I Don’t See Dead People!

The headline in the May 15, 2013 Kentucky Enquirer, ‘Ky Poll: Most Support Medical Marijuana’, which reported on the 2012 Kentucky Health Issues Poll, found that 78% of Kentucky’s citizens think marijuana should be legal for medical purposes. The Kentucky Health Issues Poll is funded jointly by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati and conducted by the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati.

Immediately drug and health officials reminded the public that the Food and Drug Administration lists marijuana as a Schedule1 drug, dangerous and having no medical value. Mary Frances, Director of the Assistance For Substance Abuse Prevention Center was quoted as saying that marijuana, “Has no currently accepted use for medical treatment in the United States and is not safe for use even under medical supervision”.

Setting aside the ridiculousness of the Governments position and irrational claims about marijuana, one glaring problem exists. Where are the bodies?

Marijuana is listed in the same category as heroin. Heroin addicts regularly overdose and many times, die when they do. Matter of fact we have a bit of an epidemic of heroin overdose deaths here in Northern Kentucky. Current estimates put regular marijuana use in the country at about 20 million. Where are the arrests for intoxicated violence, intoxicated driving, lost productivity or addiction? Where are the terrible outcomes predicted by those who would continue the policy of total prohibition, in short, where are the bodies?

Recent studies have tended to show more good than bad as regards marijuana use. This is why even now the Government only supports research on marijuana designed to show harm. For example, a recent study on marijuana and driving has shown a 9% drop in fatal traffic accidents in states that allow for access to marijuana. A lung cancer study originally designed to link marijuana smoking and cancer has shown that regular marijuana users get head, neck, and lung cancers at the same rate as people who do not smoke at all. Suicide rates are down slightly in medical marijuana states too. One must ask, Where’s the beef? Where, after a decade and a half of medical access to marijuana in California and other states are all the harms we have been told for 75 years would happen? The problem the authorities have when extolling the harm and horrors of marijuana use is the opposite of the boy in the movie, ’The Sixth Sense’. They don’t see dead people!

Time has come to admit we were duped about marijuana’s dangers in the Thirties, duped by President Nixon and his War On Drugs in the Seventies, and duped again by Reagan and his call to, ’Just Say No!’ We should have said No to the policy of prohibition in the first place!

Time for Kentucky’s legislators to choose logic and science over fear mongering and fiction and pass the Gatewood Galbraith Memorial Medical Marijuana Act during the next special or regular session of the General Assembly!

Policing For Profit

There is an interesting angle to the horror story of the 3 women who were kidnapped and held captive for ten years and who recently escaped their captors in Cleveland, Ohio.  In that case neighbors called the police several times in 2011 and 2012 about goings on at the house the women were held at.  One neighbor reported seeing a woman crawling around the back yard in a leash!  In that instance the police were called but they did not enter the house.  Neighbors claim they witnessed things that led them to believe all was not right in that house.  They claim they called the police on numerous occasions.  The police, for their part, deny receiving those calls.

Maybe the neighbors should have reported smelling marijuana coming from the house, or better yet a chemical smell, ‘like maybe their making some kinda drugs over there!’  Two calls like that and the police would have been there with the swat team breaking down the doors within forty eight hours!

In an opinion piece that appeared on the AlterNet web site by Kristen Gwynne titled ‘Why Cops Bust Down Doors Of Medical Pot Growers, But Ignore Men Who Keep Naked Girls On Leashes’ dated May 8, 2013 a pretty good case is presented as to why this is so.  The article can be accessed here—

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/why-cops-bust-down-doors-medical-pot-growers-ignore-men-who-keep-naked-girls-leashes

A former LAPD Captain of Detectives makes the case–  

‘Retired law enforcement veteran Stephen Downing, former captain of detectives in the LAPD, says he has not seen proof that the police officers failed to adequately respond to information in this case; indeed, police cannot possibly crack every case and investigate every angle all the time. At the same time, we must recognize that police are incentivized to go after certain crimes — like drug crimes — and not, other, far more heinous crimes, like rape.

In the first place, federal cash giveaways make police departments’ reactions to drug cases much more swift and severe.

“The statistical demands of the drug war and the grants that come from the federal government — all they do is incentivize our local police to chase drugs and chase seizures so they can supplement their budgets,” Downing said. “We call that ‘policing for profit.’”

Furthermore, allowing military training of local police has “turned our police into drug warriors,” instead of “police officers and peace officers.”

“Every police department, every sheriff’s department, and the federal government have personnel that are dedicated 100 percent of the time to drug enforcement,” said Downing, “and the result of that is to use police resources for that purpose.”

