Category: reason

On Friday, as J.D. Tuccille

noted, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department
issued guidelines for banks that do business with state-licensed
marijuana suppliers. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, the

aim of the memos is to reassure financial institutions that are
leery of accepting cannabusinesses as customers because they worry
it will attract unwanted attention from federal regulators and
prosecutors. But as with the
August 29 memo in which Deputy Attorey General James Cole said
that prosecuting properly regulated marijuana growers and sellers
would not be a high priority, there are
no guarantees, and that fact is likely to
deter traditionally cautious banks more than plucky cannabis
entrepreneurs.

The
Treasury memo, issued by the department’s Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network (FinCEN), says the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)
requires financial institutions to file “suspicious activity
reports” (SARs) for all marijuana businesses. But FinCEN draws a
distinction between marijuana businesses that violate state law or
implicate one of the Justice Department’s “enforcement priorities”
and marijuana businesses that do neither. The former merit
“marijuana priority” reports, while the latter fall into a newly
invented “marijuana limited” category. According to the memo, this
distinction “aligns the information provided by financial
institutions in BSA reports with federal and state law enforcement
priorities.”

What are those priorities? Cole’s August 29 memo lists eight: 1)
“preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors,” 2)
“preventing the diversion of marijuana from states where it is
legal under state law in some form to other states,” 3) “preventing
drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health
consequences associated with marijuana use,” 4) “preventing the
growing of marijuana on public lands,” 5) “preventing marijuana
possession or use on federal property,” 6) “preventing revenue from
the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises,” 7)
“preventing violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and
distribution of marijuana,” and 8) “preventing state-authorized
marijuana activity from being used as a cover or pretext for the
trafficking of other illegal drugs.” At the end of the memo, Cole
adds that the feds might also intervene for other, unspecified
reasons. 

The FinCEN memo lists “red flags” that suggest a marijuana
business deserves special scrutiny, including “international or
interstate activity,” an inability to “demonstrate the legitimate
source of significant outside investments,” signs that the
business is “using a state-licensed marijuana-related business as a
front or pretext to launder money derived from other criminal
activity,” and “negative information, such as a criminal record,
involvement in the illegal purchase or sale of drugs, violence, or
other potential connections to illicit activity.” Such red flags
are supposed to inform banks’ decisions about which customers to
reject or drop as well as which sort of SAR to file. FinCEN warns
that the red flags it mentions “do not constitute an exhaustive
list.” Although FinCEN says its advice “should enhance the
availability of financial services for, and the financial
transparency of, marijuana-related businesses,” it never actually
says banks that follow the guidelines need not worry about getting
into trouble with regulators.

The
Justice Department memo that Cole released on Friday,
which like his August 29 memo is addressed to U.S. attorneys, has a
similar limitation. He notes that the earlier memo “did not
specifically address what, if any, impact it would have on certain
financial crimes for which marijuana-related conduct is a
predicate,” such as money laundering or failure to file SARs. The
new memo clarifies that prosecution decisions related to those
crimes “should be subject to the same consideration and
prioritization” as prosecution decisions related to marijuana
trafficking. Again, the feds are not making any promises. Here is
the closest Cole comes: “If a financial institution or individual
offers services to a marijuana-related business whose activities do
not implicate any of the eight priority factors, prosecution for
these offenses may not be appropriate.” Then again, it may! Like
Cole’s August 29 memo, this one closes with a caveat that is not
exactly reassuring: “Nothing herein precludes investigation or
prosecution, even in the absence of any one of the factors listed
above, in particular circumstances where investigation and
prosecution otherwise serves an important federal
interest.” 

This weak tea may be pretty much the best that the Obama
administration can do under current law, which is why bankers are

calling for congressional action to address the tax,
regulatory, and public safety issues raised by forcing marijuana
suppliers to deal exclusively in cash. In a press
release issued on Friday, Don Childears, president of the
Colorado Bankers Association (CBA), does not sound grateful for the
new guidance:

After a series of red lights, we expected this guidance to be a
yellow one. This isn’t close to that. At best, this amounts to
“serve these customers at your own risk,” and it emphasizes all of
the risks. This light is red.

The CBA complains that the guidance from FinCEN and the Justice
Department “reiterates reasons for prosecution and is simply a
modified reporting system for banks to use,” a system that “imposes
a heavy burden on them to know and control their customers’
activities, and those of their [customers’] customers.” The CBA
says “no bank can comply” with those expectations. Childears
concludes that “an act of Congress is the only way to solve this
problem.” The Marijuana
Businesses Access to Banking Act, introduced last summer by
Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) and Denny Heck (D-Wash.), would
protect banks that deal with state-legal marijuana businesses from
criminal investigation or prosecution and from regulatory
repercussions, including loss of federal deposit insurance.

