WASHINGTON — As a gay recovering alcoholic, Michael Botticelli is not your father’s drug czar.

He’s not a cop, a military general or a governor, like drug czars of the past. His specialty is treatment; he rose to prominence as the head of the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Abuse Services.

And Botticelli, who’s served as the acting drug czar since last March, has been in recovery for more than a quarter century, after a 1988 drunken-driving accident left him handcuffed to a hospital bed.
[...]
Like Gil Kerlikowske, the former Seattle police chief whom he’d replace, Botticelli finds himself in the middle of the nation’s pot wars.

Those who support marijuana legalization note Botticelli’s opposition and say he should back off and take a cue from the president, who’s made it clear that he’s comfortable allowing states to experiment with selling pot.

Legalization opponents, meanwhile, say Botticelli talks tough but should be doing more to get the Justice Department and Obama to enforce the federal law that criminalizes marijuana.

Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, a pro-legalization group, said Botticelli was “clearly in a tough place,” with states moving quickly to legalize marijuana and polls showing most Americans supporting an end to criminal penalties.

“His best bet, and probably preference, would be to just shut up about the issue,” Angell said. “Unluckily for him, though, people keep asking him about it.”

Responding to questions from senators in a written statement, Botticelli said marijuana posed serious health risks and that he was concerned about the cross-border trafficking of the drug outside Colorado, where its use is legal under state law.

Botticelli, a New York native, said the drug czar’s office was leading an effort to monitor marijuana use in the country and examine its effects. But he said the Obama administration “is committed to enforcement” of the Controlled Substances Act, which bans the sale of marijuana and puts it in the same category as drugs such as heroin and LSD.

“Under U.S. federal law, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the CSA, subject to a high level of control, with criminal penalties for its illegal distribution and sale,” Botticelli said in his written answers.

Bloomberg responded that conventional wisdom points to education, but education isn’t going to help uneducated adults. Bradley later asked how government can offer basic fairness to the children “who have been failed.”

Bloomberg claimed that 95 percent of murders fall into a specific category: male, minority and between the ages of 15 and 25. Cities need to get guns out of this group’s hands and keep them alive, he said.


“These kids think they’re going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed,” Bloomberg said. “They just don’t have any long-term focus or anything. It’s a joke to have a gun. It’s a joke to pull a trigger.”


At one point, the former mayor brought up New York City’s stop-and-frisk practices, which gained national attention in 2011. Bloomberg said that during his last year in office, a minister at a Baptist church in Harlem invited him to speak.


“While I’m sitting there waiting for him to introduce me, he said to his congregation, ‘You know, if every one of you stopped and frisked your kid before they went out at night, the mayor wouldn’t have to do it,’” Bloomberg said. “And so I knew I was going to be okay with that audience.”

I missed this the first time around, thanks for the good news.
Rick Perry has shown once again, he doesn't have what it takes to build momentum.



"They" made him a front-runner once, will that ever happen again?
 

NEW YORK — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will raise money on Wall Street on Wednesday at an eye-popping $100,000 per-ticket Park Avenue event hosted by private equity mogul Henry Kravis and his wife.

The price of admission to the event, which will raise funds for Bush’s “Right to Rise” super PAC, surprised even Wall Street veterans used to high-dollar fundraisers.

The event comes as Bush continues a shock and awe approach to early 2016 fundraising that people close to the campaign say could eventually see the former governor reach a total of between $50 million and $100 million between the super PAC, a traditional political action committee and an eventual presidential campaign.

Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell declined to comment on the price of the Kravis fundraiser, the second event the private equity titan has held for Bush.

“We don’t detail info on private finance events,” she said in an email. But two people familiar with the event confirmed the $100,000 amount.

“I shook my head when I heard the number,” one senior Wall Street executive who is not attending the event said on Tuesday. Another said the event would likely draw a significant crowd and would put Bush well on a path to raise over $50 million for the super PAC alone.

Bush is moving quickly to consolidate financial support in the wealthy enclaves of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, in many cases squeezing out New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. People familiar with the matter said the KKR event is likely to feature Kravis and other senior executives at the firm, including Ken Mehlman, who managed George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign, and Alexander Navab. Mehlman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday night, several dozen people with the means to attend an event so pricey its invitation doesn’t list an expected contribution will gather in the Park Avenue apartment of Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis to meet Jeb Bush and add to the quickly filling coffers of Right to Rise, the PAC set up to aid Mr. Bush’s presidential ambitions. The affair will be co-chaired by Mr. Kravis’ colleagues at KKR, including Ken Mehlman, who managed George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign and later became chairman of the Republican National Committee.

This is the second event Mr. Kravis, a coveted GOP donor who leads the storied leveraged buyout firm that bears his name, has hosted for Mr. Bush in a month. On the afternoon of January 8th, KKR hosted an event at its offices where the still undeclared candidate met with 80 supporters. The night before, Mr. Bush traveled to Greenwich, where an even larger crowd of 130 greeted the former Florida governor.