Perhaps the strongest example of how drug war policing can distract resources from more pressing problems is the use of department laboratories. In Ohio, police agencies across the state have sent more than 2,300 untested rape kits to a state crime lab for testing. Some of them are decades old, and could contain vital clues regarding suspects in rapes. But they’ve been backed up in police departments across the country.

“What they don’t talk about is why do they have that backlog in the first place?” said Downing. “The answer is that drugs take a priority because they often involve people in custody, and they’re going to be in court, so when they show up in court, they’re going to have those tests. Thousands and thousands of tests run through our police labs for drugs when most of the time it’s a personal use decision. Most of the time it’s a recreational use of drugs rather than an abuse of drugs, but our criminal justice system is completely involved in dealing with drug crime rather than dealing with crime that truly affects public safety, like property and crimes against persons.”

Praising the man who helped Amanda Berry escape, Stephen Downing also says police need to become more involved with their communities.

“The community is involved in solving these cases and the willingness of people is helpful,” he said. “If the police would recognize more the true value of their community — that the people are the police and the police are the people — rather than chasing drugs and asset seizures and policing for profit modalities, all our communities would be better off and more aware.’ 

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!

Choose Wisely

America has in it’s history gone through some tumultuous times and most of these were accompanied by a war.  The Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were about Independence.  The Mexican War, the Spanish American and the Indian Wars were about expansion. The Civil War was about who we would be as a nation and whether freedom would be offered to all.  The First World War was about becoming a major player on the international stage, projecting the American ideal of  freedom and the rule of law and challenging the growth of the totalitarian state as embodied in German politics.  The Second World War was in many minds merely the conclusion of the First in which the rise of Fascism and the totalitarian state was checked but not stopped.  The Second World War settled once and for all time the conflict between the totalitarian state and the free.  The wars in Korea and Vietnam were hot parts of the Cold War against the spread of Communism , which collapsed of it’s own weight and the pressure of continuing an arms race at the expense of an unsupportive populace.

Now , as in the Civil War we are in a conflict with ourselves.  Beginning with President Reagan’s declaration that, “Government is the problem.’, Conservatives on the right have been waging a war against the Federal Government.  They feel Government should be limited in what it does for it’s people.  Their aim is to get rid of the Federal Government and it’s ‘job killing regulations’ that limit the growth of business and the economy. The regulations they want to get rid of mostly protect the citizenry against bad and sometimes criminal business practices.  Conservatives also would like to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and welfare programs apparently not seeing that not only are these programs the right thing to do for our citizens but they could also be considered riot insurance!

Liberals, the other side of the argument, believe in the expansion of Government services to all citizens.  Universal Healthcare, unemployment insurance, welfare, and food aid programs are championed by them.  The Consumer Protection Bureau is designed to protect the citizens from the unscrupulous practices of business and was fought against long and hard by conservative legislators.

After having Congress under the control of both sides of the argument one can look back and see clearly how it’s turned out.  Conservatives came to power with the election of President Bush who inherited a budget surplus and a warning about Al Qaeda and a fellow by the name of Osama Bin Laden.  Before 2000 America was a country that only attacked other countries if provoked.  Now we do.  America was the country that championed the rule of law.  Now we imprison people indefinitely without charges and ship them to foreign prisons to get around the rule of law.  America was the country that does not torture prisoners.  Now we do.  Americans believe in economic fairness yet with tax cuts for the wealthy and huge subsidies for corporations and business, conservatives have shifted a huge portion of the country’s wealth to those at the upper end.  They put it on the Government credit card and are now willing to trash the country’s finances unless Congress reduces services for those at the low end of the financial spectrum to pay for it. Americans believe in universal voting rights yet legislators in conservative controlled states are passing laws that restrict and limit the ability of the citizens right to vote.

Four years of  liberal rule under President Clinton ended with a financial surplus in the Government account.  After a financial collapse under conservative rule that has been compared to the Great Depression of the Thirties, and after six years of liberal rule under President Obama, the economy is on the mend and unemployment is improving however slowly.  Liberals have reformed the healthcare and financial systems for the betterment of our citizens despite the obstruction by conservatives of any of President Obama’s policies.

Before Americans vote in the mid term elections it would be in the best interests of the country that all citizens look long and hard at the difference between conservative and liberal governance.  I sum it up this way.  Conservative governance is all for one. Liberal governance is one for all.  If the last two elections are any indication, the liberal view of one for all is the direction most citizens want to go.  Come the mid term elections we should all heed the admonishment to ‘Choose Wisely”.

　

Here He Comes A Courtin’

The Republicans are gonna come courting’ in 2014 and chief among them will be Senator Mitch McConnell.  Some say his leadership position in the Senate is a feather in Kentucky’s cap and reason enough to send him back to the Senate for another term.  On the other hand, his stated goal of  ‘making Mr. Obama a one term president’ has forced him to adopt positions that must be said, are not good, for most Kentuckians, but are good for the Republican party.

