Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz Tosses $50K To Prop 19
Legalization David Downs — Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 11:31 AM
Facebook's bi-polar relationship with California's Prop 19 activists might get a little better this week. The site is both crucial to the Yes on 19 campaign, yet has rejected their ads. Now one of Facebook's own is giving Prop 19 some cold hard cash. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz - who Forbes says is worth $1.4 billion - has kicked in $50,000 to the Yes on 19 effort to decriminalize cannabis in California, according to mandatory late contribution reports.
Moskovitz was the CTO and later VP of Engineering for Facebook, the sizzling hot web site and subject of new film The Social Network, where actor Joseph Mazzello plays his character.
Moskovitz attended Harvard University for two years before moving to Palo Alto, CA. to work full-time at Facebook. He's also the co-founder of San Francisco tech company Asana. Moskovitz now ranks among Prop 19's biggest individual funders, a campaign notable for its lack of big-name donors like anti-prohibition activist George Soros.
Once thought to be a million-dollar affair, Prop 19 has emerged as the low-budget action thriller of the 2010 California election. According to a Field Poll, a startling 84 percent of the electorate is aware of the measure, a figure well more than twice as high as the second best-known proposition on the ballot.
Both sides have received and spent fractions of the millions of dollars usually spent on ballot measures, yet a war of words rages daily in the press. As absentee voters begin to receive their ballots in the mail, the initiative is pulling ahead in most polls, on course to win by a small but significant margin, assuming voters show up Nov. 3 2. Register to vote here.
Local would-be cultivator Jeff Wilcox also chipped in another $25,000 to the Yes on 19 campaign, and smaller amounts of late contributions have been coming in from Prop 19's creator Richard Lee of Oakland. Lee had told Legalization Nation that he was done spending on Prop 19, but politics, like Facebook, can prove addictive.
On the No side, several politicians and lobbyists of all stripes have contributed to the No on 19 campaign, run by professional lobbyist John Lovell out of Sacramento. Aspiring sheriffs for Burlingame and Fresno, along with a San Mateo police lobby, and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians have kicked in $91,000 to the No on 19 campaign this October. The yes campaign is on track to have out-raised the no side by a factor of 10:1 mostly through small donations and individuals, instead of lobbies.
Comments (10)
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How did this (Prop 19) originate in the first place?
We trace proposition 19 to Oakland, California to a place called Oaksterdam University, and Oaksterdam University where you can learn everything there is to know about growing marijuana extracting THC from marijuana, and also the politics and laws regarding marijuana. It was founded by a man named Richard Lee. He’s been a pro legalizing marijuana activists for the past 20 years. I had a chance to sit down with him and ask him why he founded Oaksterdam University , why he got proposition 19 on the ballot. He told a story that dates back 20 years ago he was involved in a serious crime and that’s what got him thinking there ought not to be laws against simple possession of marijuana. Here is a clip of Richard Lee. http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/oct/08/prop-…
RICHARD LEE: “Well, I was the victim of a carjacking and then the police took a long time to respond and that made me as mad as the carjacking. So I started thinking about how the police were wasting their time looking for people like me instead of the real criminals, the real sociopaths and predators out there. So that is how I got started working towards ending cannabis prohibition.”
It looks like SB 1449 already solved Richard’s problem. Now, this is just a pure entrepreneurial venture for Richard Lee with his fledging Oaksterdam University. Richard Lee will be the next billionaire.
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THANK YOU, DUSTIN!
Cannabis should have never been illegal in the first place. Its "illegality" is not based on any science, just on lies, distortions of fact, and blatant racism. The truth is that Cannabis is less physically addictive than caffeine, and that it may also serve as a much "safer alternative" to alcohol and/or hard drugs. It is fully recognized that Cannabis use SUPPRESSES VIOLENT BEHAVIOR, and that Cannabis may be used to help not only treat, but to also prevent some devastating illnesses as cancer and Alzheimer's disease. I worked in addiction medicine for years, and Cannabis use was the least of my problems, so I do recognize that classifying Cannabis in the same group as heroin and cocaine is one of the greatest scientific fallacies of our times. The so-called "gateway" drug theory was found to be totally invalid, and a very recent large study called this "theory" half-baked. Cannabis criminalization leads to horrendous Civil Rights violations around the country. YES on Cali Prop.19!
Not to mention, it's a LOT harder to grow cannabis than any old gardenia or daisy plant. "Front yards full of pot" made me lol hard. mjs123 clearly has no idea what s/he's talking about.
mjs123:
Where (or indeed IF) you may be able to grow marijuana in neighborhoods will be determined by property owners and by local city governments. Apparently you cant read either.
As for your "front yards full of pot" fear, I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine named logic. Logic, mjs123. Mjs123, logic. Believe it or not, very few people interested in growing their own pot in the first place would commit all that effort to a space in their front yard where their crop would be ripped off at any odd hour day or night.
Did this really never cross your mind while you were writing that post?
Justina:
NEWS FLASH - Because of prohibition (and the fact that drug dealers dont ask for ID) kids can get marijuana a lot easier than they can get alcohol. No one wants more young people to be smoking marijuana, but prohibition has SPIKED use rates among teens- it hasnt curtailed it in the least.
Sadly, it seems that the LEOs and anti-19 church types have been concern trolling a little too much over the past while. We've been able to detect the patterns and the talking points. 'Dragonfy' is DEA...
$70,000 total donated to Prop 19 by Dustin so people have the ability to grow marijuana in private residences.
"With Prop 19, one may grow marijuana at a private residence in a space of up to 25 square feet (2.3 m2) for personal use."
"Private Residence is a property owned or leased by an individual or family member for the use of themselves and/or family members requiring a supportive living environment."
Hey, the front yard is part of the private residence, so if Prop 19 passes, legally, anyone can plant marijuana in their front yards as say part of landscaping, and the side yards outside the fence can have marijuana plants for landscaping for all the children in the neighborhood to pick and consume.
That's controlling and regulating? People don't read anymore. Prop 19 is worse than a Nigerian scam that you get in your e-mail. Just because the title says Control, Regulate and Tax does not really mean the Proposition controls, regulates and tax marijuana as it should. Californians can't read. Justina is right. That $70,000 could have been put to good use to donate to education. Instead, Dustin wants more stoned children who cant' read.
Prop 19 stoner advocates boasts that Prop 19 will control access of pot to those under 21 years of age like alcohol. With Prop 19, this plant can be planted everywhere easily accessible to anyone under 21 years of age. Do you have alcohol and cigarettes growing out of everyone's yards - front yard, back yard or side yard? No. Prop 19 is written by a pot user for pot users with utter lack of concern for others. If you do not get what's up with a pot users' altered mind, then you will be sucked into this poorly written proposition. It is not the end of the world if this proposition does not pass. Someone else will write a better one the next time around, hopefully at the Federal level.
He should have given to education instead like he did on the East Coast. We'll get further behind with more stoned school kids.
The election date is NOVEMBER 2, 2010 not the 3rd. I really hope that was not intentional. If you don't fix it we know it was.
That is a pretty big oversight wouldn't you say?
Millions of middle school children and high school kids should delete their Facebook accounts.
Are you Joking ??
Millions of middle school children and high school kids should delete their Facebook accounts. This is a bad influence. They should flock to GOOGLE ME once it comes out. Switch to tumblr.com for now.
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