It’s no secret that Jeb Bush has been moving aggressively to vacuum up cash and secure support. These three events are part of that effort and the Observer’s cover story last week shared for the first time names of more than a dozen New Jersey and New York finance heavyweights who attended a fourth event – a January 8th dinner hosted by New Jersey lawyer and former RNC finance chief Larry Bathgate.

But ask a few questions about forever war and invasive surveillance, and elite Republicans line up around the block for a chance to destroy you. Problem is, Paul hasn’t gone down easily. He’s statistically tied with Scott Walker to win the Iowa caucus, according to a recent Des Moines Register poll, and he’s grabbed boldfaced headlines for his efforts to reach out to black and Millennial voters, something GOP bigwigs encourage but can’t ever seem to pull off.

Hence the fear.
I’ve mentioned the 2016 race to multiple people I know who work in Republican politics here in Washington, only to have them reflexively start fretting about Paul. You would think he was Republicans’ primary antagonist in 2016, rather than Hillary Clinton.

If the party can’t stop Paul, they seem determined to isolate him. With Scott Walker’s refusal last week to rule out ground troops in Syria, and with nearly every other GOP presidential hopeful—Perry, Christie, Rubio, Graham, Bolton, King, Santorum—having taken a swing at Paul, it’s quite likely that the Kentucky senator will be the only candidate on that debate stage who favors a more modest foreign policy.
And yet still the fear remains—and for good reason. “The one candidate that could potentially bring in new Republicans to the field would be someone like Rand Paul,” a former Obama staffer said last year.

There’s a lot of attention given to the art of explicating the motivations of Rand Paul, and the disparate coalition he’s attempting to bring together in his fledgling 2016 campaign...

...As a fan of Senator Paul, my view is that any frame of him as a cynical politician attempting to both disguise his father’s demons without insulting the base of support that he needs misses what’s really going on in any of these moments of “impetuous” comments. On nearly every topic where Paul makes a “gaffe”, it’s actually an example of a circumstance best identified by a running Chappelle Show gag, titled “When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong.” It shows a critical moment for a character when he could’ve shrugged something off or declined to make an issue out of a small insult, but decided instead to “keep it real”, to disastrous effect.

This has been something Paul struggles with because he’s not a naturally crafty politician, engaged in the art of manipulation – he’s a true believer. He’s a libertarian gangster who has gone legit, but the old world still lives inside him, in his heart – so the pull of “keeping it real” never really lets him go. He’s not some canny operator trying to pull off a political exorcism on the way to the White House. He’s a true believer who can’t help going back to the truth about how he views the world, like a social conservative who knows they would be better off cloaking their views in spiritual pablum, but they just can’t help going back to “sinners in the hands of an angry God.”

For each of these interviews – on civil rights, on vaccines, on any number of topics – sometimes there’s an actual moment where you can see the internal struggle, and finally, his face relaxes as he gives in, and is who he is. “In response to the interviewer’s question, Paul could have given a bland non-news making platitude, or… he could keep it real.” “What Rand didn’t know was that the interviewer would say slightly crazy things on purpose to get politicians to say much much crazier things… So when the anchor asked Paul about whether we have the god-given right to own tanks… to contract for a commercial exchange of sex for cocaine… to sell bourbon-laced raw milk… he could’ve just gone along with it. But instead he decided to keep it real.”

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been engaged in a courtship with Silicon Valley as he prepares a 2016 run for president, has reaped some large donations from tech donors, a new Maplight.org analysis of campaign finance data shows.

The donations went to Paul’s campaign committee, his joint fundraising committee and his leadership political action committee, RandPAC, according to campaign finance data posted between Friday and Monday, the Maplight.org analysis shows.

Among the donors are Bay Area billionaire Sean Parker, the co-founder of file-sharing music service Napster and the first president of Facebook. He contributed $7,600 to Sen. Paul’s joint fundraising committee on Nov. 3 — $5,000 of that donation was distributed to RandPAC, and $2,600 went to the Senator’s campaign committee, the limit allowed by both committees.

The senator’s joint fundraising committee is used to raise money for both his PAC and his campaign committee.

Michael Dearing of Woodside, who founded Harrison Metal and previously worked at eBay, contributed $5,000 to Paul’s joint fundraising committee. The Dec. 27 contribution was distributed to his leadership PAC, the data shows.

Facebook’s PAC also contributed $1,000 to Paul’s campaign committee on Oct 30.

Paul’s campaign committee also received $2,600 from Travis May, founder and CEO of TollFreeForwarding.com, based in Los Angeles.

MapLight.org analyzed contributions from California contributors to Paul's three committees, all of them reported in the latest round of available FEC campaign filings, covering contributions from Oct. 1, 2014, to Dec. 31, 2014.

The beginnings of what I was afraid of. Party politics before principles.

I think go to $100 in 2-3 month again

Well said. I only said mid $100s because once we approach under below triple digits there will be a panic buy up and fierce resistance downwards since, at least that's what I think.  The long term trend is still downward and we are moving sideways currently so IMO shorting isn't too bad.

