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David BienenstockApril 14, 2020

'Tiger King' Joe Exotic's 2018 run for Oklahoma governor included a call for full cannabis legalization. (Photo: Netflix)

Right now Americans are obsessed with exactly two things, and one of them is Tiger King, Netflixs hit seven-part documentary series.

Even if you havent watched an episode, youve probably seen this dramatic, borderline surreal true crime story trending online or caught wind of a meme or two featuring Joe Exoticthe titular Tiger Kingwhose flamboyant personal style and real-life exploits are so completely wild they beggar belief.

But whether youre totally obsessed with this tale of big cats and murder plots or just trying to catch up with the zeitgeist, theres one aspect of this story thats been surprisingly flying under the radar: Joe Exotic is a huge cannabis advocate.

Aside from exploring Joe Exotics loud and proud weed legalization activism, Ill strive to not give away too many of the twists and turns that make his story so compelling (not to mention problematic).

But I do need to establish the broad outlines of Mr. Exotics life journey in order to understand where hes coming from and how he ended up as a legalization advocate in Oklahoma. So if you like to go in fresh,better bookmark this page now and come back after youve watched the show.

Otherwise, heres what you need to know.

Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage (a.k.a. Joe Exotic) was already a larger-than-life figure before Tiger King came out. But unless you stumbled across his videos on the internet, or had an abiding interest in the world of exotic animals, you probably never heard of him before.

He is very much a man of contradictionsa one-time 19-year-old small town police chief turned multiple felon, a gun-loving polyamorous polygamous gay man, a politician who hates politicians, and an animal lover convicted on seventeen federal counts of animal abuse.

Joe Exotic has run for political office twice in his life. Both times he made cannabis legalization a key rallying point in his outsider campaigns for higher office.

In his first try, Exotic ran for president of the United States in 2016. He only made the ballot in Colorado, however, and only earned 962 votes nationwide, if you include the write-ins.

Two years later he lowered his ambitions by running in the Libertarian Party primary for governor of Oklahoma. In that contest he actually got 18.7% of the vote, good enough for a respectable third-place finish.

The key to his popularity, such as it was, was a series of in-your-face campaign videos. In a time when the conventions of electoral politics have been upended, the Joe Exotic for Governor media team still found ways to break new ground.

For example, he handed out official campaign rolling papers:

He also opened his first official campaign video (of 330 videos Im going to be putting up) by directly addressing legalization in his own unique way:

Lets just start out by saying that through my years, Ive tried some drugs. During one of the debates that we had, I asked one of my opponents, Have you ever smoked weed before? And he said, Yeah, but Id be ashamed to say it.

How can you represent 300 million people and be ashamed of anything and still understand what all those people are going through?

I aint ashamed of anything.

Candidate Exotic outlined his reasons for supporting cannabis legalization more substantially at an official Libertarian Party candidate rally held at the Oklahoma State Capitol in 2017.

In this particular speech and throughout his campaign, Exotic pointed to the potential revenue from taxing and regulating cannabisplus the cost savings of ending enforcement and incarcerationas the ideal way to help fund Oklahomas public schools, which at the time were facing teacher walk-outs for lack of resources.

He then briefly hit on the hot-button issue of abolishing fishing licenses before returning to his cannabis legalization plan.

Another angle Exotic took when advocating for cannabis was to position legalization as a way to alleviate the states ongoing problems with rampant abuse of drugs like opioids and methamphetamine.

The War on Meth is not successful. Not in Oklahoma, Exotic said. I personally know I dont know how many dealers and how many users. Were spending so much time on the users that were not effective at all.

His most outside-the-box cannabis planselling consumers cannabis seized by the policehas yet to be implemented, in Oklahoma or anywhere else. And its hard to imagine that it ever will be:

I want to set up a dispensary in every county for nothing but confiscated weed. And every dime of that stays in that county to help those schools, those fire departments, those police departments and to fix those roads.

Once one of the most restrictive states when it came to cannabis laws, Oklahoma voters did pass a medical cannabis law in June of 2018a few months before the state elected a new Governor but long after Joe Exotic had dropped out of the race.

