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I agree that this is true. Good job, NYT. Remember to stand up for yourself!
The Truth About the Deficit
The Truth About the Deficit
YES! Magazine / By Fran Korten
10 Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics
It's not too late to limit or reverse the impact of the Supreme Court's disastrous decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Here's how.
January 28, 2010 |
The recent Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in politics just may be the straw that breaks the plutocracy's back.
Pro-democracy groups, business leaders, and elected representatives are proposing mechanisms to prevent or counter the millions of dollars that corporations can now draw from their treasuries to push for government action favorable to their bottom line. The outrage ignited by the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission extends to President Obama, who has promised that repairing the damage will be a priority for his administration.
But what can be done to limit or reverse the effect of the Court's decision? Here are 10 ideas:
1. Amend the U.S. Constitution to declare that corporations are not persons and do not have the rights of human beings. Since the First Amendment case for corporate spending as a free speech right rests on corporations being considered "persons," the proposed amendment would strike at the core of the ruling's justification. The push for the 28th Amendment is coming from the grassroots, where a prairie fire is catching on from groups such as Public Citizen, Voter Action, and the Campaign to Legalize Democracy.
2. Require shareholders to approve political spending by their corporations. Public Citizen and the Brennan Center for Justice are among the groups advocating this measure, and some members of Congress appear interested. Britain has required such shareholder approval since 2000.
3. Pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which provides federal financing for Congressional elections. This measure has the backing of organizations representing millions of Americans, including Moveon.org, the NAACP, the Service Employees International Union, and the League of Young Voters. Interestingly, the heads of a number of major corporations have also signed on, including those of Ben & Jerry's, Hasbro, Crate & Barrel, and the former head of Delta Airlines.
4. Give qualified candidates equal amounts of free broadcast air time for political messages. This would limit the advantages of paid advertisements in reaching the public through television where most political spending goes.
5. Ban political advertising by corporations that receive government money, hire lobbyists, or collect most of their revenue abroad. A fear that many observers have noted is that the Court's ruling will allow foreign corporations to influence U.S. elections. According to The New York Times, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) are exploring this option.
6. Impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) proposes this, calling it "The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act."
7. Prohibit companies from trading their stock on national exchanges if they make political contributions and expenditures. Another one from Grayson, which he calls "The Public Company Responsibility Act."
8. Require publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than for promoting their products. Grayson calls this "The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act."
9. Require the corporate CEO to appear as sponsor of commercials that his or her company pays for, another possibility from the Schumer-Van Hollen team, according to The New York Times
10. Publicize the reform options, inform the public of who is making contributions to whom, and activate the citizenry. If we are to safeguard our democracy, media must inform and citizens must act.
The measures listed above-and others that seek to reverse the dominance of money in our political system-will not be easy. But grassroots anger at this latest win for corporate power is running high. History shows that when the public is sufficiently aroused, actions that once seemed impossible can, in hindsight, seem inevitable.
Fran Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Fran is publisher of YES! Magazine.
--
10 Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics
It's not too late to limit or reverse the impact of the Supreme Court's disastrous decision in Citizens United v. FEC. Here's how.
January 28, 2010 |
The recent Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in politics just may be the straw that breaks the plutocracy's back.
Pro-democracy groups, business leaders, and elected representatives are proposing mechanisms to prevent or counter the millions of dollars that corporations can now draw from their treasuries to push for government action favorable to their bottom line. The outrage ignited by the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission extends to President Obama, who has promised that repairing the damage will be a priority for his administration.
But what can be done to limit or reverse the effect of the Court's decision? Here are 10 ideas:
1. Amend the U.S. Constitution to declare that corporations are not persons and do not have the rights of human beings. Since the First Amendment case for corporate spending as a free speech right rests on corporations being considered "persons," the proposed amendment would strike at the core of the ruling's justification. The push for the 28th Amendment is coming from the grassroots, where a prairie fire is catching on from groups such as Public Citizen, Voter Action, and the Campaign to Legalize Democracy.
2. Require shareholders to approve political spending by their corporations. Public Citizen and the Brennan Center for Justice are among the groups advocating this measure, and some members of Congress appear interested. Britain has required such shareholder approval since 2000.
3. Pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which provides federal financing for Congressional elections. This measure has the backing of organizations representing millions of Americans, including Moveon.org, the NAACP, the Service Employees International Union, and the League of Young Voters. Interestingly, the heads of a number of major corporations have also signed on, including those of Ben & Jerry's, Hasbro, Crate & Barrel, and the former head of Delta Airlines.
4. Give qualified candidates equal amounts of free broadcast air time for political messages. This would limit the advantages of paid advertisements in reaching the public through television where most political spending goes.
5. Ban political advertising by corporations that receive government money, hire lobbyists, or collect most of their revenue abroad. A fear that many observers have noted is that the Court's ruling will allow foreign corporations to influence U.S. elections. According to The New York Times, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) are exploring this option.
6. Impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) proposes this, calling it "The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act."
7. Prohibit companies from trading their stock on national exchanges if they make political contributions and expenditures. Another one from Grayson, which he calls "The Public Company Responsibility Act."
8. Require publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than for promoting their products. Grayson calls this "The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act."
9. Require the corporate CEO to appear as sponsor of commercials that his or her company pays for, another possibility from the Schumer-Van Hollen team, according to The New York Times
10. Publicize the reform options, inform the public of who is making contributions to whom, and activate the citizenry. If we are to safeguard our democracy, media must inform and citizens must act.
The measures listed above-and others that seek to reverse the dominance of money in our political system-will not be easy. But grassroots anger at this latest win for corporate power is running high. History shows that when the public is sufficiently aroused, actions that once seemed impossible can, in hindsight, seem inevitable.
Fran Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Fran is publisher of YES! Magazine.
--
ANALYSIS
To say nothing of the paradox that he comes from a middle-class background and lately was
perceived as being out of touch with that demographic; much as it was little known that
Martha Coakley(MA) came from quite a hard-scrabble background herself, but omitted
telling her story- and look where that got her.
To say nothing of the paradox that he comes from a middle-class background and lately was
perceived as being out of touch with that demographic; much as it was little known that
Martha Coakley(MA) came from quite a hard-scrabble background herself, but omitted
telling her story- and look where that got her.
Headline: "In $3.8 Trillion Budget, Obama Pivots to Trim Future Deficits"
Obama's Budget Proposals
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/us/politics/02budget.html?8au&emc=au
Obama's Budget Proposals
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/us/politics/02budget.html?8au&emc=au
Last paragraph of today's Washington Post article:
"Also on the deficit front, the president has endorsed a pay-as-you-go proposal that passed the Senate last week. It would require any new tax cuts or entitlement spending increases to be paid for, and he has promised to create a commission to recommend by year's end ways to trim the deficits. However, a legislatively mandated panel was rejected in a Senate vote last week. Republicans opposed establishing the panel because it might recommend tax increases to close the deficit."
Entire Article
"Also on the deficit front, the president has endorsed a pay-as-you-go proposal that passed the Senate last week. It would require any new tax cuts or entitlement spending increases to be paid for, and he has promised to create a commission to recommend by year's end ways to trim the deficits. However, a legislatively mandated panel was rejected in a Senate vote last week. Republicans opposed establishing the panel because it might recommend tax increases to close the deficit."
Entire Article
D’Oh! We missed a lot of things and are appropriately embarrassed and ashamed. However, this could be
a good thing. IF we recognize now where we’ve fallen short, then we can MAYBE catch up by the mid-term
elections. So many factors are at play, it is mind boggling to write them all down.
1) Brown had less in his budget than Martha Coakley, but what he had, he made useful with Google AdWords, He did GoogleBlasts, which make your ad the only ad people can find on Google in certain geographical locations(in this case in MA). He used a lot of Google tools, as well as Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube, but also bypassing them at the same time. GOP is closing the tech gap Obama had.
2) Gary Trudeau made merciless fun of GOP twitterers, in the person of Roland Hedley, Fox News reporter.
It’s a very funny book, but the upshot, politically, was that we ignored that the GOP had taken over the Twitterverse. We just imagined these idiots in Congress, too bored to understand or pay attention to actual goings on; and twittering vain and narcissistic updates on “nothing” to their followers. We ignored that they were building up a huge and personal base and I don’t even want to imagine what THAT’S like, but maybe we should!
