Now I understand why Jimmy Buffett is doing a fundraiser for Kinky Friedman
- From: Patrick1765@xxxxxxx
- Date: 15 Sep 2006 09:41:04 -0700
Friedman Says He'd Legalize Pot in Texas
Sep 14 9:56 PM US/Eastern
By MICHAEL GRACZYK
Associated Press Writer
AUSTIN, Texas
Kinky Friedman says he favors legalizing marijuana to keep nonviolent
users out of prison. If Texas elects him governor, he says, he'll try
to get locked-up pot users released to make room for more violent
criminals.
"I think that's long overdue," Friedman told The Associated Press in an
interview Wednesday. "I think everybody knows what (U.S. Sen.) John
McCain said is right: We've pretty well lost the war on drugs doing it
the way we're doing it. Drugs are more available and cheaper than ever
before. What we're doing is not working."
Friedman, the often irreverent singer, entertainer and mystery writer,
is running as an independent in a bid to unseat Republican Gov. Rick
Perry, and he's getting some serious attention.
He said he'd take a closer look at the use of the death penalty in
Texas, wants to clean house on the state's board and commissions and
would dump public school assessment tests, even if it costs the state
federal money.
On the death penalty, he said he would be more liberal with the
governor's authority to grant a one-time 30-day reprieve to condemned
killers.
"I would be careful killing a guy," he said. "I think there are people
who need to die, but the question I've asked mostly is: When was the
last time we've executed a rich man in Texas?"
He bristled at the criticism heaped on him after he called some
Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston "crackheads and thugs."
Friedman said Wednesday that his plan to give $100 million to Houston
to hire more police "was not in any way racist."
"How can you possibly regret that, telling the truth?" he asked. "I am
not a racist, I am a realist. In looking at the statistics, I know that
20 percent of the homicides in Houston have been committed by the
element in the evacuee population.
"I never said what color their skin was. I never said all evacuees are
crack dealers or crackheads. I'm smarter than that."
Also in the race for governor are Democrat Chris Bell, Libertarian
James Werner and another independent, Carole Strayhorn, the state
comptroller who won that office as a Republican.
As for Friedman, he said he doesn't like being called a politician.
"I don't mind being called a flip-flopper," he said, a description
Perry's campaign has placed on him. "I think we actually could use a
flip-flopper as governor because a flip-flopper is a human being open
to change, and God knows change is what we need now."
He acknowledged that the Texas governor's authority is limited compared
with executives in other states but said he would use the bully pulpit
to cajole legislators. He doesn't trust them, he said, adding: "I do
not trust the media either."
"Right now the lobbyists are leading us. We have a lack of leadership,
a vacuum," he said.
One of the Texas governor's few powerful roles is in appointing state
board members, and Friedman said he would replace as many as he could,
including regents at the University of Texas and Texas A&M.
"You clean house," he said. "You get the old farts out of there. You
put a bunch of young people in and you put a bunch of people who care
about Texas. It's pretty simple."
If he wins _ most polls show Perry leading in the race but not running
away with it _ Friedman said one of the first calls he'd make as
governor would be to Robert Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam in
Houston, who he said "the Lord put in my path at the Austin airport
earlier this year."
"He's a very visionary man," Friedman said. "You would think we're at
opposite poles, but we're not. That's the guy I would tap. I would tap
him to help us get those gangsters and thugs and crackheads out of
there."
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