To the surprise of many inside and outside of the state, Oklahomas largely libertarian approach to regulating medical cannabis quickly led to the opening of hundreds of dispensaries and the birth of a thriving local industry.

The law also allows approved patients to grow their own cannabis at home. And Oklahoma now has some of this highest personal possession allowances in the entire country.

According to NORML:

Those possessing a state-issued license may possess the following: up to eight ounces of marijuana in their residence; up to one ounce of concentrated marijuana; up to 72 ounces of edible marijuana; up to six mature marijuana plants; up to six seedling plants; and up to three ounces of marijuana on their person. Those who do not possess a license face a fine-only misdemeanor for the possession of up to 1.5 ounces of herbal cannabis.

So although Joe Exotics second political campaign fell short at the ballot box, one of his signature issues moved forward in a big way.

Lets be clear: Most of the credit for that goes to the states longtime cannabis advocates, who ran a successful voter initiative in one of the most conservative jurisdictions in the country.

But the Tiger King played a small part in raising awareness and speaking to a group of voters outside the two-party system.

Veteran cannabis journalist David Bienenstock is the author of "How to Smoke Pot (Properly): A Highbrow Guide to Getting High" (2016 - Penguin/Random House), and the co-host and co-creator of the podcast "Great Moments in Weed History with Abdullah and Bean." Follow him on Twitter @pot_handbook.

View original post here:
Yes, the Tiger King really did run for governor on a 'legalize weed' platform - Leafly

Short of opening a libertarian theme park ("Ride the Rockin' Road to Serfdom!"), it can be difficult to make the love of liberty a "lived experience," especially for kids. What we need is something hands-onan emotional, immersive experience that gets children and their parents totally involved.

Fortunately, this multimedia memory-maker already exists. It's called Passover.

Passover is the Jewish festival of freedom. It's an annual retelling of the Exodus story, complete with jingles, novelty foods, and cash prizes. Moses went down to Egyptland more than 3,000 years ago, yet the story miraculously manageslike last year's matzoto stay fresh as ever.

Not for nothing do some Jews jokingly call this holiday the "festival of constipation." Matzo is the corrugated cardboardlike bread substitute we are commanded to eat all eight days of Passover. The story says that when Pharaoh finally let the Jews go, they feared he might change his mind, so they fled without even waiting for their dough to rise. To this day, we eat the same thing they did: unleavened bread. The fact that it wreaks havoc on many a digestive system is actually quite clever: Our suffering reminds us of our forebears' suffering. In fact, on Passover, we can't even saythey, as in "They left Egypt." We have to saymeorwe, as in "This is to remember when God took me out of Egypt." Because, as the haggadah points out, if "they" hadn't been taken out, "we" would still be there. Touch!

This is the Passover playbook filled with stories, songs, and stage directions such as "lift the matzo and show it to everyone." What other holiday comes with its own instruction book? And since it's all right there, this is a holiday Jews basically celebrate in the same way from Texas to Tel Aviv. We eat an apple and nut mixture that reminds us of the mortar theyer,weused to build Pharaoh's temples. We eat bitter herbs to feel, well, bitter. We point to a lamb shank bone to remember how they (we!) painted lamb's blood on our doorframes so God wouldpass overus (yes, that's where the word comes from) when he got to Plague No. 10, the killing of the firstborn sons. We even spill some wine as a small sacrifice in honor of the suffering of the Egyptians themselves. Every bit of the service points back to how terrible it was to be enslaved, reminding us that our duty is to be grateful forand to work to spreadfreedom.

One particular song dominates this holiday: "Dayenu." In Hebrew,the word means "it would have been enough." As in: If God had just taken us out of Egypt, it would have been enoughbut He did so much more, which the song then goes on to list. The key here is the killer chorus, in whichdayenuis repeated endlessly. It's so simple that a toddler can sing it. Jews with Alzheimer's can sing it tooeven after they've forgotten almost everything else. (I've witnessed this myself.)Thatis a great jingle.

The freedom theme is front and center again when the youngest child at the Passover dinner is expected to ask the famous "four questions," beginning with: "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Why? Because this is the night we really try to feel what it was like to be a slave set free. Each of the four questions gets back to that point:Oppression bad. Liberty amazing! Assigning question duty to the youngest kid guarantees that every child will do it at some point, assuring a lot of buy-in. And since it's the kid's first big moment in the family spotlight, not to mention the great river of Jewish tradition, it's memorable for everyone at the table.

