, who feel under-served and under-represented - and they are under-educated about Federal efforts to improve their lives, and the availability of basic help.

This is a GOOD IDEA - Forum provides ethics training to businesses to fight corruption

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 02:11.

This is a GOOD IDEA - Forum provides ethics training to businesses to fight corruption

Published: Wednesday, December 01, 2010, 10:00 PM - Peter Krouse, The Plain Dealer


Joshua Gunter/ The Plain DealerSteve Dettlebach, U.S. attorney for the northern district of Ohio.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- When federal prosecutors began to work with the Greater Cleveland Partnership on ways to encourage ethical business practices in the wake of local corruption scandals, they heard a stunning story.

During a trip abroad to recruit business, partnership representatives were told by a Dutch company that Cleveland wasn't a place they were interested in coming to because they believed it to be corrupt.

Study Will Recommend Ways to Strengthen Sustainability at EPA - The Future of Sustainability is General Systems Theory

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 12/01/2010 - 11:33.

Study Will Recommend Ways to Strengthen Sustainability at EPA

November 30, 2010 -- The National Research Council, at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has launched a study to strengthen the scientific basis for incorporating sustainability concepts into EPA’s decision-making. “Today I am formally requesting President Cicerone and the National Academies convene a committee of experts to provide to the U.S. EPA an operational framework for sustainability that applies across all of the agency’s programs, policies, and actions,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at an event held at the National Academy of Sciences’ Koshland Science Museum. NAS President Ralph Cicerone and Bernard Goldstein, chair of the committee that will conduct the study, made remarks as well.

Science Wednesday: The Future is Sustainability - Wednesday, December 1st, 2010 - By Paul Anastas

LPJ-at-NRC

Wow! November 30th was an amazing day for the EPA. Not only are we in the midst of commemorating four decades of accomplishments in protecting the health and the environment, but Administrator Jackson also made a landmark speech at the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Science on the future of the EPA. That future is sustainability. The Administrator laid out her vision to a packed house of luminaries from across the spectrum, from academia to industry, to environmental groups.

EPA Recognizes Sustainable Communities with Smart Growth Awards

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Wed, 12/01/2010 - 11:25.

2010 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement

2010 Awards cover

"Well-conceived, effectively implemented environmental protection is good for economic growth… A clean, green, healthy community is a better place to buy a home and raise a family; it’s more competitive in the race to attract new businesses; and it has the foundations it needs for prosperity." – EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, March 8, 2010

"Saving Progressivism From Obama" to Save America From The "Second Wave" to Save Obama From Himself

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Mon, 11/29/2010 - 23:48.

Democratic political leadership of today, to the White House, seems intellectually and socially disconnected from the progressive Democratic concepts I embraced growing up in America since 1961, personified to me by John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., in their most-glorified trappings. Today, in my part of America - the region of Northeast Ohio that includes Cleveland, Youngstown and Akron - villainous democratic leaders and their corrupt political and business machines have paralyzed all forms of social and economic progress - extinguished liberal progressivism completely - and made the region such a polluted, incompetent, FBI-embedded disgrace our citizens and economy shall never remotely recover.

At the top of our broken Democratic political, social, environmental, and economic pyramid-scheming is President Obama, who has "turned out to be such a political dud as chief executive" that our "blue-state financial misery continues", along with other blue-states, and that "deepens the ideological crisis for American liberalism" worldwide. Even billionaires traditionally supportive of Democratic party interests and candidates appear to be seeking "alternative brands to Obama himself."

I quote above two excellent columns published online this week, coming from opposite directions, analyzing the challenges Obama faces ahead, mid-term into his presidency, if he seeks any hope of winning a second term in office in 2012 - The Second Wave, by conservative writer Michael Gerson... and Saving Progressivism from Obama, by liberal writer Robert Kuttner.

Was It Smart For Obama to Arrest 77 Year Old American Cultural Icon Willie Nelson for Medical Marijuana on His Bus?

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 11/28/2010 - 19:40.

Willie Nelson Arrested for Medical Marijuana at US Customs Imprisonment Compound on I-10 in Bumfuck, Texas, USA

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 11/28/2010 - 15:17.

I was just commenting to a Facebook Friend that "I was driving on I-10 in Texas a few weeks ago and they have Border Patrol imprisonment centers ON THE FREEWAY IN AMERICA (I've seen them in New Mexico as well) where they stop every car and truck looking for illegals, I suppose. They searched my whole car - without ever asking my name... they obviously had the car in their system. 1984 but worse, as our society is a complete lie, claiming we are free."

So it is timely to read Willie Nelson Arrested After Pot Found on Tour Bus - traveling from California to Austin, Texas... detained as a US citizen on US soil and searched by US Customs Patrol, though he crossed no borders, just like me - in poor Willie's case to be arrested for what is legal in 15 states in America. From ABC News:

Next Cleveland NORML Meeting: December 4th 1-3pm at Sidetracks Cafe

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 11/28/2010 - 14:44.
12/04/2010 - 13:00
12/04/2010 - 15:00
Etc/GMT-4

Cleveland NORML will be meeting at Sidetracks Cafe on December 4th from 1 to 6pm! We welcome members and non-members alike! Join us in our fight to reform marijuana laws in Ohio and advocate for safe, compassionate access to marijuana for all patients.

