Time to End the Drug War, People are Coming Around

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN medical expert, just made a 180 degree turn around and now supports medical marijuana. Click the link to see why. That got me thinking.

One of the monumental failures of government policy is America's War on Drugs. It has imprisoned vast numbers of Americans, made criminals of almost everyone, spent enormous amounts of money, and illegal drugs are readily available to anyone, anywhere in the US (including prisons) at quite reasonable prices. There is another, much better, way to control drug use. See How to Actually Win the War on Drugs for details.

The War on Drugs has a racist result described in a very interesting book called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. To understand the extremely well documented argument you need to know one fact: drug use among African Americans is about the same as among whites but arrest and conviction rates for drug crimes are much, much higher for African Americans. This is how blacks are, albeit imperfectly, kept down. Here's how it works:

1. Drug enforcement is focused primarily on black communities, particularly young men, because 'everyone knows' that black men commit the most crimes.
2. Since everyone does drugs at about the same rate, enforcement focus leads to much higher arrest rates for blacks, particularly young men.
3. District attorneys have great discretion in how vigorously they prosecute, and black men get a lot more vigorous prosecution, in part because 'everyone knows' that black men commit a lot of crimes.
4. The end result is a large fraction of young black men in prison, on parol, or with felony drug convictions which makes it hard, sometimes impossible, to get a job.
5. Joblessness is correlated with violent crime rates. In fact, the higher violent crime rates of black men is entirely explained by the higher jobless figures.
6. Since black men have a higher crime rate, drug enforcement is focussed on black communities ... see #1.

Note that the cost of imprisoning someone for a year is about the same as attending the University of California. Which will make a better citizen, and bigger tax payer, out of a high school kid smoking a bit of reefer?

NOTE: you can make a similar argument about brown people, but I left that out for simplicity.

One way to break this vicious cycle is to get rid of the drug war, which doesn't work anyway. Let's do it!

I'm Afraid to Say, America the Torturers

Two reports have come out reminding us in excruciating well supported detail of what we already should have known:

1. During the Bush administration torture by the U.S. government was widespread.
2. This torture was approved and promoted at the highest levels of government.
3. This torture was in direct contradiction to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits 'cruel and unusual punishment'.
4. This torture generated little if any reliable intelligence.

These reports are

• The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment
• The U.S. Bi-Partisan Leadership Against Torture on the 25th Anniversary of President Ronald Reagan Signing the Convention Against Tortue and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment.

Under the treaty, torture is a crime against humanity. If the home country of a torturer does not prosecute, any country may step in and bring charges. This happened some years ago when Great Brittian arrested ex-Chilean president Pinochet at the request of Spanish authorities for torture committed in the 1970s and 80s. Senior Bush administration officials would do well to stay in the U.S. to avoid a similar fate.

Of course, if America wakes up to the fact that our most basic laws were grievously violated by the highest officers in the land, and that these crimes severely damaged our standing in the world thus aiding our enemies immensely, we just might prosecute ourselves.

Obama, Republicans and Bipartisanship

Republicans have made a big deal about the lack of bipartisanship since President Obama took office. Of course, it takes two to be bipartisan. Let me remind you of one story from the early days of President Obama's term.

The Super Bowl was a week and a half after the inauguration. It just so happened that there were two republican senators from one team's state and two democratic senators from the other team's state -- so Obama invited all four senators to watch the game with him. To anyone who wanted to work together for the good of the country, this was a golden opportunity. Three plus hours with the new president in an informal setting. Plenty of time to get to know something about him, to present one's ideas and maybe make some deals.

You know how this story has to end: both republican senators turned the invitation down.

This set the pattern for the next four years. Time and again Obama adopted republican, conservative ideas -- only to have republicans immediately turn away from their own ideas, their own initiatives for the sole purpose of saying, in this election season, that Obama failed to get the bipartisanship he hoped for.

Do you want to reward this kind of behavior? Because if the Republicans win this election, it will validate their strategy and the next time they are in the opposition they will do exactly the same thing.

The Difference Between Bush and Romney Policy

Some months ago I sent an email to all of you asking for the difference between Bush's policies and Romney's. The response was a deafening silence.