3) It is still the Great Recession for most people and not having enough money, the last thing they want to do is pay more taxes. They heard that Coakley would raise taxes. Even some well-off people didn’t want to pay more taxes. If that’s true I think it’s selfish: Look what happened in the once liberal state of
California: They voted themselves less and less taxes and are now totally surprised when basic public
services break down. As Howard Dean said, we have to get the message across that taxes pay for basic
governmental services. Reagan started the whole thing that the government is bad, intrusive or dumb
(it WAS dumb under Bush 43).
4) In this day and age with the internet at our beck and call– people are impatient, very very impatient.
I knew this would happen to Obama: 1) He inherits a mess that takes years to reverse, 2) he can’t do magic to make it all go away in one year and 3) he takes the heat. Like your GOP investor friend said: Whoever is President in a down economy takes a lot of the blame, whether he deserves it or not. The Onion News had a story, “Obama Goes out for Cigarettes,” which implied HE was fed up with everyone.
5) I volunteered during the primary but don’t know how much or whether I gave or not. Big mea culpa,
although she seemed to win that easily. Some people thought Capuano should’ve won. That I don’t know.
I did give in the Senate election but by then Scott Brown had worked his magic and “too little, too late”.
Showing the truth of your mother’s EMILY’s LIST that “Early Money is Like Yeast.”
6) Coakley’s negative attack ads. I liked them. They were clear to most people in my liberal area. But
I was vaguely aware, “Don’t they say that negative attack ads backfire on the attacker?” Well, they did.
Because many MA people already knew and liked Scott by then. As Howard Dean said, more or less,”People like to be asked and considered enough for you to ask them for your vote.”
7) Martha Coakley’s phone-banking system: Almost as bare-bones as Kerry’s in 2004, it was not even
up to 2008 standards. I could not get more than ten words across. In this day and age, people know that
most of what you get on your home phone is junk, if you weren’t expecting a call, and anyone who calls
a home phone is viewed as junk until proven otherwise. This campaign did not understand that. I think
we alienated more people than “we” helped come to a decision(I say “we” in quotes because EYE could only take so much of the abuse). Newer modes of phone-banking that exist would’ve been ideal.
The Bright Side: This COULD be a good thing. This may be a time for Obama to wake up and realize that
we need to explain, define and yes, MESSAGE our issues in a much more effective way. Maybe we can do it in time for the mid-terms.
PS:
I think we took much of Obama’s independent vote for granted. A lot of those votes were genetically conservative. They were never going to last with a liberal agenda. Now we see far-left and far-right making common cause, as they so often do.
Also 9) the short-sighted-ness of people wanting to “send a message” to Washington.
Apparently it was so important to them to send a message that they’d punish the whole USA
by shooting HCR in the foot.
a good thing. IF we recognize now where we’ve fallen short, then we can MAYBE catch up by the mid-term
elections. So many factors are at play, it is mind boggling to write them all down.
1) Brown had less in his budget than Martha Coakley, but what he had, he made useful with Google AdWords, He did GoogleBlasts, which make your ad the only ad people can find on Google in certain geographical locations(in this case in MA). He used a lot of Google tools, as well as Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube, but also bypassing them at the same time. GOP is closing the tech gap Obama had.
2) Gary Trudeau made merciless fun of GOP twitterers, in the person of Roland Hedley, Fox News reporter.
It’s a very funny book, but the upshot, politically, was that we ignored that the GOP had taken over the Twitterverse. We just imagined these idiots in Congress, too bored to understand or pay attention to actual goings on; and twittering vain and narcissistic updates on “nothing” to their followers. We ignored that they were building up a huge and personal base and I don’t even want to imagine what THAT’S like, but maybe we should!
3) It is still the Great Recession for most people and not having enough money, the last thing they want to do is pay more taxes. They heard that Coakley would raise taxes. Even some well-off people didn’t want to pay more taxes. If that’s true I think it’s selfish: Look what happened in the once liberal state of
California: They voted themselves less and less taxes and are now totally surprised when basic public
services break down. As Howard Dean said, we have to get the message across that taxes pay for basic
governmental services. Reagan started the whole thing that the government is bad, intrusive or dumb
(it WAS dumb under Bush 43).
4) In this day and age with the internet at our beck and call– people are impatient, very very impatient.