Well said. I only said mid $100s because once we approach under below triple digits there will be a panic buy up and fierce resistance downwards since, at least that's what I think.  The long term trend is still downward and we are moving sideways currently so IMO shorting isn't too bad.

AMES, Iowa — Thirteen Iowa Democrats wearily took their seats here this weekend and discussed among themselves the source of their angst: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I’m utterly tired, tired of the Clintons and the whole establishment,” said Carole Brannon, 71, a retired nurse.

Anne Kinzel, 57, a former health-care attorney, nodded sympathetically.

“The hacks think Hillary is entitled to be president,” Kinzel said. “I think she is one of those people who has lost the sense of why they are in politics.”

As Clinton prepares to launch her all-but-certain 2016 campaign, the former secretary of state remains a favorite of a vast majority of Democrats and the front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination. Still, there is unease among progressives about her largely uncontested ascent.

Greece‘s newly elected political part Syriza has some bold plans for the nation.
Should Syriza action some of these game changing plans listed below, we would likely see other nations in the region rise up and follow suit.

It will be interesting to see how the powers that (shouldn’t) be try to quell this Greek rebellion from spreading across the EU and possibly the globe.

Here the 40 points of the Syriza program:

-Audit of the public debt and renegotiation of interest due and suspension of payments until the economy has revived and growth and employment return.
-Demand the European Union to change the role of the European Central Bank so that it finances States and programs of public investment.
-Raise income tax to 75% for all incomes over 500,000 euros.
-Change the election laws to a proportional system.
-Increase taxes on big companies to that of the European average.
-Adoption of a tax on financial transactions and a special tax on luxury goods.
-Prohibition of speculative financial derivatives.
-Abolition of financial privileges for the Church and shipbuilding industry.
-Combat the banks’ secret [measures] and the flight of capital abroad.
-Cut drastically military expenditures.
-Raise minimum salary to the pre-cut level, 750 euros per month.

...
Over the past few months, Mr. Paul has been seeking to convince mainstream Republicans that he is a team player. In states like Iowa that will hold the crucial early nominating contests, he has been bringing into the fold veteran party strategists who are laying new groundwork where his father’s operation wreaked havoc when they seized control of state parties and created a bitter rift.

Before the November elections, party leaders approached Mr. Paul to ask if he would help work against libertarian candidates who were drawing support away from Republicans in Senate races where a few thousand votes could make the difference.

Mr. Paul agreed without much reluctance, top Republicans said. He filmed several ads for the United States Chamber of Commerce on behalf of Republican candidates in Iowa, New Hampshire and North Carolina. Republicans ended up taking two of those three seats away from Democrats.

Mr. Paul’s political action committee also spent $100,000 to help save the distressed campaign of Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, a target of Tea Party activists.

Harnessing the intense grass-roots energy that Ron Paul followers bring is something the Rand Paul campaign acknowledges it has to manage delicately. Jesse Benton, an adviser who has worked for both Pauls, said the expectations of the base could always be better managed.

“Their energy is so crucial, and you legitimately love and respect them so much for their dedication,” he said. “But because they care so much and they’re so passionate, they require a lot of attention and a lot of tending that does suck up campaign energy that could be used for other purposes.” (Some strategists said they sometimes have to warn overeager volunteers not to do anything too aggressive, such as covering an entire neighborhood in campaign signs and leaflets.)
...

Nobody thought that former US Representative Ron Paul would show up in Iowa this week to stump with his son, Kentucky Senator and likely 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul; but when Rand took the stage to deliver the keynote at an “Audit the Fed” rally hosted by Liberty Iowa, there was a whole lot of Ron in the room.

Ron Paul shirts, Ron Paul hats, and Ron Paul stickers adorned many of the roughly 120 people that gathered in Des Moines to hear the younger Paul speak. Even the speech itself sounded a lot more like the fiery Texas Congressman of yore than the polished, diplomatic tenor that Rand has worked to fine-tune over the course of his fairly recent emergence on the national stage.

While at times Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)93% has shied away from his libertarian heritage, he seemed to embrace it fully on Friday night – to the applause of an energetic crowd of Liberty activists from around Iowa. “Anybody here want to audit the fed?” Paul bellowed to the cheering audience as he took the stage. His opening line was a shot over the bow of the Federal Reserve, and an indicator that recent competition from the rest of the 2016 field may have pushed him back into consolidating the liberty vote, before expanding his appeal to other groups in the often-cliquish Iowa GOP.

Throughout his nearly 20-minute speech, he threw out plenty of libertarian red meat to his audience, hitting on executive overreach, prison sentencing reform, and foreign non-interventionism. After tearing into the lack of transparency and accountability demonstrated by the Federal Reserve, Paul discussed the more specific problem of backing currency with undisclosed federal “assets”, which according to him constitute taxpayer liabilities. “Once upon a time, your dollar was as good as gold. Then for many decades they said your dollar was backed by the full faith and credit of government. You know what it’s backed by now?” Paul quizzed. “Used car loans, bad home loans, distressed assets, and derivatives.”