Skewed View

2007-06-30T08:31:00.001-04:00

During the last Democratic Presidential Nomination debate at Howard University, Mike Gravel was the only candidate to call for the cessation of the drug war. The drug war reaches into our society and that of other countries with largely unseen tendrils; of corruption, of lost taxes and abandoned ideals of freedom; of people abandoned in prison for the simple growth of a plant.

I do not condone drug use, but it is easy to see for anyone who looks at the situation that the problems of illegality are larger than the actual problems of addiction and abuse. The problem is that making drugs illegal, just as making alcohol illegal in the twenties, does absolutely nothing to alleviate the social problems of addiction and abuse - it simply turns an industry which would otherwise be taxed and regulated over to the hands of predatory criminals. Following is a letter I wrote to the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, for Mike Gravel's statements received absolutely zero coverage with any news agency - absolutely none, except for blogs and tiny independent people.

Simply put, it is a travesty and a disgrace.

Dear Newshour;

I depend upon the Newshour, and other PBS
programs (both radio and TV) coverage to give me a more in depth,
straight coverage on events which are occurring in our nation and
world.

I did not expect the for profit media to give any coverage to Mike Gravel's ideas about the cessation of the drug war - he rightly called it a scourge upon our land, and it is one
that spills over to other countries, most notably Afghanistan, Mexico,
and any other drug producing nation.

The 'drug war' is just as effective as alcohol prohibition was - it corrupts politicians and
police, it strengthens illegal gangs which control money and territory
by bribery and violence, and it is responsible for the impossible
position of putting Americans and others into prison for doing nothing
more than growing a plant.

I can understand that you do not bring this travesty up as a matter of course; but I hear nothing but deafening silence even from you when the perfect opportunity presents
itself.

To be honest, your lackadaisical approach to this problem is like a knife in my gut. I feel betrayed by your indifference, and your cowardice in ignoring this issue. Who is pushing
your buttons? My god, not even one mention, on the radio or on the
Newshour - I kept expecting someone to say something, since Gravel's
idea about abolishing the drug war was pretty much the only idea which
stood out from the pack.

Of course, no one even said he was crazy or wrong - because he is not, and
to say that would have been to mention the true third rail of American
politics - the drug war. Instead, there is a deafening silence. People are rotting in
prison right now over the growth of plants.

Does not one single person in your organization realize the seriousness of this situation?
I don't advocate that anyone use drugs, but most of the illegal drugs
have been around for well over a hundred years,and people will not stop
using them ever. Contrary to popular opinion, the vast majority of those people use them
responsibly. The closest the others could come was calling for an
equality between crack and powder cocaine, but this was not mentioned
either because it would have demanded comment on Gravel's positions.

I was so happy to hear someone actually say it aloud in a democratic
debate - that the drug war must end - and yet, if you did not watch the
debate, you would never know that the comments were made.

You have disgraced yourself and your duty to this nation, and that sickens
me. Shame on you, shame on you for destroying my trust in you. I don't
know what else to say - as I sit here, the idea that our nation is
truly and completely corrupt on every institutional level is slowly
sinking in. I pray that in the coming months you will prove me wrong,
but sad to say, I no longer expect it.

Kudos to Mike Gravel for being brave enough to say what others dare not even repeat - but I am sorry to say that your performance has left me feeling nothing but
sickness and despair.

The Alternative Minimum Tax gap and what to do about it.

2007-04-18T17:46:00.001-04:00

Allan Sloan (http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/315/index.html#sloan)
was on NOW recently, and asked this question: "what would you replace
the AMT with?" in reference to doing away with this tax. The problem is
it generates to much revenue, and will generate more as the years roll
by. The answer to the solution is, however, staring us right in the
face.

Gangs are becoming a more and more deadly problem - just a few
weeks ago, two officers here in Charlotte NC were gunned down in some
type of gang related revenge or trial by ritual. And we are attracting,
now, a lot of the big national gangs; they come to the growing urban
centers of NC because they know that sales are on the rise.

Gangs in modern America are for the most part drug retailers. In almost
all cases, especially the larger nationwide gangs, drug distribution is
the whole business at hand. Other crimes are taken by individual
members of the organizations for various reasons, but as organizational
structures they serve one purpose, which gives them enough cash to
thrive and recruit new members.

We spend a huge amount of time and resources fighting the drug war, which by any measure is as it always was, an utter failure.

I know that it is a hard idea, but the tax gap could be set right
through the legalization of all major illegal drugs, put into
classifications (like beer and alcohol), and distributed through
existing or new avenues. In NC, you cannot buy hard liquor except
through what are called ABC stores, which are heavily regulated by the
state.

The savings in fighting the drug war, along with the huge tax
revenues that would be generated, should go a long way towards evening
things out. It would also have positive effects in the reduction of
gangs and therefore gang violence, and a legal economic opportunity to
those countries including Mexico which reside to our south, and which
have been adversely affected by our drug war.

That is also, of course, one of the drivers of why the people to
the south of us want to come here so badly. Corruption kills economic
growth, and Mexico and every other drug producing nation on earth,
including Afghanistan, has huge problems with corruption, and with the
gangs and paramilitary groups that make money and can stay in business
for only one reason - drugs are illegal, and it is that illegality
which forces the distribution into the hands of criminal gangs.

