Cannabis News Media Awareness Project
  Cleveland Billionaire Backs S.C. Marijuana Measure
Posted by CN Staff on August 04, 2006 at 07:09:57 PT
By Shanna McCord, Sentinel Staff Writer  
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel 

cannabis Santa Cruz -- A pot-smoking billionaire in Cleveland has bankrolled nearly all the $32,000 raised for the ballot measure to make marijuana crimes the lowest priority for Santa Cruz police.

Mega-donor Peter Benjamin Lewis, 71, chairman of the Cleveland-based Progressive Insurance Corp., is known in political circles as a leftist who gives millions to liberal causes and anti-war movements — in the same league as his friend, financier George Soros. The two are the country's biggest contributors to liberal candidates and causes such as marijuana legalization, gay rights and the environment.

Highest on Lewis' list of political priorities is the effort to decriminalizing marijuana.

Disclosure forms filed this week by Santa Cruz Citizens for Sensible Marijuana Policy with the county Elections Department report Lewis contributing $32,000 to the Santa Cruz ballot measure.

Roughly $1,200 of the Santa Cruz marijuana campaign has come from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws of San Francisco.

None has come from local donors, according to the financial disclosure forms.

"Most of our money may come through another channel, but we are a grassroots organization," said proponent Andrea Tischler. "It costs a lot of money to run a campaign and we don't think that will matter to the voters if the money comes from someplace else."

The measure would force police officers to focus on crimes other than adult marijuana sales or use on private property, and would not allow officers to participate in regional marijuana busts.

Some, including City Attorney John Barisone, question the measure's legality.

Lewis strongly favors taxing and regulating the use and sale of the drug. He was a chief backer in California's 1996 passage of Proposition 215, the measure that made medical-marijuana use legal.

A bulk of the Ohio man's marijuana-related contributions — seven-figure yearly donations — goes to the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.

The nonprofit, established in 1995, doles out Lewis' money to "grassroots organizations" working around the country to pass local legislation to legalize marijuana, spokesman Bruce Mirken said.

Lewis' money went through the Policy Project before reaching Santa Cruz, where it paid for the $20,000 petition drive earlier this year that yielded almost twice the required 3,400 signatures of registered city voters to qualify the initiative for the Nov. 7 ballot.

"Peter Lewis is our largest individual donor," Mirken said Thursday. "He has been involved in supporting marijuana-law reform for a number of years. The grants program he funds has been in the neighborhood of $2 million."

Ranked as one of the world's richest people by Forbes magazine, Lewis was arrested for possession of marijuana in January 2000 while traveling in New Zealand.

He admitted to three charges of importing drugs and freely acknowledged to being a regular pot smoker, according to various media reports, including an article in the Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C.

Lewis has also been the biggest donor to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, giving $77 million to the arts institution since 1993.

The Princeton graduate gave a gift of $60 million to the Ivy League university for the construction of a library in his name, and has given more than $60 million to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

A spokeswoman for Progressive Insurance on Thursday said Lewis was out of the country and unavailable for comment.

Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel (CA)
Author: Shanna McCord, Sentinel Staff Writer
Published: August 4, 2006
Copyright: 2006 Santa Cruz Sentinel
Contact: editorial@santa-cruz.com
Website: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/

Related Articles & Web Site:

SC Citizens for Sensible Marijuana Policy
http://www.taxandregulate.org/sc06/index.htm

Santa Cruz MJ Measure Could Face Challenges
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread22010.shtml

Initiative To Relax Pot Rules Headed To Ballot
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21757.shtml


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Comment #28 posted by afterburner on August 06, 2006 at 10:51:02 PT
The Greening of America (1970, revised 1995)
The Greening of America (1970, revised 1995): one of four books that kept me alive, hopeful and active all these years.

Amazon.com: The Greening of America by Charles Reich http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0517886367/002-3735235-1388839?v=glance&n=283155

Beware of some nasty and politically-based comments from the reviewers.

The Greening of America by Charles Reich [book cover] http://tinyurl.com/fnx4j

From the cover of the book:

"There is a revolution coming. It will not be like the revolutions of the past. It will originate with the individual and with culture, and it will change the political structure as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. This is the revolution of the new generation." [emphasis added]

Customer Excerpt:

{This is the kind of book that had I read it ten years ago, it would have changed my life. However, having a little education and some wisdom that comes with age, this book quickly reveals it's true colors. Charles Reich was (and may still be) a professor at Yale University. I originally got the idea to read this book when one of my history professors related a story about Reich gadding about campus in his bare feet during the early 1970's. My professor, with a wry grin, related how shocked he and some of his fellow students were that someone of Reich's stature would do such a crazy thing. After reading this book, this behavior fits right in with Reich's codification of what he calls a "new consciousness".

