It is such a beautiful, unseasonably cool August morning, crisp, cool and a tad cloudy. I picked up the Sunday papers on my way back in from walking our dog, Charley. I opened the Times, put it down and glanced at the front page of the Sun, below the fold on the right hand side. “Community in shock over Harford man’s drug charges … Ecologist, decades long teacher revered by residents.”
My gut told me this was not some heroin dealing, gun toting, cocaine smuggling outlaw swaggering through the
A sixty-two-year-old man who spent his life teaching kids about nature, our environment and love of life. He smokes marijuana and it appears as if he might consume some psilocybin mushrooms sometimes. He must really be an evil man. Pretty soon, all the kids in Harford will be smoking dope, dropping acid, snorting cocaine, having sex and god knows what else. Known as Ranger Bob to all the kids, why, if there ever was a contrived name, Ranger Bob is it. Look, he even has a beard and plays Santa Clause on his Christmas tree farm. That’s how he snares all those kids. The devil in disguise. You think he is really teaching about the earth, nature and our history, respecting life and the planet we live on...
OK, enough with the sarcasm, but this is just madness. I don’t think anyone should go to jail, or have their home or children threatened with seizure, or livelihood taken away from them for smoking, growing or even selling marijuana. Most Americans who are 62 and lived through the counter culture world of hippies, slogged through a rice paddy in
Most people I know, at some point in their lives, smoked dope. There is a reason why we call it dope. So, most of us don’t do it anymore. Most of us don’t get drunk anymore. We have more important things to deal with then people’s personal behaviors.
People should not go to jail for using marijuana. We should legalize it, tax it and let it be. Grow hemp so we can stop cutting down trees for paper, and let marijuana bloom like we grow tobacco for cigarettes and hops for beer and barley for whiskey. Many Indian reservations want the chance to grow hemp for industrial uses. It could help our environment, create new jobs and new industries.
Harvard Economist Dr. Jeffrey Alan Miron produced a highly acclaimed study, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," which was endorsed by hundreds of economists, including conservative leaders like
Dr. Milton Friedman of the Hoover Institute, Dr. George Akerlof of the University of California at Berkeley, and Dr. Vernon Smith of George Mason University. He concludes that “replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement -- $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels for a combined savings of $10 to 14 billion dollars."
Bob Chance, by all accounts from the former Mayor of Bel Air to the head of their county library, is a good soul who loves children and a defender of our environment who loves teaching. He should not have his life destroyed because he likes to smoke pot on his own time. He should be able to wake up on this unseasonably cool August morning not worrying about going to jail or losing his beloved farm.
Pulling from the bottom of the deck? Playing the race card?
When Obama said, “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.” he was right.
Who knows how many voters will not vote for Obama simply because he is a black man? It is not a white working class issue, but is an issue for many that cuts across the entire spectrum of white people in America-working class, middle class, rich. There are a lot of visceral things that define how we vote. We don't determine our votes entirely on the outcome of long, intellectual deliberations of the issues. One would hope that is part of it, but that is not what motivates many people when they pull that lever or push that button or punch that chad or write in that name on the first Tuesday in November.
The creative campaign war team around Senator McCain are the same people, or mindset, who during the 1988 presidential campaign played the “race card” by using William Horton to help George Bush defeat Michael Dukakis and who brainstormed into being the sultry white women asking Harold Ford to “call me” in Tennessee. All of this is playing on the innate racist fears of America. Tapping into the worst within us. They are the ones who cleverly rode the swift boat to sink Kerry and are now attempt to smear Obama with being the mindless pin up dreams of Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton.
This is going to be very ugly. Now, politics in America has always been ugly. It was historically contained and restrained by a media that was limited to print and partisan print, at that, read by a chosen few. Now the complexity of modern technology means constant accessibility every vantage point.
Unfortunately, whether you believe the media to have a liberal or conservative or just a corporate bias, it is mostly mindless bland blather despite all its immediacy and visual bells and whistles.
Obama is treading lightly, fearing to touch on race but you know his Republican opposition will keep bating him with it, subtlety and overtly, throwing it America’s face.
The network media will soundbite for all its worth into the shallowest part of our consciousness touching our deepest fears without any substantive conversation to jar us into thinking.
Twenty four hour news stations and all we get are drivel and sound bites.
Just look at this week. It seems as though major TV media and some print are working to trivialize this campaign and especially Obama’s message.
Now, let me clear, as I will post in my coming blogs, there is a lot about Obama’s platform and ideas that bother me, stuff I don't think he has thought through enough. I am not talking about critique of substance but a trivialization of ideas and the very future of America.
Obama came out with a major statement energy policy this week. It was well thought out, and one may have serious disagreements with it (as I did).
None and I mean none of the major TV media used this an opportunity to set up Obama’s vision of ending oil use in our lifetime versus McCain’s vision of more oil exploration and nuclear power. They could have produced a stunning debate on one of the most important issues of our time. It could have been visually and intellectually compelling. Where was it? Not there.