I knew this would happen to Obama: 1) He inherits a mess that takes years to reverse, 2) he can’t do magic to make it all go away in one year and 3) he takes the heat. Like your GOP investor friend said: Whoever is President in a down economy takes a lot of the blame, whether he deserves it or not. The Onion News had a story, “Obama Goes out for Cigarettes,” which implied HE was fed up with everyone.
5) I volunteered during the primary but don’t know how much or whether I gave or not. Big mea culpa,
although she seemed to win that easily. Some people thought Capuano should’ve won. That I don’t know.
I did give in the Senate election but by then Scott Brown had worked his magic and “too little, too late”.
Showing the truth of your mother’s EMILY’s LIST that “Early Money is Like Yeast.”
6) Coakley’s negative attack ads. I liked them. They were clear to most people in my liberal area. But
I was vaguely aware, “Don’t they say that negative attack ads backfire on the attacker?” Well, they did.
Because many MA people already knew and liked Scott by then. As Howard Dean said, more or less,”People like to be asked and considered enough for you to ask them for your vote.”
7) Martha Coakley’s phone-banking system: Almost as bare-bones as Kerry’s in 2004, it was not even
up to 2008 standards. I could not get more than ten words across. In this day and age, people know that
most of what you get on your home phone is junk, if you weren’t expecting a call, and anyone who calls
a home phone is viewed as junk until proven otherwise. This campaign did not understand that. I think
we alienated more people than “we” helped come to a decision(I say “we” in quotes because EYE could only take so much of the abuse). Newer modes of phone-banking that exist would’ve been ideal.
The Bright Side: This COULD be a good thing. This may be a time for Obama to wake up and realize that
we need to explain, define and yes, MESSAGE our issues in a much more effective way. Maybe we can do it in time for the mid-terms.
PS:
I think we took much of Obama’s independent vote for granted. A lot of those votes were genetically conservative. They were never going to last with a liberal agenda. Now we see far-left and far-right making common cause, as they so often do.
Also 9) the short-sighted-ness of people wanting to “send a message” to Washington.
Apparently it was so important to them to send a message that they’d punish the whole USA
by shooting HCR in the foot.
Krugman feels it's bad we didn't have a bigger stimulus but also advises what we can still do.
What Didn't Happen
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: January 17, 2010
Lately many people have been second-guessing the Obama administration’s political strategy. The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Obama tried to do too much — in particular, that he should have put health care on one side and focused on the economy....
What Didn't Happen
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: January 17, 2010
Lately many people have been second-guessing the Obama administration’s political strategy. The conventional wisdom seems to be that President Obama tried to do too much — in particular, that he should have put health care on one side and focused on the economy....
Sure the GOP has watered HCR down and really tortured it, but let's remember the famous
Bill Clinton saying(which is actually from Voltaire):
"Let us not make the perfect the enemy of the good."
This whole mess is extremely complicated. Here's Paul Krugman's take:
Krugman Says Pass the HCR Bill
Happy Holidays, All!
Bill Clinton saying(which is actually from Voltaire):
"Let us not make the perfect the enemy of the good."
This whole mess is extremely complicated. Here's Paul Krugman's take:
Krugman Says Pass the HCR Bill
Happy Holidays, All!
By Gail Collins in NY Times today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/opinion/05collins.html?th&emc=th
[Will come back and make this into link when laptop not malfunctioning, OK?]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/opinion/05collins.html?th&emc=th
[Will come back and make this into link when laptop not malfunctioning, OK?]
Paul Krugman has advice and criticism for Obama in advance of the Jobs Summit:
"Yes we can create jobs and yes we should," says Paul.
The Jobs Imperative
"Yes we can create jobs and yes we should," says Paul.
The Jobs Imperative
Patricia Williams explains that it matters how the American President speaks,
in Diary of a Mad Law Professor at thenation.com:
Nobel Peace Prize Sparks War
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/williams
in Diary of a Mad Law Professor at thenation.com:
Nobel Peace Prize Sparks War
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/williams
"Does anybody really know what's in the bill?", asks Joe.
"Has 'anyone' TRIED to see what's in the bill?" we ask.
This reminds me of the Kerry campaign in 2004.
Even his own supporters complained he wasn't articulating his own
platform effectively enough. I get so sick of the complacency of people
who can't be bothered to lift a finger to research what the info IS,
when in this age of Google, it is ALL there. People get bothered
that the message hasn't been effectively shaped(read "spoon-fed").
