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New Jersey Governor Proposes Marijuana Tax Hike

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) wants to hike a special tax on cannabis from $2.50 to $15 an ounce to fund social service and violence intervention programs with tens of millions of dollars in new revenue.

“In just five years, cannabis has gone from destroying lives—in the form of excessive criminal sentences—to helping save lives,” Murphy said in his budget address Tuesday.

Murphy’s plan comes about two months after the state Cannabis Regulatory Commission hiked the tax from $1.24 to $2.50 an ounce in December.

The tax, known as the social equity excise fee, is paid by cannabis cultivators. The money goes to a dedicated fund for social equity programs and investing in communities hurt by marijuana prohibition, and another portion is allocated to programs to divert youth from cannabis.

As of August 2024, the tax has brought in more than $6 million, which is all sitting unspent, according to the cannabis agency. That money must be allocated by the Legislature and governor under the state’s cannabis legalization law.

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Ohio Senators Approve Bill To Scale Back Voter-Approved Marijuana Legalization Law By Reducing Home Grow And Adding New Penalties

An Ohio Senate committee has approved a bill to make significant changes to the state’s voter-approved marijuana law—by halving the number of plants adults could grow, adding certain criminal penalties and removing select social equity provisions, among other revisions.

On Wednesday, the Senate General Government Committee passed the legislation from Sen. Steve Huffman (R) in a 5-2 vote, sending it to the Rules and Reference Committee to prepare it for a full Senate vote that come come as early as Wednesday afternoon.

This comes about a week after the panel held a hearing on the proposal, taking testimony and adopting a substitute version. On Wednesday, the panel adopted an additional substitute that would clarify that THC limits per package don’t apply to products intended for combustion, prevent people with felony convictions from obtaining a marijuana license and restore the ability of level two cultivators to expand their operations to 15,000 square feet.

In its initial form, the bill would have raised the state’s excise tax on marijuana products from 10 percent to 15 percent and also changed how taxes are redistributed to local governments. But those tax provisions were removed at the previous hearing in light of separate plans to adjust the tax rate in broader budget legislation.

Democratic members of the committee offered a series of amendments, several of which sought to dial back some of the proposed changes to the voter-approved law. All were defeated by the panel’s Republican majority, however.

For example, the substitute approved in committee would lower the maximum household plant limit for home cultivation from 12 to six. An amendment was offered to “compromise” by raising that to nine.

Huffman made the motion to table that amendment, saying that “this bill is all about being reasonable and appropriate,” and the legislation “initially started with two plants, and we compromised up to six and I believe that continuing as six is reasonable and appropriate.”

Under current law as approved by voters in 2023, adults can grow up to 12 cannabis plants at home.

Reform advocates oppose the legislation because, in addition to halving the home cultivation limit, they say it would recriminalize the sharing of cannabis between adults, smoking or vaping in someone’s own back yard and transporting unopened edibles in a vehicle. It also would eliminate non-discrimination protections to ensure cannabis consumers aren’t denied child custody, access to medical care and public benefits.

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Marijuana Possession Would Be Decriminalized In Texas Under Lawmaker’s New Bill

Low-level marijuana possession would be decriminalized in Texas if a new bill filed this week by a key House leader is enacted.

The measure, HB 3242, from Rep. Joe Moody (D), would make simple possession of up to an ounce of cannabis flower a Class C misdemeanor—explicitly removing the risk of arrest and incarceration.

Class C misdemeanors are punishable by a fine of up to $500, with no possibility of jail time. Currently simple possession of cannabis is a Class B misdemeanor, which carries penalties of up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine.

Moody’s proposal, introduced on Monday, is the latest of nearly two dozen cannabis-related bills filed so far in Texas for the current legislative session. Various other measures would legalize adult-use marijuana, prohibit certain hemp-derived products, remove criminal penalties for cannabis possession and adjust the state’s existing medical marijuana laws, among others.

