by Barry Hastings
It’s found not only in Michigan, but folks here are certainly playing the parts
of Lewis & Clark as pathfinders for the legislative masters of folly, sloppy work,
little work, no work, and work requiring more work just to make it work.
The Michigan medical marijuana law(s) are a great example. While Colorado wrote a
working law, and began collecting a large tax bounty within months, Michigan’s
lazy, corrupt, and backward-looking legislature has had to re-write our state’s
marijuana laws on what seems to many an annual basis for six, seven years.
Nobody I’ve spoken with seems to know just what the law requires. And how
could they, with rules changing every year?
Now Barry County’s idiot Mike Callton (usually incognito as an intellectual) is introducing more legislation to further complicate procedures, make pot more expensive, and to make sure the state rips off even more of any profits realized by growers and dispensers. Since pot for medicinal purposes was semi-legalized, we’ve seen many horror stories of people using it as medication in a legally legitimate manner have lost jobs, been arrested, had it confiscated, and been hassled in a quadrillion ways. Most of them feel they’re taking huge risks when they buy, when they smoke, when they sell.
Of course Callton says his new bill will protect legal buyers and sellers of medical marijuana. That’s exactly what they said about the first edition, all those years, and regular revisions, ago.
They’ve done basically the same thing with concealed carry laws, changing them often, but doing little, if anything, to ensure concealed weapons are kept out of the hands of nit-wits, the mentally impaired and plain “bad actors.” I can question the “firearm worthiness” of more that one person I know with or without a concealed carry permit. The law should be simply this: any person with no known mental problems, with no felony (or violent misdemeanor) convictions, and not awaiting trial on felony (or violent misdemeanor) charges should be allowed to carry, concealed or open. The Constitution says nothing about charging people for the right to carry. Legislators like to make things seem complicated so you’ll believe they’re doing critical, complicated and necessary work over there in Lansing (where birds of a feather really do flock together).
Every year 10,000 of our fellow citizens are killed by firearm violence, tens of thousands more badly hurt. A very high percentage of them have been shot to death by someone they knew (or know, for wounded survivors). Wives, girlfriends, children, mothers, brothers, cousins, sisters, grandparents (for Christ’s sake)! Good people and rotten (shake the dice) have fallen.
Now and then, someone the shooter doesn’t even know takes a bullet – or two, or three! And the “open carry'”part of the law is ridiculous — telling people to make themselves “first target” of shooters in public places. (Thanks, you jerks.) What kind of people are willing to put up with 10,000 slaughtered people every year?
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Well, truthfully. . . , the same kind of people willing to put-up with the sex-kitten Jamrat, and her Coarser friend, in the state legislative body for as long as one, or the other, or both, or others like them, can work up a plurality among the electorate. The House and Senate created a way to get rid of these folks in Lansing, but no way to keep them away from the public trough, permanently.
Stumble and fumble on, you idiots – many will be watching. Let’s get rid of the jerk (House Speaker Kevin) Cotter while we’re at it, as well. He has been nefariously involved in this SEX scandal — which, if the state police do their job (as we expect them to), he may join the Jamrat (and Coarser) in another environment, altogether. I certainly hope so. Only bars will satisfy.
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There’s another matter, as well – our pathetically bad roads which have all but been ignored by these twits for years, while the potholes get bigger and deeper. Some folks have been killed because of neglect by the legislature. Others have been seriously injured. Everyone who hits one is going to be out some money.
Two summers ago I hit one near the VA in Battle Creek that did over $800 damage to my fine old Buick (16 years old, less than 100,000 miles). Four or five months later, I got caught in heavy traffic and hit another, not all that far from the first. When the repair estimate hit 1500 dollars, I scrapped the old girl for good. I, for one am so sick of those pathetic twerps (from Governor on down), I could puke, and if I don’t get off the subject now, I will.
Ahhhhhh (page three). Well, the two biggest jerks in the Republican presidential race are gone. The dumbest was shot between the eyes by Donald Frump, who wiped him out with one sentence about Perry buying new eye-glasses to make himself look more like a part of the conservative “intelligentsia.” As I remember, “intelligent” and “conservative,” like “good” and “cat,” are mutually contradictory terms.
Don’t get me wrong now, I love my cats, all six of them, and each as much as the next. People however, well they’re another matter. The last intelligent conservative I met was William F. Buckley, in 1964. I was not impressed. Biggest phony ever. Oh, yeah, Scott (the tonsured Monk) Walker is also gone. Who cares?
I’m takin’ bets on the next to go, and I say it will be the South Carolinian who, speaking of the Confederate Battle Flag said, “It works for us.” He meant to say, “It works for me.” It don’t work up here, Buster.
Hey! Will someone explain to me how government spokesmen are looking into ways to bring criminal charges against Volkswagen for manipulating and allowing too much carbon from their diesel engines, when GM just killed about 125 people over 10/11 years over a cheap ignition switch replacement, and no one – that’s no one, in the government could find any way to imprison guilty company executives?
I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret few ever talk about. You can find secrets like those of GM and Volkswagen hidden in the boardrooms or records of just about any large corporate entity in America, and throughout the free(ish) world. Bank (heh, heh) on it.