[Most of these critics have access to computers and TV news shows.
Use 'em-- and not just the ones you agree with.]
Obama, answering complaints that no one know what's going on,
presents himself on five TV shows in one day plus Letterman the next;
What do we hear? "He's overexposed." Can Bill Maher be right?
"Has 'anyone' TRIED to see what's in the bill?" we ask.
This reminds me of the Kerry campaign in 2004.
Even his own supporters complained he wasn't articulating his own
platform effectively enough. I get so sick of the complacency of people
who can't be bothered to lift a finger to research what the info IS,
when in this age of Google, it is ALL there. People get bothered
that the message hasn't been effectively shaped(read "spoon-fed").
[Most of these critics have access to computers and TV news shows.
Use 'em-- and not just the ones you agree with.]
Obama, answering complaints that no one know what's going on,
presents himself on five TV shows in one day plus Letterman the next;
What do we hear? "He's overexposed." Can Bill Maher be right?
While Obama/Biden are considering what to do in Afghanistan,
we think police work, including routing out the top guys("cutting the head off the snake"), mixed with political solutions is the best way to effectively end terrorist movements.
RAND Study on How Terrorism Ends
we think police work, including routing out the top guys("cutting the head off the snake"), mixed with political solutions is the best way to effectively end terrorist movements.
RAND Study on How Terrorism Ends
See below for correction in caps:
Did Obama squander the summer? Maybe. But did Maureen Dowd count Joe Wilson(R-SC)
among racists because she "didn't understand the 'serious' opposition"? No. Nice Try, guys.
It's not a contest which president got called the worst names(besides with G. W. Bush, people called him so many things--it was a cottage industry!-- that a lot of these lazy insults lost their meaning as they were often not preludes to real action):
No prez has ever been called a liar in front of a joint session of Congress.
[Bush was called a liar in 2007 in by Rep. Pete Stark but he apologized IN Congress on the House floor.]
.
Personally I think too big a deal has been made of it, but did he come off racist? Yes. Maureen was quite loathe to, as Morning Joe so unoriginally says, "play the race card",
but she is right-- and Wilson could end this whole firestorm simply by apologizing to Congress...yes, again.
Did Obama squander the summer? Maybe. But did Maureen Dowd count Joe Wilson(R-SC)
among racists because she "didn't understand the 'serious' opposition"? No. Nice Try, guys.
It's not a contest which president got called the worst names(besides with G. W. Bush, people called him so many things--it was a cottage industry!-- that a lot of these lazy insults lost their meaning as they were often not preludes to real action):
No prez has ever been called a liar in front of a joint session of Congress.
[Bush was called a liar in 2007 in by Rep. Pete Stark but he apologized IN Congress on the House floor.]
.
Personally I think too big a deal has been made of it, but did he come off racist? Yes. Maureen was quite loathe to, as Morning Joe so unoriginally says, "play the race card",
but she is right-- and Wilson could end this whole firestorm simply by apologizing to Congress...yes, again.
Sung to the tune of "They Just Want You to Be There" from Carly Simon's latest album,
This Kind of Love":
They don't care if the country's scared,
They just want him to fail....
GOP forces Resignation of Green Enerrgy
Jobs Director
They don't mind when the country's not succeeding,
If it's trying to improve and not sure how it will bail,
They just want him to fail."
Seriously, though. I keep hearing on neo-con talk shows like David Gergory's Meet The Press, that Obama hasn't specified where he will find savings for the healthcare plan.
He has thought of many ways to save, one of which involves more prevention and less
pathologizing(simply fixing illness), a theme specified by Howard Dean; another which involves not incentivizing doctors to order unnecessary testing, and not preventing them from doing the necessary ones.
The sort of thing that doesn't get counted by the Congressional Budgeting Office(CBO).
This Kind of Love":
They don't care if the country's scared,
They just want him to fail....
GOP forces Resignation of Green Enerrgy
Jobs Director
They don't mind when the country's not succeeding,
If it's trying to improve and not sure how it will bail,
They just want him to fail."
Seriously, though. I keep hearing on neo-con talk shows like David Gergory's Meet The Press, that Obama hasn't specified where he will find savings for the healthcare plan.