At the end of the meal, kids go hunting for a little piece ofyou guessed itmatzo, known as theafikomen. The winner gets a prize, often cash that he or she has to haggle for. Just like trade show organizers promising the grand prize drawing at the end, this scavenger hunt keeps people from leaving early. It also gets the kids running around, bonding (and fighting) with their cousins, assuring even more memories are made.

If the holiday just featured a special game,dayenu. If it featured a special game and a special food,dayenu. But Passover works on every level, hammering home the message: Thank God (literally!) for freedom.

See the original post here:
Is Passover the Most Libertarian Holiday? - Reason

The libertarian-leaning Illinois Policy Institute has tried reaching out more to Democratic legislators since Gov. Bruce Rauner lost his reelection bid. Rauner at one point was so close to the group that he fired several of his longtime staffers and replaced some of them with IPI staff, which did not work out well, to say the least.

The organizations political wing has contributed money to more than a few legislative Democrats campaign funds in recent months, and they were able to introduce some bipartisan legislation last year and this year although the spring session is now mostly a bust because, as I write this, the General Assembly has no set plans to return amid the pandemic.

An IPI staffer even posed for a picture with Gov. J.B. Pritzker and posted it on Twitter last year. Looking forward to working with his administration, the caption read. Its been on a serious mission to change its image.

If you go to its website, youll see the IPI has devoted an entire section to empathetic interviews with small business owners about how theyre faring during the pandemic. Theyre well-written, including one featuring the owner of a Chicago restaurant.

In general, everyone is standing, waiting in the wings until were allowed to open back up regularly, which obviously no one knows when thats going to be yet, the owner was quoted as saying.

The organization claimed this week in a private Facebook group it runs that it wants the state to begin planning to reopen the economy and give people visibility on what that might look like.

But then it tipped its hand in the comment section.

As an owner of 2 small businesses, one essential (radon mitigation), one a restaurant ... nothing I can say will express the absolute disdain I have for this man or his policies, a commenter complained about Pritzker.

A Policy Institute staffer replied to her comment asking if she would be open to speaking to a member of the IPI team. Weve been doing our best to give our community a voice on our site and pressure JB to reopen the states economy.

Another commenter predicted that Pritzker and his boss lori lightfoot will kill Illinois. An IPI staffer replied with the same request to speak with her about her story. Weve been featuring small business owners on our site to try to pressure the governor to reopen the states economy.

The IPIs privately admitted agenda did not go over well with the governors press secretary, as you might imagine. She let it fly.

COVID-19 has left a trail of devastation across the globe. There is no country, no city, no community that is immune, wrote Jordan Abudayyeh. Every day, we grieve with the families who have lost loved ones in this battle. And we yearn for the time when life can return to normal.

We usually ignore the Illinois Policy Institutes institutionalized and reflexive partisanship, but in this time of crisis, we cannot afford to let this dangerous ideology go unanswered. We all want the economy to reopen no one more than the Governor, Abudayyeh continued. But to suggest that should happen before the science says it is safe is not only foolish, its dangerous.

In Illinois, more than 500 people have succumbed to the virus and more than 16,000 people have been sickened. Those numbers climb every single day and because of that fact, an overwhelming majority of Illinoisans are working together to flatten the curve. The IPI has lobbied for some atrocious policies in the past, but this time their efforts could mean the difference between life and death for many Illinoisans. They need to stop lying to people about whats at stake in this crisis and own up to the public responsibility we all have to be committed to a truthful and honest conversation about our collective public health.

Yikes.

A spokesperson for the IPI said they want the governor to establish a process and timeline to safely and effectively open the economy, so we are not only protecting lives but also safeguarding livelihoods.

But a timeline simply isnt possible right now because literally nobody can say with certainty when this will all end.

The spokesperson went on to say that the governors refusal to discuss this is causing uncertainty, which is making residents wary.

Wary of what, he didnt say.

We will continue to tell their story, he said. And continuing the pressure, no doubt.

