Did the Office of National Drug Control Policy use its funds and clout to influence elections in 2006? Henry Waxman wants to know!
Crossposted from GreenState Project
I keep telling people: cannabis prohibition and the war on drugs are far bigger problems than they know. I keep telling them the GOP uses the war on drugs as a political tool.
Well, here we have Henry Waxman asking the Office of the Drug Czar and John Walters about apparent misuse of tax dollars in "2006 republican campaigns, particularly those described as "struggling". This inquiry is turning up the names of not only John Walters and the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but of one Sara Taylor and Karl Rove.
This is good stuff.
I remember when extremely similar actions were happening, back in 2004: The Drug's Czar's office was using their funds - your tax dollars - to help republican candidates. Back at the time The Marijuana Policy Project were after the records of this travel to Nevada to interfere with the cannabis reform issue that was on the ballot in 2004. Of note is a report, also from 2004, that GAO Green-Lights White House Interference in Elections
With two federal watchdog agencies freeing the White House drug czar to overtly influence state ballot initiatives, the Senate is poised to reauthorize this anti-democratic exercise for the next five years – the wheels greased by a ten-year total of $4 billion in taxpayer-funded advertising designed to sway the votes of those who pay for it.
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By the GAO's lights, Walters can use tax dollars to loose whatever fictions he wishes upon the land since it saw no need "to examine the accuracy" of an ONDCP pre-election letter to prosecutors nationwide calling on them to oppose what the letter termed "campaigns to normalize and ultimately legalize the use of marijuana." In accompanying material, ONDCP made reference to "state initiatives" and the need for prosecutors to dispel the alleged myths that support their passage.
Sure, this mostly focuses on the Drug Czar's attempts to influence elections by lying and whatever other means available, but there's the documentation he was there and that he was there to purposefully influence the election at taxpayer expense. Team Bush is very good with "The 2-fer" - getting 2 or more desirable (desirable to them, not us) impacts out of one shady or overtly unconstitutional act.
Now Henry Waxman has caught hold of it happening in the 2006 elections and is requesting the documents, too, though specifically for "improper politicization", which, I will admit, seems like looking for speeding at a drag race.
Congressman probes drug czar politics
WASHINGTON — The White House sent officials from the Office of National Drug Control Policy to 20 political events featuring vulnerable Republican members of Congress shortly before the 2006 elections, and at taxpayers' expense.
Is that evidence of improperly politicizing a government office? Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is looking into that question. He sent letters Tuesday to drug czar John P. Walters and former White House Political Affairs Director Sara Taylor requesting documents and interviews.
Oh Yeah... that Sara Taylor
Taylor complied with a Congressional subpoena and appeared last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify in the investigation of the firing of 8 US Attorneys. Now, Waxman is suggesting that Taylor might be implicated in politicizing government programs that Waxman has called 'historically nonpartisan.'
Waxman, the Oversight Committee's chair, was particularly critical of the White House appearing to deploy the nation's 'drug control czar' and his staff in the Office of National Drug Control Policy to Republican Congressional campaign events.
"As the nation's drug czar, Director [John] Walters has the responsibility to oversee the federal government's domestic and international drug control efforts," he wrote in the Tuesday letter. "It is hard to understand how his ability to perform this essential function would be enhanced by extensive taxpayer-funded travel to 'god awful places' to appear with vulnerable Republican members."
And Karl Rove's name gets dropped in the machinations
Waxman said that a memo written by Douglas Simon, the drug policy office's White House liaison, detailed a post-election meeting in which White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove thanked the office and other federal agencies for their help in the campaigns.
"Karl Rove opened the meeting with a thank you for all of the work that went into the surrogate appearances by cabinet members and for the 72 Hour deployment," Simon wrote. "He specifically thanked, for going above and beyond the call of duty, the Dept. of Commerce, Transportation, Agriculture, AND the WH Drug Policy Office."
The Repub value system is wholly-exposed in this following gnarly statement from that Simon character:
"It's another day, another letter from Representative Waxman," said Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman. "What the requests show today is that Director John Walters traveled around the country to meet with representatives in communities that have been hit hard by the scourge of drugs, and that is completely appropriate."
Connect the Dots
So we see, despite the bipartisan origins of the war on drugs, the GOP gets no end of political influence with this issue. The Dems just sort of go with the flow. That's bad, but the War on Drugs is just not the heartbeat of the Democratic Party.
The way that the "White House spokesperson Scott Stanzel" tosses out "Director John Walters traveled around the country to meet with representatives in communities that have been hit hard by the scourge of drugs" is so very typical. Part and parcel of the larger dynamic I wish more progressives - and anybody else genuinely concerned about the state of freedom in America - would recognize.
Here the "scourge of drugs" appears to mean "cannabis reform initiatives on ballots that are likely to win". Arizona and Nevada have had cannabis reform initiatives on recent ballots.
They did not mean the terrible problems of meth or of heroin addiction.
They meant legal, American efforts to petition the Government for a redress of bad laws. And that. my friends, IS undue political influence, which, of course, is Team Bush's middle name.
And Henry Waxman has ahold of it now, so maybe this too will get more interesting. Maybe the connections will become more apparent, either implicitly or explicitly. With folks like Sara Taylor and Karl Rove being cited, I'd say it's only going to get investigated more now.
The war on cannabis and drugs in general is simply undue political interference, it's openly and proudly based on lying and manipulating elections.
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