He has thought of many ways to save, one of which involves more prevention and less
pathologizing(simply fixing illness), a theme specified by Howard Dean; another which involves not incentivizing doctors to order unnecessary testing, and not preventing them from doing the necessary ones.
The sort of thing that doesn't get counted by the Congressional Budgeting Office(CBO).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-frank-lipman/true-health-care-reform-1_b_266734.html
Friend of Chris N. prescribes better healthcare
I think the above is is basically enlightening.
Friend of Chris N. prescribes better healthcare
I think the above is is basically enlightening.
Hey, NY Times! The Wall Street Journal is kicking your ass and you publish this?
The WSJ feeds my intellect and emotions a bit,
but The NY Times feeds my soul. So don't lose your soul, NY Times.
The book review in question:
Reefer Madness
This is a classic example of a candidate or a newspaper pretending to be conservative.
Politicos, If you do that, then conservatives will inevitably end up preferring the REAL conservative, not YOU.
Ok, ok, I vented. Now seriously, folks-- and long overdue:
We sympathize deeply with this young woman who had to lock out her late-teen son because he became too violent to live with. But a NY Times writer slanting it that
this young man's behavioral problems were the fault of marijuana alone is making our heads explode, yes! Did anyone think to wonder if he might have had his own problems?
Also the idea that one woman had a bad experience so it should then become policy.
Like with all drugs, people's reactions to them vary widely. I will grant you that even
NORML[which I recommend you catch WAY up with for scientific studies on marijuana, at:
http://www.norml.org
NORML
]Even NORML discourages teen use of marijuana! HOWEVER, by not legalizing and regulating marijuana, the way we do with alcohol[a MUCH more dangerous, violence-inducing substance
(OMG, the relentless number of fatal car crashes alone(!)]
and cigarettes--
We are putting the marijuana right into the hands of these adolescents AND we can be
putting them in very dangerous situations when they go to score the drug, when they
COULD just be FORBIDDEN to buy it from the local drugstore until they are of age.
Recap: Marijuana COULD be more tightly controlled. Hello!
Witness the miracle of hundreds of thousands at Woodstock, who were crowded together on a farm in Bethel but remained peaceful and happy throughout the whole event.
The normally redneck cops of upstate NY learned on the spot not to arrest them because
they saw that it was CROWD CONTROL. If the kids had all been knocking back beers it would've been mayhem.
OK. Back to Lost Child. Again we sympathize deeply with Julie Myerson's tragic tale of a teen pot-smoking gone awry(by the way, don't let your teens take the psychotropic Risperdal either, as it causes suicide in about 17% of them, a significant number). But I think Prozac might be OK. No, pot isn't really for teens. Although I knew many who smoked and seemed to become a lot more successful than me, who did not/does not.
Obama, being very cool, asked the blogosphere what their most burning topic was in
politics today and I believe about 70% said legalization of marijuana.
My hero Howard Dean wasn't too thrilled about this as he thinks the issue of healthcare comes first. The regulation of marijuana IS an element in healthcare(think of the hundreds of thousands with debilitating illnesses that could find relief but are suffering without it). As soon as this healthcare thing is settled, if ever, we MUST face up to and stop the abuses of the Drug War.
The Drug War is functioning right now as an excuse to put black men in jail, breaking up families very painfully and then you see The Wall Street Journal say something like, "Gee! Why do black men leave their families so much? Someone really ought to do something about that!" Granted that phenomenon is(I'm not sure what percentage more or less) about joblessness, exacerbated in the Great Recession.
The Drug War DOES work for those whose income derives from running prisons, which are mushrooming in size and number. It isn't helping anyone else, certainly not the country or the economy at large. Tons of US tax dollars wasted.
Marijuana and Hemp, if legalized could jolt the real economy quite a bit. Especially now,
when the world needs a financial jolt.
I don't blame Obama for not committing political suicide. It could be that the
the Supreme Court might decide and he might just get out of the way, or it might happen state by state. But legalization IS a burning issue and the people have spoken up to Obama that they know it.
Now Columbia's medical website, Go Ask Alice, says marijuana impairs motivation and sex-drive. But is that enough to make an essentially peaceful drug, which no one has ever died from(!!!) illegal? If you want to be peaceful and mindful, should that be illegal?