This new consciousness, which is essentially the hippie lifestyle, is a new extension of man that has grown from a technological and corporate society run amuck, and two prior forms of consciousness that failed to properly allow man to run a high-tech world. This first consciousness was what our founding fathers had: a sense of individuality and hard work. With the advent of industrialism, this consciousness gave way to the second form. This is the one most of us are familiar with today. It a way of strict conformity to hierarchy, a rigid adherence to rules and regulations, as well as heavily materialistic and goal-oriented. Reich argues that this way of being was too stilted and crushed individuality and free expression. The result was the third phase of consciousness: the hippie. Doing your own thing, freedom, and a desire to make technology work for humanity were the ultimate goals of this group. Reich examines their clothing (of which shoeless activity is perfectly acceptable for a college professor) and music. He sees in all of this an articulation of rebellion and rage against the Corporate State, a mindless automaton that runs roughshod over all of humanity. The glorious hippies will rise up and put a stern hand on this rudderless beast and all will be well. Reich makes sure he points out that the current system is beyond reform (which I agree with) and that the only way to bring about a "Greening of America" is to restore humanity to society.} --Idealistic but Flawed, March 21, 2001 Reviewer: Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA)

After that, the reviewer basically rains on our parade, but for those of us who still carry the "freak flag" of our youthful idealism, we see the 1960s as a time of discovery, a time ahead of time, a time of rehearsal for the challenges of today, a time pointing to solutions to the global problems that still face us today. And the problems have festered to the point where the "solutions" are more needed than they were 30 or 40 years ago.

We know who the PTBs are, that have attempted to use violence to stop this peaceful revolution, and they will ultimately fail as they wallow in the mud of their own greedy and ecologically-destructive making!

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #27 posted by FoM on August 05, 2006 at 14:46:13 PT
Building a Better Mousetrap
I have been doing a lot of thinking these days. I am not sad or depressed but trying to figure out how we can make it better. I just was reading about Eco Villages, The Farm and what they are trying to do. The term building a better mousetrap is how they have got us where we are now but how can we make a better way for society or at least a portion of society? Politics just can't do it.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #26 posted by whig on August 05, 2006 at 14:37:53 PT
museman
You're right, the PTB have too much at stake to willingly give up their power. Imagine if they had to work for a living! They need workers and they need them to be hungry.

They won't give up without a fight but the last thing we should be willing to do is fight them. This is counterintuitive to many people, who think that we would win if it came to violence, but we would not. At best, at absolute best, we would replace one set of elite rulers with another. That's not a solution.

We have to practice nonviolence and we have to make our own systems that do not depend upon the PTB for their existence and our mutual support. Most of all we need to wake people up to the fact that they are being controlled for the benefit of a wealthy few and to seek alternatives like we're talking about.

There is no way we can do this merely by speaking and writing, we cannot reach the numbers of people that the well-funded media can. We cannot unbrainwash enough people fast enough to overcome their replacement rate, new zombies created every day. The only way to prevail is for people to wake up on their own, to see for themselves, and then to seek out the truth. Then we will be here, as we have been all along, to say what we know and what we are doing and we will all re-create together.

For this, we need cannabis to be free. We know this and the PTB know this, and they seek to confuse the rest so that they can prevent cannabis from becoming free. Because once cannabis is free the PTB will lose.

Perhaps I speak too frankly, and tip our hand too openly. I do not care who knows it because everyone should. It is not a secret plan that we have, it is our open intention, to end the system of oppression and control, to restore liberty to the world. When the American colonists declared their independence from England they made their intention plain as day and signed their names to it. We will do the same in our time. Now is not the time that we give our true names to the world (though anonymity is a very weak shield, easily pierced), but it is not too soon to give our words. It is the time that we are now living through to say what we will do because it will be soon that prohibition shall end.