Heather Fazio, director of the Texas Cannabis Policy Center, has been tracking legislation in the state and applauded the introduction of HB 3242 by Moody, who was tapped by House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R) to serve as House speaker pro tempore.

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After Romanian Deep State CANCELLED Presidential Elections, the Leading Candidate, Anti-Globalist Calin Georgescu Is ARRESTED and Taken for Questioning

After Romania CANCELLED the first round of elections, now the dictatorial measures escalated with the arrest of the favorite Presidential candidate, the anti-globalist leader Calin Georgescu.

Georgescu was stopped in traffic and taken in for questioning by the General Prosecutors Office over alleged ‘illegal campaign financing’.

Sputnik reported:

“The Georgescu saga has plagued Romania and its EU and NATO overlords since the shock cancelation of elections in December, which the candidate won with a plurality in the first round.

Georgescu has asked sharp questions about the benefits for Romania of membership in NATO, critiqued the US missile base deployed on Romanian territory targeting Russia, criticized the flow of NATO arms to Kiev via Romania, and predicted that Ukraine would be split after the conflict.”

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Sacrificing Truth on Leviathan’s Altar

Last Sunday, 60 Minutes featured tyrannical German prosecutors boasting about persecuting private citizens who made comments that officialdom disapproved. Three prosecutors explained how the government was entitled to launch pre-dawn raids and lock up individuals who criticized politicians, complained about immigrant crime waves, or otherwise crossed the latest revised boundary lines of acceptable thoughts.

In a craven slant that would have cheered any mid-twentieth century European dictator, 60 Minutes glorified the crackdown: “Germany is trying to bring some civility to the world wide web by policing it in a way most Americans could never imagine in an effort to protect discourse.” Nothing “protects discourse” like a jackboot kick aside the head of someone who insulted a German politician on Facebook, right? Mocking German leaders is punished like heresy was punished 500 years ago—though no one has been publicly torched yet.

Do the priggish German prosecutors realize that they are the latest incarnation of nineteenth-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel? Hegel declared: “Men are as foolish as to forget, in their enthusiasm for liberty of conscience and political freedom, the truth which lies in power.” Hegel bluntly equated government and truth: “For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements.” Hegel probably did more to propel modern totalitarianism than perhaps any other philosopher.

Unfortunately, many Americans favor the US government becoming a Ministry of Truth like the German government. Fifty-five percent of American adults support government suppression of “false information,” according to a 2023 poll. But other polls show that only 20 percent trust the government to do the right thing most of the time. So why would people trust dishonest officials to forcibly eradicate “false information”? Did some people skip logic class, or what? A September 2023 poll revealed that almost half of Democrats believed that free speech should be legal “only under certain circumstances”—perhaps only when a rascally Republican is president?

Hegelian notions of “Government = Truth” propelled censorship here in recent years. Three years ago, Americans learned they lived under a Disinformation Governance Board with a ditzy Disinformation Czar who boasted of graduating from Bryn Mawr University. A public backlash led to the board’s termination but federal censors quickly and secretly resumed their sway over the internet.

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FIGHTING ELECTION FRAUD – BIG UPDATE: 20 Ohio Counties Launch Investigations into Suspicious Progressive Group that Allegedly Turned In Piles of Phony Voter Registrations

In August 2024, The Gateway Pundit’s Patty McMurray first reported on a Democrat-funded voter registration group accused of turning in hundreds of suspected fraudulent voter registrations—this time in Ohio!

** You can read the full TGP August report here.**

The Gateway Pundit discovered that a group called Black Fork Strategies, which operates across the state of Ohio, was being investigated by the Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose over another alleged fraudulent voter registration campaign.

On their website, Black Fork Strategies brags about registering a stunning 125,000+ voters in Ohio since 2018.

The Hamilton County Board of Elections has turned over several suspicious voter registration applications Ohio Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division.

According to Hamilton County Board of Elections members, the voter registrations in question were recently turned in by the self-described “progressive” voter registration organization Black Fork Strategies.