Im thinking there will be no more photo-ops with the governor.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.

Send letters to letters@suntimes.com.

Read more from the original source:
Libertarian Illinois Policy Institute wants a timeline for reopening businesses thats just not possible - Chicago Sun-Times

Governor Murphy: Extend Democracy To The

Green, Libertarian, Socialist Parties and

All Independent Candidates

During This Crisis

For Immediate Release For Immediate Release

April 7th, 2020

The Covid-19 crisis continues to unravel and put a heavy strain on our society, critical medical care system and overall resources. On March 19th, Governor Phil Murphy signed Executive Order No. 105, allowing for Democratic and Republican Partiesto submit their petitions online, in addition to in person, and the Secretary of State to create an online form that allows voters to submit their signatures on petitions electronically.

Set up for independent candidates the same protocol for filing electronically that was established for the Democrats and Republicans for the rest of the campaigns that will take place this year, including the presidential race.

Craig Cayetano, State Co-Chair said, This battle isnt just in New Jersey. Greens across the country are facing a stone-wall on this critical issue. We want equal and fair consideration for all parties and Independents especially during this pandemic. We have to work 2-3 times as hard to get signatures and are losing out on our main pathway which is door-to-door. For the safety of our signature gatherers, candidates and the populace I hope each state, especially New Jersey comes around on this immediately!

Madelyn Hoffman, NJ Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in 2020 who garnered 25,150 votes in 2018 and came in third in that U.S. Senate race added, All too often, those outside the two mainstream political parties get treated like second-class citizens when it comes to applying principles of democracy. I urge Governor Murphy to address the issue of independent political parties in the same way he addressed the difficulties and obstacles faced by Democrats and Republicans during these uncertain and potentially dangerous times. It is impossible for the Greens to safely gather the signatures needed to be placed on the ballot, either by going door-to-door or at large events or gatherings.We had to shut down that part of our campaign weeks ago. For our health and the health of people who would sign our petition, and to allow us to compete on at least a somewhat level playing field, we ask that you do the right and the fair thing allow all independent candidates to file their signatures electronically.

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Governor Murphy: Extend Democracy To The Green, Libertarian, Socialist Parties and All Independent Candidates During This Crisis - InsiderNJ

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said Sunday that he would not rule out running for president this year. Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team and is one of the shark investors on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank.

I would've never considered it prior to a month ago. Now things are changing rapidly and dramatically, Cuban said on the Fox News Sunday program. Im not saying no, but it's not something Im actively pursuing. Im just keeping the door open.

Cuban, who is worth an estimated $4.1billion according to Forbes, has previously described himself as somewhat of a libertarian.

"Not so much libertarian as much as I'd like to be libertarian, he told ABC Dallas-based affiliate WFAA in 2015. "When I think libertarian, it's 'as small of a government as we can get, right now you just cut right through it and you make it [smaller] right now.' That's not real. There's got to be a process. There's got to be a transition. As a country, we make decisions. We make decisions that we're going to provide healthcare, right? We don't just let people die on the street. You can go into any hospital and they have to treat you."

Cuban has also said that while he would be interested in joining the Republican party, he feels the party is too rigid.

"I'm a Republican in the respect that I like smaller government and I like less intrusion in some areas. But there's sometimes where I think we have to intrude. I think there's sometimes when you have to do things," he continued.

The November election will likely be a race between Republicanincumbent Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term, and Democratic rival former Vice President Joe Biden. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders exited the race last week, leaving Biden as the almost certain Democratic nominee.

Cuban and Trump have feuded since 2016. Cuba, who endorsed Hillary Clinton,had harsh words for Trump at a Clinton campaign stop in Pittsburgh.

"You know what we call a person like that in Pittsburgh? A jagoff," Cuban said. "Is there any bigger jagoff in the world than Donald Trump?"

Trump would later callCubandopey" andnot smart.

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has canceled in-person campaign rallies, forcing candidates to resort to digital events. As of Monday at 2:15 p.m. ET, there have been560,891 cases and 22,681-coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S.

Read more:
Mark Cuban To Run For President? Billionaire Dallas Mavericks Owner Does Not Rule Out 2020 White House Bid - International Business Times