Strong words

From Ethan Baron in the Winnipeg Free Press, this is certainly a … graphic way of getting the point across.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is getting tougher on pot growers than he is on rapists of children. Under the Tories’ omnibus crime legislation tabled Tuesday, a person growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal.

It really points out the legislators like to pass laws with no sense of proportionality of sentencing or proper reasoning. It’s just a constant stream of “let’s get tough” as they pull new sentencing structures out of thin air (or someplace worse).

The problem with this OpEd is that it’s likely to have little impact on those passing the laws. They’ll just decide they need to increase the sentencing for child rape.

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15 Responses to Strong words

  1. tintguy says:

    They are learning from the worst apparently.

  2. vickyvampire says:

    I’m not going to mince words Harper is a prick.

  3. Nunavut Tripper says:

    Yes Harper is a first class prick all right. People who have met him say he’s not got a warm personality. He’s cold and uncomfortable with the common folks. He gives the exact same speech at each location on the campaign trail (even pausing for a sip of water after the same sentence each time )and leaves abruptly afterwards without answering the peoples questions.
    He claims he’s never tried cannabis and although he’s a lying politician I believe him on this one as he’s so uptight and better than the rest of us peasants.
    It’s seems surreal that we can have harsh cannabis laws enacted by someone who has never toked.
    Would we want driving laws developed by someone who has never had a drivers license ?

    • tensity1 says:

      And I thought Canadians were smarter than we Americans (us Americans? Hell, and I studied English? ::facepalm::) and wouldn’t pull their version of Dubya term II, but I guess we don’t have a monopoly on stupidity after all.

      Wait . . . check with the investment bankers and corporate CEOs–no doubt they’ve gotten their undue share; they seem to like to hoard shit.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .
      The thing I find intriguing about Canada’s public policy is that the pendulum is swinging the diametric opposite of the American pendulum. It’s nothing new either. While the Reagan administration was incubating the jack boots the Canadians were adopting their Charter of Freedoms, and came >< that close to re-legalizing cannabis as well as totally embracing sanity. Now that we've got the jack boots on the run the Canuckistanians are embracing their sick philosophy. Better them than us, but it's still a crying shame. Can't we all just get along?
      ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———- ———-

      Well the 2010 State crime statistics are out. California continues to see the incidence of crime fall off of the rhetorical cliff. The total crime rate is now down more than 40% since 1996. The violent crime rate is now just under -49% since 1996. Didn't I hear some hysterical rhetoric that medical merrywanna would make the crime rate "skyrocket"?

      Wow, West Virginia's crime rate has actually increased since 1996. What are they doing wrong? Too much hillbilly heroin? They're the latest State to have an authority say that they don't want to be like California. I just don't understand why California gets such a bad rap. True their fiscally incompetent but money isn't everything. Less crime, less addiction, less people driving while impaired, and just about any climate you'd prefer. What's not to like?

  4. divadab says:

    Harper has a whole lot more power than the US president – basically, he is king for up to 5 years. And this omnibus police state bill was part of his campaign, so it’s no secret that he and his 37% of the country which voted authoritarian like the idea of sending more young and poor people who don;t toe the line to jail, out of sight and off the street.

    However, what he’s proposing (and it will pass since he has an outright majority of parliamentary votes) is still a long way from as bad as the law Stateside. Harper is just playing catch-up ball with his mentor and hero GW.

    6 cannabis plants = mandatory 6-month sentence. What fascist ignorance, what unjust dominion, what complete idiocy.

  5. TotallyFreeStuff says:

    “So protest police brutality, media whoredom or governmental corruption all you want, but if you’re willing to overlook the fact that our money supply is controlled by an elite group of criminal bankers, nothing will change.”

    http://tinyurl.com/3tu84ch

  6. claygooding says:

    the entire system needs to crash,,,or we need to hit the restart button.

  7. Servetus says:

    “…the best government will err on the side of leniency…. Certain ‘inconveniences’ will, no doubt, sometimes result from such an extensive liberty. But the attempt to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them.

    …this freedom is of the first importance in fostering the sciences and the arts, for only those whose judgment is free and unbiased can attain success in these fields.” –Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Chap. 20, G III.243/S 226.

  8. Windy says:

    http://www.cracked.com/article_19455_5-common-crime-fighting-tactics-statistics-say-dont-work.html
    “Let’s say with our two hypothetical bong smokers, we give one probation/community service and give the other a short sentence in jail. The first guy, the one who spends his time picking up trash in a garish orange vest and chatting weekly with a police officer, is approximately 20 percent less likely to be in jail three years later.

    “The second guy, supposedly taught a harsher lesson, has a close to 50 percent chance of showing up in prison again within the next three years. A variety of studies have shown this — jailing first-time nonviolent offenders is completely ineffective at deterring future crimes. It’s weird — it’s almost like prison puts you in a criminal mindset, as if spending all day and all night living with and talking to other criminals, completely immersed in their lifestyle and morals and way of thinking, makes you start to act like them.”
    snip
    “It’s not because violent crime is rampant in the U.S., either — the U.S. is average in that category (for instance, the U.S. has fewer violent crimes per capita than the U.K., regardless of how civilized that accent makes them seem). It’s because we jail people for anything. The U.S. is the only modernized country to throw people in jail for writing bad checks. In no other civilized (or even pretend civilized) country will someone go to jail because he couldn’t pay a $215 fishing license fine. And then we have the perpetual drug war, which has added around 200,000 people who wouldn’t see jail time in Europe.

    “Meanwhile, states are cutting funding to programs meant to keep people out of the prison system and spending far, far more on prisons (where it costs $24,000 per prisoner, per year). Jail is where the bad guys go, and we’ll be damned if we’ll just let those bong-smoking bastards walk around free.”

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .
      Windy, the problem with the above example is that it still seems to regard punishment for preferring cannabis over drinking alcohol as legitimate. Whether the punishment is involuntary servitude picking up trash and/or being forced to “chat” with a jack booted thug, or incarceration, the entire premise is unjust and just plain wrong.

    • claygooding says:

      Wendy,,America is the only country in the world to throw “some” hot check writers in jail,,,our whole congress wrote so many hot checks on their “private” bank a few years back that it failed and not one of them spent a minute in jail.

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