It would not be an easy battle, but sooner or later it will be a necessary battle - it is one that should be fought now.

Oil Addiction (The President said so)

2006-12-11T01:40:00.001-05:00

140 billion gallons of gas per year.

Maybe it will look better with zero's, instead of the word:

140,000,000,000

Nope; the number is just as depressing. I have to pump about ten gallons a week through those contraptions which stretch across our country from one side to another, and I depend upon that liquid for every facet of my life.

It has been proven by Brazil that alcohol can be produced on a scale necessary to meet a countries needs. Brazil has much fewer cars; they also have much less land, technical knowledge and work and industry forces. We can do this.

Every time I buy gasoline, and every time every other person buys gasoline, they help to finance

1 - Despotic Rulers (In three different continents)

2 - Arms and fighters flowing into Iraq

3 - The International arm of Al Quaida

4 - The groups and countries arrayed against Israel (I am not taking Israel's or the other's side).

5 - Government and business corruption on a vast scale.

At the same time, we are spending and have been spending our national treasure and world standing for the steady supply of this energy.

This has amounted to an invisible subsidy for the oil interests, on top of all the subsidies which are in plain sight.

When the true cost of doing business in the Mid East is figured into the price of a barrel of oil, alcohol comes out cheap.

And the best thing about it out of all the reasons to switch is this - no one can turn the tap off.

They can with oil, and they have before. That was about 32 years ago, and it was when Brazil started to switch to alcohol, and away from gasoline.

It took them almost that whole time to make the switch one hundred percent, which makes me think, if we can send a man to the moon, how soon could we switch? If we really put our minds to it?

Whatever the answer is, it will not be quick enough.

What can I say?

2006-12-09T20:51:00.001-05:00

What can I say, that I have not before?

You are familiar with a lot of my beliefs - perhaps this is what God thought, and instilled in us with Her sense of purpose. Perhaps that is why we incessantly invent religions that end up being misused by people with low moral courage.

And yet, even in religions that are misused, there are usually good things to be learned (and good people that learn those things) - just as there are in science, and nature itself. About the face of God I have no clue - even if we are an experiment by some creature, and our reality nothing more than a bunch of cells in a petri dish it does not deny the existence of the Great Architect, or our own self awareness - and by that self awareness, our uniqueness. Is that a byproduct of our soul, or do we owe the simple fact that we have a soul to that one trait?

The magic is that either way it does not matter.

My most innate knowledge of our reality is this: that it is the birthplace of our soul, and that just as we leave the womb in pain and rebirth, so we shall leave this reality in the same way - in inevitable pain, and inevitable rebirth - never to return to this existence again. That does not deny some tenuous connection, perhaps, with those still present here in this reality.

Just as in the womb, we can never see what lies behind the viel of the belly of God; to my mind, we can never doubt that there is a further reality, one that we can barely imagine being born into. That is one of the reasons that the way we behave and learn is more important than the animal instincts which drive us.

2006-06-25T20:15:00.000-04:00

I have been wondering for a while now how odd it is that the current events of the day, while pointing to the larger problems of our nation seem to obscure the roots of those problems.

For instance, the relationship between illegal immigration and the drug war.

The federal and state governments involved in fighting the drug war will say that the connection between the two is simply the fact that drug dealers pay illegal immigrants to carry a load across the border when they go. This undoubtedly does happen, but other experts think that most of the transportation of drugs across the border is done by professionals who do that for a living.

The actual connections are much deeper, and much more subtle; as with all social problems, history has to be considered, for it is what has made Mexico and Central and South America so dysfunctional.

For many years after Cocaine, marijuana and other drugs were made illgal in the 1930's the new drug laws had a very subtle effect. There was not widespread usage of cocaine, which is the drug we are concerned with here. The farmers which produced the drug, until the 1930's had been dealing with a free, legal market and it took some time for that market to become corrupted.

In the sixties and seventies there was an explosion of drug use across the country; in the early seventies, President Nixon declared the first War on Drugs, and that policy was reaffirmed and strengthened by President Reagan.

These policies had unintended side effects - they drove the price of the drug up in the market; the more expensive the drug got, the more power and money it gave to the gangs who now controlled the farming population.

This building momentum led to weakening governments in the drug producing nations; the US pushed all countries to adopt the same drug policies, and the drug cartels' influence over the governments and army and police forces became stronger than the governments themselves, despite our best efforts to help these countries.

There is a dirct line between our drug policies and the failed governments and economic policies of those countries to the south of us. We are not wholely responsible, but our policies have ensured the destructive influence that would go with any huge illegal industry in a country which is not very strong to begin with.

It has taken decades for this problem to develope; now we see people fleeing across the border every day, striving so hard, fighting with death itself to get away what they are leaving behind as much as what they are coming towards.

Until our policies on the drug war change, there will be little change in the levels of corruption that are found in Mexico and Central and South America. Until that happens, there will be little or no real ecomic developement, and the imigration trend will only become worse. In this situation, as in our energy policy and the study of the influence of money on the system, we are guided away from the root causes of our problems. The drug war is not the whole story on illegal immigration, but it is a factor that is to large to be ignored.

It is also one that has gone on long enough without being discussed in a senseible way.

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