Bill Maher calls out Jeb Bush for marijuana hypocrisy
Bill Maher hit Presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama hard for not being more progressive on marijuana given their past use. He however slammed Jeb Bush harder than them all for his degree of hypocrisy which showed a complete lack of ethics.
“When Jeb Bush was at prep school, he was apparently not just a pothead but a dealer,” Bill Maher said. “But he dismisses that by saying ‘Back then I was a cynical little turd at a cynical school.’ OK. But then when you became a governor of a state you insisted on mandatory sentences for drug crimes and a policy of jail only, no treatment for drug users. Except when it was your daughter. When you made an exception. Wow that sounds like something a cynical turd would do.”
It is well known that Governor Jeb Bush’s daughter had a drug problem. At the same time his daughter was getting treatment for her drug abuse, Jeb Bush was opposing a proposition that would allow the masses that same treatment.
The proposed amendment to Florida’s Constitution, called the Right to Treatment and Rehabilitation for Nonviolent Drug Offenses, hasn’t yet made it through all the legal hurdles it needs to before it can appear before voters this fall.
But the Bush administration is so concerned about the measure that state officials started holding strategy meetings last fall at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to figure out how to defeat it.
The measure would give certain first- and second-time drug offenders the right to treatment.
It wouldn’t apply to people arrested for drug dealing or violent crime. In some cases, people who have histories of violence or drug dealing could get treatment instead of prison, as long as their conviction is at least 5 years old.
Jim McDonough, Bush’s drug czar, calls the proposal “the Right to Abuse Drugs in Florida.” Bush says it would “cause confusion.” And FDLE Commissioner Tim Moore calls it “de facto drug legalization.”
Note the standard wordsmithing that the GOP is famous for when they want to kill a popular policy. Helping drug users becomes “the Right to Abuse Drugs.”
As Bill Maher said in his ‘New Rules’, Jeb Bush was not only a heavy user of marijuana, on at least one occasion he was a dealer as well. According to a recent Jeb Bush profile in the Boston Globe a friend of Jeb Bush interviewed said the following.
“The first time I really got stoned was in Jeb’s room,” Tibbetts said. “He had a portable stereo with removable speakers. He put on Steppenwolf for me.” As the rock group’s signature song, “Magic Carpet Ride,’’ blared from the speakers, Tibbetts said he smoked hash with Bush.
He said he once bought hashish from Bush but stressed, in a follow-up e-mail, “Please bear in mind that I was seeking the hash. It wasn’t as if he was a dealer, though he did suggest I take up cigarettes so that I could hold my hits better, after that first joint.”
If Jeb Bush was an average American youth let a lone a youth of color, he would be rotting in the penitentiary. One hopes the media will quit the honeymooning and report the hypocrisy of the man. It is an important dichotomy to be explored.