Day: September 23, 2009

The AP is reporting that the FBI is investigating the hanging death earlier this month of Bill Sparkman, 51, in rural Kentucky to determine if Sparkman, a census worker, was killed because he worked for the the U.S. government.

Sparkman’s body was found hanging in a tree in a cemetery in the Daniel Boone National Forest in southwest Kentucky on Sept. 12 with the word “FED” scrawled across his chest.

Sparkman, who also worked as a substitute teacher, was tasked by the Census Bureau with conducting door-to-door interviews in the area.

“Our job is to determine if there was foul play involved — and that’s part of the investigation — and if there was foul play involved, whether that is related to his employment as a Census worker,” FBI spokesman David Beyer said, according to the AP.

A spokeswoman for the Census Bureau’s regional headquarters in Charlotte said she was informed by the FBI that Sparkman’s death was being investigated as “an apparent homicide.”

Asked about the motive behind her son’s death, Henrie Sparkman told the AP: “I have my own ideas, but I can’t say them out loud. Not at this point… Right now, what I’m doing, I’m just waiting on the FBI to come to some conclusion.”

At this early stage, nothing can be ruled out including suicide and other more typical motives, but if it was murder, the mode of death is eerily reminiscent of lynchings during the Jim Crow era.

A report from local television offers insight into Sparkman’s character:

Concern… gripped the staff of Johnson Elementary last Thursday when Bill Sparkman didn’t show up for his after school work assignment.

“He was always where he was supposed to be, when he was supposed to be. He didn’t call..he didn’t show up,” said [school official] Gilbert Acciardo.

…Sparkman had recently beaten the odds in an often fatal form of cancer. That was while he spent two years earning a teaching degree while holding down two jobs. And school staff say he was always dependable. Then on Sunday his body was found more than 30 miles away in a rural part of Clay County.

“We have the same questions everybody else does — what happened to Mr. Sparkman? Because we know what police have told us,” said Acciardo.

On the website for Western Governors University, where Sparkman recently received his teaching degree, he offered a testimonial:

“To be here today at graduation at Western Governors University means so much; not only for the degree itself, but for everything that I learned towards the degree, for everything I’ve been going through for the last few years with the education and otherwise, it just means so much more for me to be here. I realized to be here today and to take part in the fulfillment of my goal, of a dream that has been building, it has just been super.”

The Census Bureau has suspended door-to-door canvasing in the area.

The Heritage Foundation, which is oxymoronically characterized as a “conservative think tank,” is collecting email addresses via an online poll. The wording of the questions is tilted to the extreme right, of course, with gems like “Do you think leftists in and outside of Congress will succeed in prosecuting Bush administration officials for “war crimes?” and “Do you think leftist policies are putting our free-market economic system in danger?”

So if you have a few spare moments, cruise over the Heritage Foundation site and take the poll.

via videosift.com

The state of California is having a tough time making ends meet these days, but proposals to legalize and tax marijuana, which could generate over a billion dollars in new revenue every year, have generally met with skepticism, derision and/or political cowardice by the state’s elected leaders.

In March, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco introduced AB 390, a bill that would legalize and tax marijuana. In July, the state tax board estimated that if Ammiano’s bill were to pass, it would produce $1.4 billion in new tax revenue every year.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, in his youth, was caught on tape toking a doob (see video above) opposes AB 390. Anticipating his veto, there has been little enthusiasm for the bill in the capitol.

Whiffing important but controversial legislation is standard operating procedure in Sacramento, so legalization activists have recently begun taking matters into their own hands. Two separate ballot initiatives that would legalize and tax marijuana have now been greenlighted for signature-gathering by the secretary of state’s office. Each will need to collect about 490,000 signatures by Feb. 18 in order to appear on the November 2010 ballot.

It is currently a felony to sell a joint or grow a marijuana plant in California. California NORML estimates that it costs the state $170.3 million annually to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate marijuana offenders. As part of their deal-making to close the state’s multi-billion dollar budget gap, the governor and the legislature are negotiating strategies that would dramatically reduce the state’s burgeoning prison population. And yet Schwarzenegger appears to be averse to releasing non-violent pot offenders as a group. Observers predict that the cuts in prison rolls may be made arbitrarily instead, which could lead to the release of serious offenders and leave harmless stoners behind bars.

Politically speaking, if one or both of the initiatives qualify for the ballot next November, it can be assumed either of them would draw out young people, civil libertarians and liberals, which would help the Democratic candidates, including ticket-toppers Sen. Barbara Boxer, who may be opposed by ousted Hewlett-Packard (and McCain campaign embarrassment) CEO Fiorina, and either San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has announced he’s running, or Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, who has not.

Finally, even if one or both of the ballot initiatives were to pass next year, marijuana possesion would still be illegal under federal law. In August, the Obama administration DEA made its first raids on the state’s legal medical marijuana industry.

From Will Ferrell and company at Funny or Die — the folks who brought you “Prop 8: The Musical” — comes this new parody of a political ad in support of the rights of hard-working, overpaid medical-insurance executives.

Cast includes Will Ferrell, “Madmen” star Jon Hamm, “Reno 911” co-creator Thomas Lennon, Masi Oka from “Heroes” and others.

Excerpts:

“People are saying a lot of mean things about health insurance companies and their executives and it’s gotta stop,” pleads Thomas Lennon.

“These great business men are American heroes,” says Linda Cardellini.

“So why is Obama trying to reform health care when insurance companies are doing just fine making billions of dollars in profit?” Will Ferrell asks.

The project was produced by Moveon.org.