Kanadesaga

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In 2006, 43.9 percent of the 1,889,810 total arrests for drug abuse violations were for marijuana -- a total of 829,627. Of those, 738,916 people were arrested for marijuana possession alone. By contrast in 2000 a total of 734,497 Americans were arrested for marijuana offenses, of which 646,042 were for possession alone.


Drug War Facts: Marijuana

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[quote=Kanadesaga;153720]0


Almost, but not exactly, zero. Michael Milliken back in the day. Ivan Someone or other, or did he get off? SOMEONE, surely, in the Enron scandal? Martha Stewart, for a year.

Not a Texas Oil Man who was caught selling Stuff to the enemy.



[quote=Kanadesaga;153720]0


Almost, but not exactly, zero. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Anyone else?







This is an outrage. This is lying, thieving, manipulative bullies locking up dissidents, nothing less.

Moreover, if I understand this correctly, every one of those "felons" are stripped of their right to vote...each round of incarcerations skewing the system further in favor of a skewed system.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Aside from the GROSS INJUSTICE, which apparently we are perfectly prepared to accommodate so long as we don't get caught in the threshing machine, ponder THE COST of prosecuting and incarcerating so many American adults who elect to smoke weed rather than get drunk and pop pills.

The difference, AS A CHILD CAN PLAINLY SEE, is that Big Money has a firm grip on the profit handle of booze and pharmaceuticals-read-that-drugs.

They're buyin' up all the arable land, though, so legalization of marijuana can't be far behind. What say, just to polish up the old international image, we release those potsmokers from captivity? Being stigmatized as ex-cons, perhaps we can find it in our hearts to at least grant them the lives that illegal immigrants live with impunity.

Kanadesaga, I thank you VERY much for the statistics.

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What's the story on ballot initiatives?

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Rollerball

Since when is selling stuff to the enemy against the law?
Take a list of the Iran-Contra weasels then take a list of names in the Bush administration, you'll be able to match up at least a dozen.

Gates is one off the top of my head but I know there are at least 10 more, it's just that my head ain't what it used to be when it comes to pulling this stuff up.
ThankGoodnessforComputers.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/wo...t/02wyatt.html

In Surprise, Oilman Admits Iraq Kickbacks
By ALAN FEUER
Published: October 2, 2007

Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., the Texas oilman accused of cheating the United Nations oil-for-food program, pleaded guilty yesterday to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s government in 2001 to gain access to lucrative Iraqi oil contracts.

Mr. Wyatt’s surprise plea came on the 14th day of his trial in United States District Court in Manhattan, before federal prosecutors finished presenting their case. Under an agreement with the government, he admitted guilt on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and is most likely to be sentenced to 18 to 24 months in prison rather than the 70 years he might have faced if convicted on all five counts of the indictment.

Mr. Wyatt, a former drill-bit salesman who rose to prominence in the Texas oil business, had proclaimed his innocence almost from the moment he was arrested two years ago at his home in the exclusive River Oaks section of Houston.

After rising before Judge Denny Chin to admit his guilt, Mr. Wyatt, a plain-spoken octogenarian, embraced his wife, Lynn, a doyenne of the Houston social scene known for her philanthropic work and taste for haute couture.

“I didn’t want to waste any more time at 83 years old fooling with this operation,” he told reporters in the courtroom. “The quicker I got it over with, the better.”

Mr. Wyatt’s lawyer, Gerald L. Shargel, said the government had offered the deal, under which four of the five original charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea. Those included conducting financial transactions with Iraq, an enemy nation at the time, and violating a United States embargo on that country.

“The defense of a criminal case is complicated when the client is 83 years old,” Mr. Shargel said. “That was certainly taken into account. For the government to have offered this disposition at this point suggests both sides recognized the risks involved in having a jury decide it.”

Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, issued a statement within two hours of the plea that said, “When Oscar Wyatt agreed to defraud the oil-for-food program by making illegal payments to the Hussein regime, he traded the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people for the satisfaction of his own greed and the greed of the former government of Iraq.”