In the debate, when asked to differentiate himself from Bush, Romney's first item was energy policy. Romney wants to do a lot of drilling for oil. Bush was all for a lot of drilling for oil. I can't tell the difference either. I'm sure there are some somewhere, but I don't see any big ones. The similarities, however, are quite striking. Among other things, both favor:

Lower tax rates

Higher military expenditures

Reduced regulation

A bellicose, go-it-alone foreign policy

The results of the Bush years are important to remember. They included:

Massive failure of the economy

Massive failure to control government finances (went from a balanced budget to a deficit of well over a trillion dollars)

Failure to win in Iraq

Failure to win in Afghanistan

Failure, in seven years of trying, to kill bin Laden

Failure to slow or stop Iran's nuclear program

Romney advocates many, if not most, of the same policies as Bush. Why would you expect substantially different results from a Ronmey presidency?

Islamic-Region Attacks on America, by President

It is instructive to look at the history of terrorist attacks on Americans. Consider:

Jimmy Carter -- Iranian students took American diplomats hostage. 52 were held for 444 days. Eight American servicemen died in a rescue attempt.

Ronald Reagan -- Hezbollah killed 241 American servicemen, most of them Marines, with a single truck bomb. Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the sky by Libya killing 243 passengers and 16 crew.

George H. W. Bush -- Iraq invaded Kuwait touching off a full scale war that killed 294 Americans.

Bill Clinton -- al Qaeda blew up two US embassies in Africa killing over 200 people and wounding thousands. Al Qaeda attacked the U.S.S. Cole killing 17 American sailors. The Khobar Towers attack killed 19 American servicemen.

George W. Bush -- al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center and severely damaged the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000, and a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. The Riyadh compound bombings in Saudi Arabia killed 35 people including nine Americans.

Barack Obama -- Four diplomats were killed in a recent attack on the consulate in Libya.

Thus, we see that Obama has, so far, the best record of protecting Americans from Islamic-region attacks of any recent president.

Obama and the Taliban

When Obama took office, the Taliban had the initiative in Afghanistan and were making major gains in Pakistan. They controlled large and growing swaths of territory in both and had just taken over Swat, which is only an hour or so from Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. Remember that Pakistan is nuclear armed.

Today the Taliban are on the defensive.  They have lost control of Swat and much of the rest of Pakistan.  They have lost control of a great deal of territory in Afghanistan.  Their leadership is dying under a hail of drone attacks.  Osama bin Laden is dead and the personal commitments the Taliban leadership made to him are gone.

That is about as good as it gets in that part of the world.

Obama's Campaign Promises

Like all candidates, President Obama made promises during the 2008 campaign, and like all candidates he delivered on some, partly delivered on some and failed on others. Also, like all voters we imagine he promised far more than he actually did. Right now I'd like to remind you of some of the promises that were kept and invite you to think about whether these would have happened under President McCain or Romney.

Obama promised:

• To get out of Iraq. We're out.
• To focus on al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Afghanistan. Bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda leaders are dying like flies, and the Taliban have been pushed back in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
• To end 'Don't Ask Don't Tell.' It is gone.
• To enact universal health care. It is enacted. The next step: 'Medicare for All.'
• To cut taxes for the middle class. The stimulus contained the largest middle class tax cut in history.
• To support green energy. PG&E, my utility provider, just sent me a chart of energy supplies. Renewables are 18%, compared with 19% for hydro, 22% for nuclear, and 25% for natural gas. In other words, renewables are almost as big as any other supply! And it is not just California. I flew across the country last May. Looking out the window I saw an America dotted with wind farms. Wind is the fastest growing energy supply in the US and now provides 3% of all US electricity.
• To re-regulate the financial industry. Legislation has been passed, a consumer protection agency created, and government oversight strengthened.
• To increase manufacturing. US manufacturing is up about 50%.
• To turn the financial crisis around. Then the Dow was 8,000. Now it is over 13,000. Then we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, now we are gaining 100,000 or more. Then the financial sector was technically bankrupt, now it is much more stable. Then GDP was down about 9% for the year, now it is up 2% or more. Then two of the three US auto companies were headed for destruction, now GM is once again, for the first time in a long time, the biggest car maker in the world. Oh, and US companies are as profitable as they have ever been.
• To focus on bringing loose nuclear material under control. This is vital to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack on American cities, the second worst national security issue we face today (the first is the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals). All around the world, over the last few years, poorly secured nuclear materials have been identified and either secured locally or, in many cases, shipped to the US for safekeeping. This may have been Obama's most important act, and one for which he will never get much credit.

Obviously, there is a lot more to do, so if you want these sorts of things to keep happening, vote for President Obama and other Democrats this November.