During his time in the Senate he originally supported gun control legislation but has flipped on gun control and now opposes any gun control measure at all.  He easily disregards the thousands of deaths from gun violence every year and the support of over 80% of Kentuckians who favor gun control laws, to represent the will of his real supporters the gun manufacturers as represented by the National Rifle Association.  While Mitch is busy supporting gun manufacturer’s ability to sell guns to anyone without restriction, he is also busy opposing the Affordable Care Act.  It appears he wants us to have guns but not the healthcare you might need if you were to get shot with one!

Under his watch his party managed to trash the Government’s credit rating and have left America’s reputation as the country that does ‘the right thing’ in tatters.  Not only has our credit rating been lowered but we are now known as a country that will attack without provocation and will use torture to reach our goals!

Under Senator McConnell’s leadership, his party overloaded the country’s credit card with tax cuts that transferred a huge portion of the country’s wealth from the bottom of the financial pyramid to the top.  At the same time his party was transferring this wealth it was getting rid of those pesky regulations that get in the way of business.  Regulations that were put in place after the Great Depression of the Thirties that don’t apply now.  In 2007 we found out that those pesky regulations were pretty important!  But hey! That’s ok!  Mitch didn’t notice cause he was busy and besides his supporters weathered the recession quite well thank you! 

Since the 2008 election Senator McConnell has opposed any proposals made by the President that might make the President look good, such as infrastructure or job creation proposals.  He and his party have gone so far as to repeatedly threaten to destroy the finances of the country over the debt ceiling unless the rest of the legislators give in to their demands!

What positive effect has this had for your average Kentuckian?  McConnell and his cronies oppose ANY Government spending except for tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations so they can create jobs, (remember jobs?), money for defense and paying down the deficit that Republican rule led by Mitch McConnell created.  One has only to read the budget supported by Mr. McConnell and his party to see the Republican plan.  Cut money for people at the lower end to keep policies and programs funded for the upper end.  My God, their budget even cuts money for food stamps!  Have we become so callus that we need to steal money from a beggars cup to keep tax cuts for the rich in place?

Come 2014 Mitch and his party is gonna come a courting.  It would behoove Kentuckians to think long and hard before we accept the flowers and eat the candy he will offer.

Columnist Says Most Vets Do Not Deserve Military Funeral Honors

I saw an op-ed piece in the St Louis Post Dispatch where a columnist was disparaging Military Honors for most Veterans.   Columnist Bill McClennan, in his column, says that most Veterans just did their jobs and did nothing heroic.  That Veterans Organizations should provide these services and not the Government. That Veterans Organizations do these funerals and if a Veteran wants a military funeral he should join one.  His reasons, besides the insult that these Veterans did nothing special, are that government is broke and can’t afford doing these funerals for every soldier who served honorably.  He is adamant that most Veterans did nothing ‘heroic’ and are therefore not deserving of these honors.  He says that Veterans Organizations should do these funerals and if a Veteran wants a military funeral he should join one.

Having served on the VFW funeral detail for a few years till my service connected disability would not let me, I certainly can attest to the rightness of doing these funerals.  Actually the cost is negligible and a pittance when stacked aside what the Veteran and his family might have sacrificed during the Veterans service.  Indeed, we honor not only the Veterans sacrifice but that of his or her family.  We recognize and honor the family’s loss and I cannot begin to measure the gratitude expressed over and over by them.    However not every post has a funeral detail and not all Veterans join these organizations.  Still we do funerals for Veterans who are not members on a regular basis.

While I would argue that signing a contract that allows your boss to do with your life as he wishes is in itself a sacrifice most citizens would not make, it is still a huge sacrifice.    It is true that a large portion of our soldiers will not see combat.  We do not honor only those who have seen combat or who were hurt in combat operations, although these Veterans are held in highest esteem, we honor all, all who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.    The Christian religion says the highest form of sacrifice is to lay down your life for another.   The honor and deference we give to our Veterans is to thank them for their willingness to make that sacrifice.

Should we as a society decide that this modest tribute to our Veterans cost too much?   Who needs this pittance so much more that we should dishonor our Country, our Veterans and ourselves to give them this money?   I agree that we should get our financial house in order, but if in order to do that we have to sell our soul and honor, then the country would already have lost whatever we had that was worth sacrificing for!  

Wack A Mole

In his State of the Union Address the President laid out a number of proposals, many of which were at one time Republican ideas, pre-school for all children, infrastructure improvement, immigration reform, and as many as twenty others. He called for ‘smarter government’, planning to use the power of the government to begin righting the unbalanced nature of the country’s wealth and build up the financial strength of the middle class.  The President said by raising the minimum wage we will be increasing the ability of many to live the American Dream of moving into the middle class. This signals an end to the war on the Government waged by the Republicans over the last 40 years.