Mr. Garcia’s office, which led the criminal investigation into the troubled program, has so far extracted guilty pleas from five other defendants and won conviction of one more. Some $16.5 million in illicit profits have been seized, money that officials plan to transfer to the Development Fund of Iraq. Under the oil-for-food program, established in 1996, Iraq was allowed to sell its oil despite sanctions imposed after its invasion of Kuwait. But all profits from the sales were to have been used for food, medicine or any goods needed to sustain the Iraqi population.

As part of his plea, Mr. Wyatt admitted that he paid $200,000 in kickbacks to Iraq in December 2001, funneled through a bank account in Jordan. He also admitted that he never told United Nations officials of the secret deal, a violation of the oil-for-food program’s rules. He is free on bail until his sentencing, scheduled for Nov. 27.

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Texan Sentenced In Iraq Oil-For-Food Scam, Oilman Oscar Wyatt Ordered To Serve 1 Year, 1 Day For Violating United Nations Program - CBS News

Texan Sentenced In Iraq Oil-For-Food Scam
Oilman Oscar Wyatt Ordered To Serve 1 Year, 1 Day For Violating United Nations Program


Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., center, 83, founder and former chairman of Coastal Corp. arrives at Manhattan federal court with his wife Lynn Wyatt, to be sentenced for his part in a United Nations oil-for-food corruption case Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 in New York. (AP)



(AP) Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt Jr. was sentenced to one year and one day in prison Tuesday after pleading guilty last month to conspiracy to violate the rules of the U.N. oil-for-food program.

Wyatt, 83, had agreed to be sentenced to 18 to 24 months in prison and forfeit $11 million when he pleaded guilty in October to the federal conspiracy charge.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, citing Wyatt's age, military service during World War II and the many letters written to the court on his behalf, handed down a more lenient sentence, but noted: "There's little doubt in my mind that he broke the law."

Wyatt cried as he addressed the judge, apologizing to his family and friends and saying, "I would never do anything to hurt my country."

Before pleading guilty on the 12th day of his trial, Wyatt had insisted he never paid an illegal surcharge to the Iraqi government to win oil contracts.

Prosecutors contended he paid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials to get an unfair share of contracts connected to the oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003.

The program permitted the Iraqi government to sell oil primarily to buy food and medicine for suffering Iraqis.

It was meant to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions, but authorities said the program was corrupted when Iraqi officials began demanding illegal surcharges in return for contracts to buy Iraqi oil.

During the trial, the government introduced evidence that Wyatt used an energy company he founded, Coastal Corp., to buy crude oil from Iraq in the decades leading up to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

After the invasion, Wyatt maintained a close relationship with Saddam Hussein to guarantee his continued access to Iraqi oil, prosecutors said.

In court papers filed prior to sentencing, prosecutors argued against leniency for Wyatt, criticizing his "breathtakingly immoral" actions. The government claimed that Wyatt was in a unique position to dissuade Iraq from corrupting the scheme.

It played a tape for the jury of a 1990 conversation in which Wyatt is heard telling Saddam that he had visited Iraq as many as 40 times in the previous 15 years and that he was "largely responsible" for a lot of the transactions in which Iraqis sold one-third of their oil exports to the United States.

Wyatt's lawyers described their client as an American hero.

They said he tried to play a peaceful role in resolving conflict between the two countries, even helping to fly Americans out of Iraq when Hussein was threatening to keep them there in the event of a U.S. invasion.

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We should go for the jugular with Housing Handmaiden Alphonso Jackson. DESTROY HIM.

We have to start somewhere.

Nailing a G-Man involved with the housing crisis would...as they like to say on Capitol Hill, where there is apparently a shortage of postage stamps...SEND A MESSAGE.

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Rollerball

There's no point in even talking about this until the monkey is out of the white house.
George has used his executive powers to suspended Justice for the rest of his term.

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Because he has done so and done so is NEITHER REASON NOR EXCUSE to let him continue doing so.

Congress is chickenshit.

So are an appalling number of my countrymen.

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