Over the past three decades, America’s state and
local governments have experienced a large and underappreciated
divergence. Some places, usually but not always led by Republicans,
have become friendlier to free enterprise. Other places, usually
but not always led by Democrats, have become friendlier to big
government. Some political scientists call it the Big Sort. John
Hood says you can see the self-selection manifest itself in polls,
in voting behavior, in migration patterns, and in policy
outcomes.

View this article.

Do you agree with
Sen. Rand Paul? As noted at
Reason 24/7, the libertarian Kentucky Republican told
Glenn Beck that

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime … unless
they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party,” Paul said evenly.
“And it has to be a transformation. Not just a little tweaking at
the edges.”…

The primary goal, Paul said, is to present the “ideas of
liberty” to everyone.

“There are many people who are open among all these disaffected
groups, who really aren’t steadfast supporters of Obama or an
ideology,” Paul asserted. “I think they’re open to listening, but
we have to have a better message and a better presentation of
it.”

More clips and context here.

No national politician has done a better job over the past few
years of presenting ideas about limiting the size, scope, and
spending of the federal government than Paul (whom
Reason magazine dubbed “the
most interesting man in the Senate“). From his repeated
attempts to cut the federal budget by $500 billion in five years to
his epic filibuster on drone policy to calling for a new approach
to foreign policy to pushing industrial hemp, Paul is a standing
challenge not just to the GOP establishment but to the larger
Washington establishment. He’s made more than a few missteps so far
and he’s far from perfect, but he’s looking sharper and sharper
from a limited-government perspective.

In 2013, Reason TV covered reactions to Paul’s speech about race
at Washington, D.C.’s Howard University:

Do you agree with
Sen. Rand Paul? As noted at
Reason 24/7, the libertarian Kentucky Republican told
Glenn Beck that

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime … unless
they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party,” Paul said evenly.
“And it has to be a transformation. Not just a little tweaking at
the edges.”…

The primary goal, Paul said, is to present the “ideas of
liberty” to everyone.

“There are many people who are open among all these disaffected
groups, who really aren’t steadfast supporters of Obama or an
ideology,” Paul asserted. “I think they’re open to listening, but
we have to have a better message and a better presentation of
it.”

More clips and context here.

No national politician has done a better job over the past few
years of presenting ideas about limiting the size, scope, and
spending of the federal government than Paul (whom
Reason magazine dubbed “the
most interesting man in the Senate“). From his repeated
attempts to cut the federal budget by $500 billion in five years to
his epic filibuster on drone policy to calling for a new approach
to foreign policy to pushing industrial hemp, Paul is a standing
challenge not just to the GOP establishment but to the larger
Washington establishment. He’s made more than a few missteps so far
and he’s far from perfect, but he’s looking sharper and sharper
from a limited-government perspective.

In 2013, Reason TV covered reactions to Paul’s speech about race
at Washington, D.C.’s Howard University:

On this President’s day, let’s
have a shout-out to William Henry Harrison, a man who was a true
statesman as president of the United States. He was a statesman, at
least, by the definition of Bloom County‘s Opus the
penguin, who noted, “Statesmen are dead politicians. Lord knows we
need more statesmen.” Inaugurated on March 4, 1841, Harrison

died of pneumonia just one month later.

Harrison’s official
biography on the White House website notes:

When he arrived in Washington in February 1841, Harrison let
Daniel Webster edit his Inaugural Address, ornate with classical
allusions. Webster obtained some deletions, boasting in a jolly
fashion that he had killed “seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as
smelts, every one of them.”

Webster had reason to be pleased, for while Harrison was
nationalistic in his outlook, he emphasized in his Inaugural that
he would be obedient to the will of the people as expressed through
Congress.

But before he had been in office a month, he caught a cold that
developed into pneumonia. On April 4, 1841, he died — the first
President to die in office—and with him died the Whig program.

This means the the new president had time to make a flowery
speech—and who doesn’t like a good speech, especialy in the days
before national television networks, when nobody outside D.C. even
had the ability to actually listen to them. He then had the good
grace to expire before actually doing anything. Then, his vice
president and successor, John Tyler, broke
with Whig policies (which were a mixed and even incoherent bag, but
generally favored protectionism and a stronger national government)
and also prevented much from getting done.

Let’s hear it for a statesman!