Go on, Be Yourself, New York Times, like your mother said.
The WSJ feeds my intellect and emotions a bit,
but The NY Times feeds my soul. So don't lose your soul, NY Times.
The book review in question:
Reefer Madness
This is a classic example of a candidate or a newspaper pretending to be conservative.
Politicos, If you do that, then conservatives will inevitably end up preferring the REAL conservative, not YOU.
Ok, ok, I vented. Now seriously, folks-- and long overdue:
We sympathize deeply with this young woman who had to lock out her late-teen son because he became too violent to live with. But a NY Times writer slanting it that
this young man's behavioral problems were the fault of marijuana alone is making our heads explode, yes! Did anyone think to wonder if he might have had his own problems?
Also the idea that one woman had a bad experience so it should then become policy.
Like with all drugs, people's reactions to them vary widely. I will grant you that even
NORML[which I recommend you catch WAY up with for scientific studies on marijuana, at:
http://www.norml.org
NORML
]Even NORML discourages teen use of marijuana! HOWEVER, by not legalizing and regulating marijuana, the way we do with alcohol[a MUCH more dangerous, violence-inducing substance
(OMG, the relentless number of fatal car crashes alone(!)]
and cigarettes--
We are putting the marijuana right into the hands of these adolescents AND we can be
putting them in very dangerous situations when they go to score the drug, when they
COULD just be FORBIDDEN to buy it from the local drugstore until they are of age.
Recap: Marijuana COULD be more tightly controlled. Hello!
Witness the miracle of hundreds of thousands at Woodstock, who were crowded together on a farm in Bethel but remained peaceful and happy throughout the whole event.
The normally redneck cops of upstate NY learned on the spot not to arrest them because
they saw that it was CROWD CONTROL. If the kids had all been knocking back beers it would've been mayhem.
OK. Back to Lost Child. Again we sympathize deeply with Julie Myerson's tragic tale of a teen pot-smoking gone awry(by the way, don't let your teens take the psychotropic Risperdal either, as it causes suicide in about 17% of them, a significant number). But I think Prozac might be OK. No, pot isn't really for teens. Although I knew many who smoked and seemed to become a lot more successful than me, who did not/does not.
Obama, being very cool, asked the blogosphere what their most burning topic was in
politics today and I believe about 70% said legalization of marijuana.
My hero Howard Dean wasn't too thrilled about this as he thinks the issue of healthcare comes first. The regulation of marijuana IS an element in healthcare(think of the hundreds of thousands with debilitating illnesses that could find relief but are suffering without it). As soon as this healthcare thing is settled, if ever, we MUST face up to and stop the abuses of the Drug War.
The Drug War is functioning right now as an excuse to put black men in jail, breaking up families very painfully and then you see The Wall Street Journal say something like, "Gee! Why do black men leave their families so much? Someone really ought to do something about that!" Granted that phenomenon is(I'm not sure what percentage more or less) about joblessness, exacerbated in the Great Recession.
The Drug War DOES work for those whose income derives from running prisons, which are mushrooming in size and number. It isn't helping anyone else, certainly not the country or the economy at large. Tons of US tax dollars wasted.
Marijuana and Hemp, if legalized could jolt the real economy quite a bit. Especially now,
when the world needs a financial jolt.
I don't blame Obama for not committing political suicide. It could be that the
the Supreme Court might decide and he might just get out of the way, or it might happen state by state. But legalization IS a burning issue and the people have spoken up to Obama that they know it.
Now Columbia's medical website, Go Ask Alice, says marijuana impairs motivation and sex-drive. But is that enough to make an essentially peaceful drug, which no one has ever died from(!!!) illegal? If you want to be peaceful and mindful, should that be illegal?
Go on, Be Yourself, New York Times, like your mother said.
18,000 people die a year from deaths that were medically unnecessary, says a 2004 study,
in Kristof's, "Till Medical Bills Do Us Part". He describes a woman who had to divorce the man
she loved because his growing dementia would've eaten up her and her daughter's savings.
Till Medical Bills Do Us Part
in Kristof's, "Till Medical Bills Do Us Part". He describes a woman who had to divorce the man
she loved because his growing dementia would've eaten up her and her daughter's savings.
Till Medical Bills Do Us Part
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