Instead, they trivialized Obama with NBC News anchor Brian Williams devoting 30 seconds to theses critical energy speeches. All Williams had to say was, with no details or analysis mind you, was some quip Obama was “refining” his energy plan. The other media didn't do much more with perhaps even less substance.
The McCain love fest is back, the media has grown tired of its new love interest, Obama, the uniqueness of the color of his skin fading in the dullness of their mindless coverage.
We face a critical juncture in our energy future, in the war in Iraq and our foreign policy, in issues of torture and our conduct internationally, our economy fraying at its carbonized edges with auto and airlines teetering on verge of collapse and own infrastructure bankrupting cities. All we get is Brian Williams and Katie Couric their ratings and their banality.
Sorry folks, had to vent .. it was driving me nuts.
What do you think?
-Marc
"Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.
In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized."
Wow, I just read it and sat there stunned for a minute. Then I woke up,
and wondered what I was so shocked about.
Here we have Wal-Mart, a store, that despite its new green image and it’s pronouncements about the Green economy with SEIU boss, Andy Stern, has a history of abusing its employees, paying low wages and few benefits.
Wal-Mart says they are not telling any employees how to vote or who to campaign for. Right, I am working the cash register at Wal-Mart wearing a big Obama button. Oops, is that a pink slip floating after me?! Who’s to know, who’s to protect my rights. Oh yes, that would be Papa Walton.
Let me be clear about my past. I have been a member of union. I have
been a union organizer. I am one of those who believe that if had not been for unions we would have had no middle class in the numbers that we have in America. They fought to ensure that their working class members had a decent life.
Now, unions have become increasingly irrelevant to life in America. Partially of their own making by becoming lethargic corporate giants themselves. Union leaders got too far away from their own members forgetting what it means to work hard to pay your bills and take care of your families. They stopped organizing. Yes, unions were victims of this economy and of the erosion of the industrial base of America. But they have done little to fight it, to change with the times, to organize new workers, to speak up for the unorganized and to enter the 21st century. They became lethargic dinosaurs.
They became easy targets for onerous laws to destroy or curtail or cripple their power to organize. Unions became the media demon and the business
the clean good guys in white shirts that knew how to run a nation.
Unions are only here because so many employees get screwed. It is
interesting I can think of five friends who own companies that don’t have unions. Their workers don’t want or need them. These owners run the gamut from libertarian to progressive to conservative to liberal. They don’t have unions because they treat their employees right. They offer health care, take care of people, worry about their families and take human beings into consideration. They are small companies, too, from 50 to 200 employees. They do it right.
If business leaders don’t want unions, then treat people right. Meanwhile,
America’s laws should be union friendly. Unions need to be protected while organizing and have the freedom to do so. The Employee Free Choice Act that Wal-Mart and others are so worried about is the least our government can do to protect an employee's right to organize and better their lives.
Senators McCain and Obama, what say ye? We are waiting here.
We're pleased to bring you a special guest blog today by CEM contributor Lea Gilmore.
When 10
Psst! Looking for Marc's blog post on legalizing marijuana? Click here to read it! We sent the wrong link in the last email! Sorry!
Yesterday's Sun carried a story about Mayor Sheila Dixon's desire to
reclaim control of Baltimore City Schools. She was always troubled
by the state takeover, as were many of us. She is being encouraged by all the other Mayors who have taken control of their city's schools.
I remember when State Superintendent Dr. Nancy Grasmick made her move
to control the management of city schools. We aired a number of
conversations in this debate. I was very doubtful then of the logic
of the move. More importantly the state's bureaucracy was no more
nimble or creative in its work, or willing to take the risks necessary
to change the city schools than the city school's entrenched
Paleolithic-minded bureaucracy.
It was not until the Baltimore City Board of Education's leadership
and direction changed that things began to move. More importantly it
was not until parents, students and teachers started to demand charter
schools that any movement took place. Ultimately, it was when Dr.
Andres Alonso arrived that our city schools began to make the
radical leaps needed to shake the lethargy out of aging special
interests. Now our schools have begun to blossom. Students,
parents, teachers and principals are beginning to be heard, held
accountable and be made part of running our schools.
The Board and the new CEO and our schools seem to be operating almost
independently of the state or the city. Things are changing. The
state needs to get out of the way. The city should not get in the
way. Maybe an entirely new partnership has to be created between the
city and our schools. Perhaps we have not invented the next step, yet.
The Mayor and the School CEO need some quiet time together to think
this through. City officials, the CEO, the school board, parents,
teachers, students, and our business and philanthropic leaders need to
spend some time thinking calmly and clearly about the future.
There is no going back to old paradigms and designs. There is no
handing pack power to old models of control and management. We need
to be moving forward to new ideas, not stuck in 20th century power
politics playing with the lives of our children.
We have a unique opportunity here. Let's build it not blow it.
A look at the practice of using tax credits to lure film industries to locate their productions in Maryland.
Federal Hillywood?