We are going to end the corporate state. We are going to disestablish the churches and the synagogues. We are going to shun them, and cease to do business with them once we have no further need of them. It will take time to build, and to replace, but it will be done because it must be done and all cannabists will understand the need to do this. We will know it within ourselves, and we will do it together.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #25 posted by FoM on August 05, 2006 at 13:22:15 PT
Probably My Last Hurrah!
After the elections this fall and in 08 I will probably not care about politics at all. We will see change on Cannabis laws or we won't by at least 2010 I think. At that point I will be over 60 and it will be time to forget about our countries direction and leave it up to the young people. We have tried and tried and we have made some progress but the powers that be have grown way stronger then we have. If the young people wake up and use their youthful energy to change the world then we will have planted a good seed and it will grow in my opinion.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #24 posted by FoM on August 05, 2006 at 13:12:29 PT
museman
The more complex our system gets the more I want to drop out. If I wasn't online I would probably not even watch the news or not as often. I know they won't go away but I can go away from them.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #23 posted by museman on August 05, 2006 at 13:01:25 PT
Republicans, money, and votes
FoM, Republicans will not 'go away' even if 'legal votes' put them out. Their elite constituents still 'own' 2/3 of the planet. The laws and constitutional corruption have insured their status, power, and position, no matter what feeble attempts are made by 'democrats' or any of the other powerless political parties to change the laws. Remember we have been trying to establish sanity and reason in the government for a long time. History shows that no matter how hard we fight, how many are sacrificed, freedom is still a commodity that is equal precisely to the amount of zero's past half a billion in ones' annual rake-in.

The real power in the world has been in power for a long time. They have all the rhetoric, all the twisted logic necessary to convince a majority of anything...particularly when the majority is as aware as a 3rd-grade level sit-com can make 'em.

Republic-RATS and Democrans. Same club. Same bunch of folks. All the democrats ever did for me or anyone else for that matter -in my lifetime - was to give false hope, and maybe a few years breathing room before the Reps came back and torched it all. No social progress can be measured in any kind since Roosevelt did the welfare thing, and they've sure screwed that one up; instead of spending money on people, they spend it on legislation, more laws to enhance the lifestyles of the rich, more cops, and more prisons. And of course WAR!!

The republicans and democrats are just like the old 'good cop, bad cop' scenario. Right now we got the 'bad cop.' But the 'good cop' is waiting to step up and accept the cheers for their 'victory' over the 'bad.'

I for one am tired of voting for the lesser of evils. I don't want to vote for ANY EVILS AT ALL!

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #22 posted by FoM on August 05, 2006 at 12:19:14 PT
Whig
I wish we didn't have to pay taxes. We all would be so much further ahead if we didn't. As far as voting I don't know. I never was interested in politics. I never gave politics the time of day. I only want to vote now to make the republicans go away as far as possible because I am angry with them for what has happened.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #21 posted by whig on August 05, 2006 at 12:02:11 PT
FoM
What's really offensive to me is the idea that people should have to participate in or support a government which actively tries to cage them and harm them in many ways. If we aren't allowed our medicine and we aren't allowed to practice our religion without the risk of arrest, even though we aren't hurting or threatening anyone, why the heck should we be expected to vote or pay taxes. Please explain that.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #20 posted by FoM on August 05, 2006 at 11:15:36 PT
Whig
I wish we all could see eye to eye on issues but it will never happen since we all are different. What's important to one person can mean nothing to another. If I had a choice I wouldn't want any of my tax money to go to fueling the war machine. I would rather my tax dollars go to helping poor children get a better education so they can climb up and get out of poverty if they try hard. I want people to have health care and not die because they can't afford a treatment that's necessary. I would like to see new sources of fuel and co-op farms so people can grow their own healthy vegetables. I want people to be able to afford a home of their own too.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #19 posted by whig on August 05, 2006 at 10:50:14 PT
FoM
I've thought a lot about the idea of subscription government, where you decide whether and to which provider of social and protection services to belong to. I think this can work at least as far as some things, and does anyhow, in the form of insurance. The problem of course is that insurance companies can be unscrupulous and unless there is some oversight it could get out of control and I could see protection services shaking people down.

Really the best solution is what Secession.net advocates which is that individual counties or communities would subscribe themselves or confederate to provide these services. Then there is at least some bargaining power and the local government can be responsible for overseeing the contracts and making sure that it is respected. It is easy for a protection service to shake down any one person but it is hard for them to threaten an entire community especially if there are agreements in place with the neighboring communities, it would provide some counterbalance.

Of course that does mean if you live in a "red" community and you don't like the local government, you have to take the next step and secede individually or else you could consider moving or trying to change it. At least you might have some influence at the local level, even if you had to go door to door and talk to your neighbors it is at least possible. When the government is very large and far away it is impossible to really change anything as a single person, and the people with more money and influence will always have more power.