Location

Sidetracks Cafe
13429 Lakewood Heights Blvd
Cleveland, OH
United States

KUSHCON II - THE LARGEST MARIJUANA LIFESTYLE CONVENTION IN THE WORLD

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 11/28/2010 - 02:51.
12/17/2010 - 16:00
12/19/2010 - 18:00
Etc/GMT-4

KushCon II December 17-19, 2010 Denver Colorado

Colorado Convention Center set to buzz with largest-ever cannabis convention, December 17-19

DENVER, CO – Over 300,000 square feet of the Colorado Convention Center in Denver this December 17-19 will be consumed by KushCon II, the largest star-studded Cannabis Lifestyle convention ever to take place.

The event, sponsored by Kush Magazine and dailybuds.com, is open to the public, family-friendly and cannabis free. The event will feature over 450 vendor booths running the gamut of the marijuana industry – from a daily concert series to ski jumping demonstrations to dispensaries to gift items that are sure to complete any “Kushmas” list.

Location

Colorado Convention Center
700 14th Street
Denver, CO 80202
United States

"Medical Marijuana: Prop 203′s Passage Means a New Billion-Dollar Industry for Arizona."

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 14:31.

 

The New York Times published more disturbing news for citizens living in states that have political leadership too incompetent, corrupt  and/or ignorant to legalize marijuana and other cannabis industries, like HEMP... living in a nation ruled at the federal level by political leadership too incompetent, corrupt  and/or ignorant to legalize marijuana and other cannabis industries, like HEMP..."It is being called the green rush. With more states moving to legalize medical marijuana, the business of growing and dispensing it is booming, even as much of the rest of the economy struggles."

"Clare threw around poverty that irresistible charm which only women can communicate to religious or civic heroism"

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 01:30.

Shortly after my daughter Clara was born, nearly 11 months ago, I shared her birth with the world on YouTube - realNEO homemovie 1 Women in HypnoBirth in Waterbirth Delivering Baby Happy - and on realNEO and it has since been viewed by nearly 110,000 people.... showing 300-400 people a day (and growing) how pure and simple birth and human life may be, to help the modern world rediscover the dignity of the human person. Feedback and inquiries from expectant mothers (and fathers) shows me the modern world heard us, and Clara helped many babies enjoy the best possible starts in life.

“That’s just where his head is right now,” Ms. Frutchy said.... it's about the pot!

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 00:37.

 

I missed an important and telling article in the New York Times, September 29, 2010, about Cleveland home-town billionaire Peter B. Lewis, Chairman of Progressive Insurance  - Many Big Donors to Democrats Cut Support - which analyzes why "Democratic donors like George Soros, the bête noire of the right, and his fellow billionaire Peter B. Lewis, who each gave more than $20 million to Democratic-oriented groups in the 2004 election, appear to be holding back so far"... showing many of the world's most powerful people think, feel and act the same way I do about our failed leadership in America and their failure to address the failure of their racist, unethical, immoral "War On Drugs".

Zakee A Rashid - Matters of Opinion: "Why are we spending 10 billion dollars a year to stop people from smoking weed?"

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sat, 11/20/2010 - 13:42.


Find more videos like this on Shaw High Online

I was pleased to see posted on East Cleveland's core home-town social network, Shaw High Online, an excellent opinion editorial - Matters Of Opinion: Vol 7 Decriminalize Marijuana - by Zakee A Rashid. The tagline reads: "Why are we spending 10 billion dollars a year to stop people from smoking weed?"

Rashid goes on to reference a wide range of facts about the economics and injustice of the prosecution of citizens for marijuana that all Americans must take into account. In Ohio, recent polls indicate 73% of voters support legalization of medical marijuana "MMJ", showing opposition to legalizing MMJ (now legal in 15 states, including McCain's Arizona) is a losing political ticket. Making President Obama a major loser... especially as the harm caused by unjust marijuana prosecution in America predominantly harms African Americans, who rallied to elect Obama president.

"A Perfect Storm For A Hemp Farm Bill, And It's Time..." - Hemp Industries Association President Steve Levine, 11/08/2010

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Fri, 11/19/2010 - 04:46.

Hemp Industries Association (HIA) President Steve Levine - speaking to membership at the 2010 Annual HIA Convention, November 08, 2010, in San Francisco - discusses his expectation that California will pass and enact into law a Hemp Farm Bill in 2011 - "Definitely in 2012 it (hemp) will be grown in California" - "there is talk there may be some hemp grown in 2011". Steve indicates developments are positive for a 2011 version of Ron Paul's Federal Hemp Farm Bill to pass congress and become Federal law in 2011, making it legal to farm hemp nationwide in 2012 - "as hempsters, we did not lose one of our sponsors for the bill - all 25 were re-elected". This is one of the most important economic development forecasts for America of the 21st Century, to-date.