Though it may not be George
Washington’s actual birthday, Presidents’ Day is still a good
excuse to raise a glass to our
entrepreneurial first president. 

“The Spirit of Mount Vernon: The Return of George Washington’s
Whiskey,” was originally released on February 16, 2011. Original
text is below. 

Many know George Washington as a general and statesman,
but few think of America’s first president as a preeminent
entrepreneur, operating the most successful whiskey distillery in
the late 18th century. At its height, Washington’s distillery
produced over 11,000 gallons of liquor a year, supplying the
surrounding area and becoming one of his most lucrative business
ventures.

At Washington’s former plantation, Mount Vernon , a group of
historic interpreters are looking to bring this story to a wider
audience. Thanks to a fully functioning replica of Washington’s
distillery (and special dispensation from the Virginia General
Assembly), George Washington’s rye whiskey is once again being made
and sold to the public.

In November, Reason.tv followed the entire process as
Dave Pickerell, Master Distiller and former Vice President of
Operations for Maker’s Mark, and Steve Bashore, Mount Vernon
Distillery Manager, oversaw a two week production run while
adhering as strictly as possible to 18th century means and methods.
The result is an 80-proof reminder of the nation’s first president
and the entrepreneurial ideals of colonial
America.

Shot, edited and produced by Meredith Bragg. Approx. 6
minutes.

Though it may not be George
Washington’s actual birthday, Presidents’ Day is still a good
excuse to raise a glass to our
entrepreneurial first president. 

“The Spirit of Mount Vernon: The Return of George Washington’s
Whiskey,” was originally released on February 16, 2011. Original
text is below. 

Many know George Washington as a general and statesman,
but few think of America’s first president as a preeminent
entrepreneur, operating the most successful whiskey distillery in
the late 18th century. At its height, Washington’s distillery
produced over 11,000 gallons of liquor a year, supplying the
surrounding area and becoming one of his most lucrative business
ventures.

At Washington’s former plantation, Mount Vernon , a group of
historic interpreters are looking to bring this story to a wider
audience. Thanks to a fully functioning replica of Washington’s
distillery (and special dispensation from the Virginia General
Assembly), George Washington’s rye whiskey is once again being made
and sold to the public.

In November, Reason.tv followed the entire process as
Dave Pickerell, Master Distiller and former Vice President of
Operations for Maker’s Mark, and Steve Bashore, Mount Vernon
Distillery Manager, oversaw a two week production run while
adhering as strictly as possible to 18th century means and methods.
The result is an 80-proof reminder of the nation’s first president
and the entrepreneurial ideals of colonial
America.

Shot, edited and produced by Meredith Bragg. Approx. 6
minutes.

Why does the drug
scare meme appear so regularly in America? If we accept at face
value that, indeed, so many substances have reared their ugly,
panic-inspiring heads in such regular succession, then it seems we
have never gotten a handle on drugs in America, and we never will,
as drug scares stretch behind and before us ad infinitum. By
embodying these irresolvable social problems and dilemmas in drugs,
we hold out the ever present hope that American medicine will solve
them, most likely using pharmaceuticals. And that, writes Stanton
Peele, is the greatest drug scare of all.

View this article.

Miramar, Florida,
police closed Pembroke Road and several side streets and locked
down a nearby school for over
two hours after someone reported suspicious items on the
side of the street. Cops called in the Broward County sheriff’s
department bomb squad, which determined the objects were a shopping
bag and pillows.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 702 headed from Addis
Ababa to Milan signaled “Squawk 7500,” a radio frequency that
indicates
hijacking. The plane passed Rome, where it was supposed to
stop, and Milan, where the flight was scheduled to end, eventually
landing in Geneva. @matthewkeyslive posted audio purporting to be
someone on the plane requesting asylum in communications with air
traffic control in Geneva. Jaunted.com reports asylum was
negotiated between Swiss authorities (the ones available before 6am
local time), the pilots, and the hijackers while the plane burned
through its fuel over Lake Geneva. It finally landed at Geneva
around 6am local time, and the airport remains closed with flights
diverted to Zurich.

Twitter spent the last few hours pointing out social media was
on ET702 news while the mainstream media wasn’t, though it appears,
according to Twitter, to be being picked up by cable news outlets,
including BBC and CNN. It doesn’t yet appear to be on any of the
major US news websites, including CNN.com. Also via Twitter,
a press release from
Ethiopian Airlines claiming passengers and crew were safe was
pulled from its website. The pilots may have exited via the
windows.

The Swiss,
incidentally, recently voted to restrict the country’s
immigration rules.