Well, Governor Do-You-Know-Who-My-Daddy-Is is at it again. When I returned to Nebraska from the failed experiment of living in Texas for a few years, I took one look around and realized the state I returned to was not the same state I left. In Texas I had Rick Perry to deal with, but even that shiny turd is no match for the pure hypocrisy, ignorance, and sadism of the Ricketts family. Imagine my horror when I returned to my home state for some much-needed peace and respite only to discover Joe Ricketts had bought his son Peter the Governorship like other people would buy their kid a 99-cent fake sheriff’s badge. Joe had to buy some sort of position for the poor guy: rumor has it that when Peter was working at TD Ameritrade they had to keep moving him from position to position and calling it a promotion because nobody wanted him fumbling cluelessly around in their department.
Speaking of TD Ameritrade, you know they make money off weed, right? While Peter’s jackbooted thugs are out on I-80 pulling over and terrorizing anyone who isn’t a straight-looking white guy for “following too closely” on the off chance they might have some plants and money that could be stolen by the state, Joe, Pete, and everyone else at TD Ameritrade is cackling and rolling around in the cash they make off weed. We’ll get to all that in a minute.
But first let’s back up a bit. Way back on April 28, 2015, newly installed Governor Peter Ricketts posted this garbage screed of nonsense in which he refers to marijuana as a dangerous drug on his Facebook page, and it stays on his official .gov page to this day despite being mostly fear-mongering bullshit. I found an email I wrote on May 1, 2015 to a journalist at the Scottsbluff Star Herald in reference to an article he had written about a “doctor” who had given a presentation in Scottsbluff and who spread exactly the same lies Peter Ricketts tells about marijuana. It took me about 15 seconds to google this “doctor” and discover he is a “doctor” like Dr. Phil, Dr. Demento, and Dr. Feelgood are doctors. The original article has since disappeared, and I didn’t make note of the “doctor’s” name in my email. Anyone remember that? I remember the “doctor” told everyone in Scottsbluff that weed causes heart disease and then the next day Pete declared May Red Meat month or some such typical hypocritical bullshit. You know what ACTUALLY causes heart disease? Yes, red meat.
Since then, despite the rest of the nation moving forward into reality, Peter has only doubled down on his efforts to keep cannabis out of reach of the people who would greatly benefit from it. He has “partnered with” (I’m assuming this means “gives his allowance to”) a group called Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which at one point was staffed by Ricketts’s Nazi Bennett Bressman. Bressman supposedly has since been removed from the organization. Why would a white supremacist care about making sure weed stayed illegal? Watch the excellent Netflix / Fab 5 Freddy documentary Grass is Greener which does a great job of spelling out just exactly how racist the war on drugs is and always has been. You certainly won’t feel so cute about all the white boomers getting rich off legal weed right now while thousands of people of color are doing years in prison for the equivalent of a joint or two.
But back to America’s biggest drug dealer, TD Ameritrade. TD Ameritrade currently shows 52 different stocks they trade that profit directly from the cannabis industry.
This helpful article even tells you you can buy just about every marijuana stock, mutual fund or ETF with TD Ameritrade, including all four of the biggest players in the Canadian cannabis industry. So weed is good enough for Peter to make money off of, but if anyone wants to use it for pain control, Parkinson’s related tremor control, nausea, glaucoma, PTSD, or any of the other zillion uses of this natural medicine, Peter just says no. Because not only is Peter making money off cannabis, he is also making money off all those icky opioids he and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson are so, so worried about. I mean, the guy will drink a beer to protest beer taxes despite the many actual proven dangers of alcohol, but if a desperate family brings their suffering child to him to beg him to let them have access to the only medicine that helps with their child’s seizures he will unceremoniously show them the door. Don’t even get me started on the nightmare that is Nebraska’s prison system and how Peter and his gestapo are ruining lives and making money off of that, too.
Yesterday the Governor without any clothes released yet another screed of nonsense in which he provides shaky “evidence” of the evils of weed. I was going to thoroughly break it all down, but does it even matter? I mean the very first sentence of this nonsense propaganda is: “Several states across the country have allowed various forms of marijuana in defiance of federal law and at great risk to public health”. Um, there are only four states in which cannabinoids are still illegal. Even Texas and Oklahoma have legalized weed. So if that is the foot he starts out on, the whole bullshit screed can be thrown in the trash along with everything else that comes out of his office.
States Where Cannabis Is Illegal
- Idaho
- Kansas
- Nebraska
- South Dakota
This week our Legislature will be debating Senator Wishart’s bill LB110 to legalize medical marijuana. It is long past time for the people to be heard. Write or call your Senator today and tell them to stand up to Peter’s tyranny and legalize cannabis.