This actually is what I advocate as the best of all imperfect solutions to the need for government versus the unmitigated disaster that is the nation state. It's why I don't participate in the present system, I don't subscribe to it. I am not a nihilist, I don't want to destroy what exists, but I do want to replace it with something better -- maybe it won't happen in my lifetime but maybe it will. Ironically the Republicans are doing a lot to help make it be a real possibility by wrecking the current state, and there are some of them that are doing that intentionally and I could even agree with them if they weren't hurting people to do so. But I cannot subscribe to violence, I cannot advocate intentional infliction of suffering on anyone. I want this to happen peacefully and I don't want to participate in any other approach.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #18 posted by FoM on August 05, 2006 at 08:51:50 PT
Secession.net
I checked out the link and I have wondered why we don't split the USA. How can a country as big as ours try to make everyone think the same and have the same moral values as each other? I have never understood it. My question is I live in a red state so what would happen to someone like me if we got cut off and made red? I could never live like a red state and I sure don't have any desire to move. How could it work and I ask this seriously. Could we be ruled by having a blue or red card or something?

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #17 posted by mayan on August 05, 2006 at 03:40:25 PT
whig
Thanks for that link. I can definitely see some states attempting to secede in the very near future, regardless of if we get Hillary or Frist or whichever RepubliCrat for president. Of course, the fascists will start a civil war to "preserve" the Union.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #16 posted by whig on August 05, 2006 at 00:15:56 PT
OT: Secession.net
A site worth checking out:

http://secession.net/

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #15 posted by whig on August 04, 2006 at 22:00:08 PT
Max
You have mail.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #14 posted by ekim on August 04, 2006 at 19:28:42 PT
please Peter Benjamin Lewis cover MMJ paitents
go to bat for them and stop this zero thc BS

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #13 posted by Wayne on August 04, 2006 at 19:15:24 PT
Progressive
I must say I'm a proud Progressive customer, for 3 years straight now. They came through for me in the clutch when my car got mangled by a hit and run driver, and my premium didn't go up at all.

I've always admired Mr. Lewis for doing good with his fortunes...and the noble and attainable causes that he supports. I can't imagine why O'Reilly and the right-wing crowd vilify him so much, I'd like to see what causes THEIR fortunes are going towards.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #12 posted by Max Flowers on August 04, 2006 at 17:21:16 PT
whig
Yes, smog inspections are the only worry here as far as inspections go. Unless your car has bad rings or valves or something, passing should not be any problem, but what sux is that it costs $40 extra or something like that (in addition to DMV costs) when it comes up.

And yeah, car insurance costs are bad news. Guess I'm used to it. I think we can, in part, thank the hordes of people who pull insurance frauds every year.

Glad to hear you got your car though, and that things are starting to come together for you guys...

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #11 posted by FoM on August 04, 2006 at 12:34:06 PT
Whig
Thank you. I remember my son didn't like something about having a car in California but I don't remember what it was except it cost him money.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #10 posted by whig on August 04, 2006 at 12:16:23 PT
FoM
Mrs. Whig says she believes there is just an annual smog-check out here.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #9 posted by FoM on August 04, 2006 at 12:02:06 PT
Whig
Do you have car inspections out there? We did when we lived in PA every 6 months. It got really expensive. We don't have any required inspections in Ohio.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #8 posted by FoM on August 04, 2006 at 11:57:57 PT
Insurance
We really have old vehicles and are insured thru AARP.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #7 posted by whig on August 04, 2006 at 11:40:27 PT
Max
One bit of sticker shock, we just got our car out here finally (today!) and renewed our insurance with Progressive -- the premium is double what we used to pay in Pennsylvania. It's not just Progressive though, we checked and all the car insurance companies charge way more out here.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #6 posted by Max Flowers on August 04, 2006 at 11:29:36 PT
Progressive is progressive-owned?
After learning this, I may just switch to Progressive soon...

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #5 posted by FoM on August 04, 2006 at 09:18:36 PT
Progressive
I can't go with this company because we sued them but if you are on their side they will fight for you. That was before the Internet.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #4 posted by Toker00 on August 04, 2006 at 09:15:20 PT
Contributions
It really is nice to know a portion of my insurance payments are going to our cause, as well as my direct contributions to DPAlliance. Thanks, Mr. Lewis. A satisfied PROGRESSIVE customer.

Toke.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #3 posted by FoM on August 04, 2006 at 09:00:16 PT
Progressive
We had to fight Progressive after a truck accident. We won an ok settlement but boy do they send in lawyers. They might be good but in court they are really aggressive but I guess most companies don't want to pay out what is due.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #2 posted by whig on August 04, 2006 at 08:46:29 PT
Progressive
Today, I'm glad to say we have Progressive Insurance on our car.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #1 posted by Truth on August 04, 2006 at 08:07:52 PT
Peter Benjamin Lewis
A true American hero.

[ Post Comment ]

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