Ronald Reagan started the war on Government with his proclamation that Government was the problem.  This has caused more damage to this nation in the last 40 years than almost anything one can imagine. His declaration of war on the Government, and by definition war on the people who support that Government was the cover for the massive shifting of the wealth of this country from the middle and bottom of the financial pyramid to the top.   You want proof.  Wages when adjusted for inflation have been stagnant for the last 40 years while the earnings for those at the top have never been higher. When employers couldn’t pay a lower wage because of the minimum wage, they shipped the jobs to where they could!

Reagan’s real goal and the game plan of the Republican Party is to create huge deficits and then demand they be paid with the money Government uses to support the middle and lower class. Cutting Healthcare and social security to pay for the debts the Republicans ran up when they were in control of the Government, thus shrinking the size of the Government they have to pay for but also limiting or ending the things the Government can do for its people like unemployment, healthcare, or welfare and food stamps.  Indeed Paul Ryan’s current version of the budget does exactly that, cuts money for food stamps! Rather than some “job creator’ not getting his tax breaks!!!   It is true, by the way, that when we raise up the lives of those of us who have the least, we certainly do improve the lives of all Americans.

It was good to hear the President lay out his proposals and let the chips fall where they may.  One can see though that the President does have his eye on the midterm elections in 2014.  Just look at some of the proposals he has laid out, a veritable minefield of political bombs.  Democrats will be able to point to their opponents and say I was for so and so and my Republican friend was not!  Any one of these things could become a flashpoint for a local election.   If you are in an election where the voters are mostly low and minimum wage workers you’d be cutting your throat to oppose raising the minimum wage.

It’s the same scenario with many of the President’s proposals.  The Republicans see these things as expanding Government and costing too much but they don’t seem to see how these things, in improving the lives of our citizens also improves the life of the country.  Marco Rubio when giving the Republican response, seemed to be ‘whacking moles’ as he went on to  emphasize a negative outcome to all the Presidents ideas.  It is awful hard to explain to a minimum wage worker that a $1.80 an hour raise would not be good for that worker and his family.  It is equally hard to explain how preschool would not be good for that workers children while cutting money for education.  The list goes on and the Republicans are running hither and yon in an effort to knock down all the President’s proposals every time they get a chance.  This should leave them looking weak and negative when the midterm elections come around.  Besides they will probably be exhausted from wacking moles.

Constitutional Support

Ask most people , where in the Constitution of our great and free nation does the Constitution allow the Federal Government to prohibit the use of drugs and they can’t answer.  As free individuals we should be able to decide for ourselves what or what not to put in our bodies, so where does the Federal Government get it’s authority to prohibit certain drugs and allow others?

Strangely enough the authority actually comes from our Constitutional requirement to abide and enforce the international treaties we are signatories to. The United Nations Convention on Drugs, in force since 1990, requires it’s signatories to enforce and promote a policy of total prohibition when handling their drug problems.  Harry Anslinger, the first Drug Czar, realized his dream of a world wide policy on drugs and the United Nations signed on to the American example of total prohibition thus achieving Constitutional support for a policy that otherwise would be, by any measure, unconstitutional.  This dubious achievement has caused world wide misery, suffering and death over these last 99 years and currently results in the arrest of 750,000 American citizens every year for marijuana possession alone.  It costs over 51 billion dollars a year and untold billions in lost productivity and as a result what have we accomplished?  The reform group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition says that when prohibition as policy became law in 1914 with the Harrison Act roughly 1.3% of the population was addicted to drugs.  In 1937 with the enactment of the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act, declared unconstitutional in 1969, the percentage was 1.3%.  The enactment of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 again found the rate at 1.3%.  Now in 2013 the estimate is still at 1.3%.  Ninety-nine years and no positive change in the numbers.

Finally, and none too late, science and reason is starting to break through the shell of denial hiding the reality of the failure of our current policies.  United Nations members  like Uruguay, Peru, Columbia, and Portugal are ignoring the UN Conventions and creating policies that recognize the need for reform based on harm reduction and not punishment.  With South American leaders at the forefront there are calls for reform of the entire UN Convention on Drugs itself.  Reform is in the air among UN member nations as science and logic undermine the ideological attachment to prohibition.  The entire UN Convention could be completely reworked as a result.  This could very well remove any constitutional support for our current prohibition laws rendering them unconstitutional!

Geeze! Ya think allowing people the freedom to decide for themselves would be any worse than it already is?  It could be so bad we might revert to the percentage of the population using drugs going back to what it was before the Harrison Act when prohibition started.  Certainly we don’t want that percentage being any higher than it currently is at 1.3%.  What would we do then?