Obama Stimulates Corruption.

h/T Libertatian Republican.

Some of the lefties who were so certain that Obama was one of them have been shocked at DEA raids on medical Marijuana suppliers in California. People carrying out legal activities in that state are finding themselves under arrest: -

From a libertarian perspective this is a double-whammy: Through this action, Obama has signaled that his administration would not be a friend of legalization, even for medicinal use, but worse, that he has little if any respect for the concept of States' Rights. It calls into question, what will his DEA be doing in the other 10 states in the Nation that have also decriminalized medicinal marijuana, most recently in the 2008 election, Michigan and Massachusetts, by overwhelming majorities.

We libertarians, especially libertarian Republicans, have been screaming at the cultural left for months now that Obama was no friend of civil liberties. Outside of abortion rights, and gay rights, Obama is a cultural authoritarian, most especially on issues such as seat belt laws, 55 mph speed limit, gambling, free speech rights, affirmative action quotas, gun ownership and smoking bans. Why should any civil liberties advocate expect anything different from him on marijuana reform?

Rather amusingly some of them are blaming Bush.

I have just been reading some stuff on the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant, which Bush proposed to eliminate because it proved to be an ineffective and inefficient use of resources.

The Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program provides hundreds of millions of dollars a year to local and state crime prevention initiatives. ….

A 2002 report by the ACLU of Texas identified seventeen scandals involving Byrne-funded anti-drug task forces in Texas, including cases of falsifying government records, witness tampering, fabricating evidence, false imprisonment, stealing drugs from evidence lockers, selling drugs to children, large-scale racial profiling, sexual harassment, and other abuses of official capacity. Recent scandals in other states include the misuse of millions of dollars in federal grant money in Kentucky and Massachusetts, false convictions based on police perjury in Missouri, and making deals with drug offenders to drop or lower their charges in exchange for money or vehicles in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Well we are in for hope and change, right? If it as a government program was so bad that Bush was prepared to scrap it, then Obama would surely get rid of it, wouldn't he? It seems that according to Ron Paul the opposite is the case.

At least $4 billion is allocated to expanding the police state and the war on drugs through Byrne grants, which even the Bush administration opposed, and the COPS program, both of which are corrupt and largely ineffective programs.

They are rewarding them with massive increases in funding to do more of it. Failed government programs always tend to get more money, otherwise it would be an admission of failure and the state will never accept that.

Or is it just that the activities mentioned in the third paragraph are the sort of conduct a Chicago Democrat can empathize with?