30 January 2011

Obama skirts the legalization question

cross-posted on Workhorse Politics

About 26 minutes into the YouTube interview with President Obama, the top-voted question about legalizing (or at least decriminalizing) drugs was played.

Obama answers the public's video questions in
an interview with Steve Grove of YouTube.
The main point of legalization is to pull the rug out from under the foreign cartels and local gangs who control the illegal trade. The most common reason children get killed by stray bullets in the crossfire on our urban street corners is because of turf wars revolving around drugs. And the thrust of Officer Mackenzie Allen’s question was to do away with the violent market and international terrorism, but Obama did a quick two-step, describing drug use as a public health problem and the need to curtail demand. He did not actually answer the question.

Here’s my transcription of Obama’s answer to Allen:
Well, I think this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate. I am not in favor of legalization. I am a strong believer that we have to think more about drugs as a public health problem. When you think about other damaging activities in our society — smoking, drunk driving, making sure you’re wearing seat belts — typically we’ve made huge strides over the past 20 or 30 years by changing people’s attitudes. And on drugs, I think that a lot of times we’ve been so focused on arrests, incarceration, interdiction, that we don’t spend as much time thinking about how do we shrink demand. And this is something that, within the White House, we are looking at very carefully.

Some of this requires shifting resources, being strategic, where does it make sense for us to really focus on interdiction? We have to go after drug cartels that not only are selling drugs but also creating havoc … for example, along the U.S.-Mexican border. But are there ways that we can also shrink demand and … in some cities, for example, it may take six months for you to get into a drug treatment program. Well, if you’re trying to kick a habit and somebody says to you, Well, come back in six months, that’s pretty discouraging. So we’ve gotta do more in figuring  out how we can get some more resources on that end of it, and also look at what we’re doing when we have first-time nonviolent drug offenders — are there ways that we can make sure that we’re steering them into the straight-and-narrow without automatically resorting to incareceration, drug courts, mechanisms like that. These are issues that are worth exploring and worth a serious debate.

Paris Catacombs - National Geographic Magazine

From a series of photos by Stephen Alvarez
-- see slideshow on the Nat'l Geo article
National Geo writes up the Paris Catacombs, a 180-mile quarry under the city, from which limestone was mined to build major structures such as the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Not only is the history of this underground world fascinating, but also the illicit current-day exploring, gatherings and art happening down there.

27 January 2011

Pass the dutchie, Barack

cross-posted on Workhorse Politics

As part of a two-day campaign to talk directly to Americans following Tuesday’s State of the Union address, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time today, President Obama will answer questions via live streaming on the World View YouTube channel. Up through midnight World View invited the public to upload their video questions and to vote the most popular questions to the top of the list.
U.S. Marines battle poppies in Afghanistan


This morning, if you visit the page and filter the questions by choosing “All Questions” and “Sorted by popularity” the most popular questions at least through position number 30 (where I got tired of counting) ask about legalizing marijuana  or all drugs, or about allowing growth of industrial hemp in the United States as a green initiative (we currently import our hemp from China and Canada), and similar questions.

To ignore these questions would certainly turn the effort to respond directly to Americans’ concerns into a sham. One might think that Obama is in a bit of a spot here, but in actuality the sentiment that drug prohibition should be ended in the United States plays out on both ends of the political spectrum — Liberals and many Conservatives (or, at least, the Libertarian if not Christian Right flavor of Conservative) alike believing that we waste billions on the so-called War on Drugs, that it is not effective, that it in fact supports gang activity and causes violence, and many other reasons (supported by research, by example in other countries that have relaxed or removed prohibitions, and by the opinion of a growing body of current and former law-enforcement officials).

The question at the very top of the list, having earned far more votes than any other question, comes from a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (“LEAP”). This seasoned Officer Mackenzie Allen packs many solid reasons for repeal into his 32-second vid, and asks only whether the President thinks it is time to discuss repealing drug prohibition.




How can Obama possibly ignore answering the most popular question by far, coming from a police officer? We shall see.

08 January 2011

How are economists jerks? Let me count the ways …

...undisclosed conflicts of interest when economists are called upon to testify or otherwise help make critically important national policy decisions -- read the post on Workhorse Politics

07 January 2011

Hero of the Day: Rep. Lynn Woolsey

... for having the unswerving moxie to reintroduce her public option bill in the face of a slew of new Republican bills in the works aimed at eviscerating or eliminating the new health care laws.

02 January 2011