In the video below, Hamilton County Director of Elections Sherry Poland discusses three issues she identified with voter registrations tied to Black Fork Strategies, which she claims is running voter registration drives throughout the state of Ohio.

In one example, Ms. Poland explained how they received a voter registration from Black Fork Strategies, and  the name of the registrant was ‘Henry Kissinger.’

“We did do a match, the voter registration database as compared to the DMV database, and it was a mismatch on every item listed, any identifying information listed on this registration form. So we again asked Black Fork Strategies for the canvasser who submitted this registration form, and that is on your summary sheet.”

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On Nuclear War and Expensive Pennies

Trump’s assault on USAID is more than an exposure of its alignment with far left narratives. It raises the question: How far will he go in dealing with its perceived waste and abuse?

It looks like he won’t be satisfied with merely slashing jobs and the agency’s budget.  Republican Representatives Chip Roy and Majorie Taylor Greene have already introduced legislation to permanently abolish USAID.  And what about this proposed legislation would make it permanent, should it become law?

Absolutely nothing.

Government has been at odds with its Constitution since the establishment of the First Bank of the United States in 1791.  In a letter to President Washington Thomas Jefferson said the Twelfth Amendment should be the final word on the issue of a national bank, that “to take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”  Twenty years later Congress failed to renew its charter but only by the tie-breaking vote of VP George Clinton.  President Madison reluctantly signed the bill authorizing the creation of The Second Bank of the United States in 1816, President Jackson fought to prevent renewing its charter in 1836, but the final blow came in 1913 when President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve into law, and monetary recklessness proceeded uninterrupted, often with favor.

If the central bank’s history is a bellwether, and it’s one of countless examples, nothing exists to prevent USAID II being passed by some future administration.

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Top Israeli Calls for the Killing of All Palestinian Adults in Gaza: Report

Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of Israel’s Knesset, sounded like a Fox News host on Sunday when he called for the murder of every adult male in Gaza.

The New Arab reported that Vaturi, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, indicated to an Israeli radio station that there are no innocent Palestinians and that the IDF is being too “considerate” in the enclave.

“We need to separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate,” he said, calling them “scum and subhumans.”

He also called on the IDF to turn the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank into Gaza.

Vaturi’s comments — if they were directed at any other group of people in the world — would be met with scorn and disbelief, but his position is the same as many politicians in Washington and commentators on network news channels.

Martin Oliner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s appointee on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, penned a recent column claiming that Gazans are fundamentally evil and unworthy of mercy.

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 German Leftist Party Chants Antifa Slogan Before Entering Parliament

Members of the far-left Die Linke party proudly chanted an Antifa slogan before they entered the Bundestag parliament in Berlin after the German elections.

At one point, Die Linke (The Left) looked like they wouldn’t even make it into parliament by failing to achieve 5 per cent of the vote, but a late rally driven by fearmongering over the Afd helped them to garner 8.8 per cent thanks to a last minute surge.

Left leaders Jan van Aken and Ines Schwerdtner and former chancellor candidate Heidi Reichinnek gathered for a photo-op with other MPs to chant, “alerta, alerta, antifascista!” outside the Bundestag.

“The phrase — “attention, attention, anti-fascists” — originated in 1920s Italy among leftist opponents of the Mussolini regime before being picked up in the Weimar Republic by the German leftist-extremist Antifascist Action group, the predecessor of the modern Antifa movement. The phrase is often heard at Antifa rallies worldwide to this day,” reports Breitbart.

In other words, literal Communists who support a movement that has been defined as a domestic extremist organization by some countries now have a foothold in German politics.

Die Linke was the most popular party among voters between the ages of 18 and 24 at 25 per cent, while the young female vote was crucial to them entering parliament.

34 per cent of women who voted in that age bracket cast their ballot for Die Linke, with their nearest challengers being the Afd on just 14 per cent in that demographic.

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