Tag: democrats

Tennessee lawmaker used federal funds to pay for wedding, lavish lifestyle, feds say

A Tennessee state senator was charged with swindling $600,000 in federal funds to pay for her wedding and finance a lavish lifestyle, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

From 2015 to 2019, state Sen. Katrina Robinson is accused of stealing the money that was granted to The Healthcare Institute — a company she directed, according to prosecutors.

In addition to covering her wedding costs, Robinson, a Democrat from a Memphis district elected in 2018, is charged with using the funds to pay for her honeymoon and pay legal fees for her divorce, the feds charge.

With the stolen money the lawmaker also paid for her daughter’s 2016 Jeep Renegade, home improvements, a $500 Louis Vuitton handbag and invested in a snow cone business run by her children, prosecutors and the FBI said.

Robinson was charged with theft, embezzlement and wire fraud.

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Democrats Wimp Out on Federal Marijuana Legalization. Thanks, Joe Biden!

It’s 2020 and the leadership of the Democratic Party still cannot get it together on marijuana legalization, which two-thirds of Americans support.

Pew

According to Pew polling data, support for full legalization crossed the 50 percent threshold back in 2010 and has been growing ever since. Much like support for gay marriage recognition, this seems to be a permanent cultural shift in attitudes.

But unlike the Democratic Party’s embrace of gay marriage, its leadership cannot seem to line up behind marijuana legalization, even as the Black Lives Matter and criminal justice reform movements highlight precisely how the drug war has led to the overpolicing and harassment of black communities.

Marijuana Moment reports that on Monday the Democratic National Committee rejected an amendment to put a plank supporting marijuana legalization into the party’s platform. The final vote against, 50-106, is almost a perfect inversion of the two-thirds of the public who want legalization.

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A one-party system: House Democrats and military spending

I recorded how each House Democrat voted on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and on Mark Pocan’s amendment to the NDAA (that would have reduced military spending by 10 percent). Then I compared the results to how much each of them took from the defense industry so far in the 2020 election cycle (via OpenSecrets). Here’s what I found.

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