LOCO-FOCO: Library of Economics and Liberty
I have been asked about the name of my boat, Loco-Foco. Its roots lie in the factionalism of the old Jeffersonian Democratic party: the group standing opposed to special privilege and funny money.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Internal Revenue Bulletin - January 31, 2005 - Notice 2005-3
Here is link for 1031 exchangors who had their exchanges affected by Hurricane Ivan -- or one off the other recent hurricanes -- in reference to the IRS extending the 45 and 180 deadlines for identifying and closing on replacement property. It provides for at least a 120 day extension.
Here is link for 1031 exchangors who had their exchanges affected by Hurricane Ivan -- or one off the other recent hurricanes -- in reference to the IRS extending the 45 and 180 deadlines for identifying and closing on replacement property. It provides for at least a 120 day extension.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Wolfowitz at the World Bank Great analysis by Wanniski:
Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: A Perfect Fit
If you really don’t know what the “World Bank” is all about, you would think that President Bush was joking in nominating Paul Wolfowitz to be the new president of the Bank, replacing Jim Wolfensohn. One of the chief architects of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz is a political theorist, a 61-year-old man who spent most of his adult life at blackboards and lecterns teaching students about international politics. He may know how to operate an Automatic Teller Machine when in need of ready cash, but he knows absolutely nothing about banking. Wolfensohn, who was a New York investment banker before President Clinton named him to the post a decade ago, at least knows something about banking. His partner in New York, to which I suppose he will return, is Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, our nation’s central bank. Wolfie the Warrior, by contrast, is the lifetime sidekick, even protégé, of Richard Perle, probably the most important intellectual in the service of the military-industrial complex. If you want to know how Professor Wolfowitz got the job, follow the money.
That’s what the World Bank is all about. It was created as an adjunct of the United Nations at the end of World War II, along with its brother institution, the International Monetary Fund. On paper, its function was to lend money to developing countries to help them grow. Its real job has been to serve the interests of the major money-center banks and the multinational corporations who make the big bucks in World Bank development projects. The Bank, which is really a “fund,” persuades a poor country like Ghana, for example, to build a new industrial complex in order make stuff for export. It will lend the money to Ghana -- which it gets from global taxpayers including you and me -- and arrange for the complex to be built by one of the favored corporations in the military-industrial complex. The list always includes Bechtel Corporation, Halliburton, and Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton. These outfits go in and build the projects because the locals have no expertise.
In my January 23 memo in this space, ”Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” , I remarked on the recent book by John Perkins, who explains in some detail the mechanics of this gigantic money machine. It not only promotes unnecessary industrial complexes in Ghana, which rust away in bankruptcy when they prove to be uneconomic. The aim of the military-industrial complex is not only “industrial,” but also military. The name most closely associated with Halliburton, of course, is Vice President Cheney, who was Defense Secretary in the first Gulf War, with Paul Wolfowitz even then at his side (urging all-out war with Iraq even after Saddam put up the white flag and retreated to Baghdad before the war began!!) Rats.
The name most associated with Bechtel is George P. Shultz, once its top dog, now a mere director. Shultz was Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon (helping talk him into floating the U.S. dollar), Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, and currently a member of the Defense Policy Board, which until last year Richard Perle chaired.
Shultz also introduced Governor George W. Bush to Condoleezza Rice, who in turn introduced Paul Wolfowitz to Governor Bush back in 1999. Shultz of course knew at the time that Wolfie and Perle and their neo-con Cabal were planning a war in Iraq, and we know nice, little “doable” wars (Wolfie’s word), are meat and potatoes for the military-industrial complex. Instead of squeezing nickels and dimes out of the taxpayers to persuade Ghana to build a steel mill it doesn’t need and can’t run, even little wars run into the billions. And everyone gets into the act. The arms makers who produce airplanes, tanks, guns, jeeps and humvees get to blow up a country (like Iraq) and Bechtel and Halliburton come in right behind to rebuild it. In announcing the Wolfowitz appointment today, President Bush said the World Bank is a big organization and Wolfowitz has experience running a big organization, the Pentagon!! As far as the military-industrial complex is concerned, Wolfowitz did a FANTASTIC job. He was only expected to plan for a $30 billion war and he screwed up so badly that it is now a $200 billion war, and counting. Anyone who can screw up that badly deserves a promotion, to the World Bank.
So you see it doesn’t really matter that Wolfowitz doesn’t know the first thing about banking or the economics of development projects. He will sit behind the biggest desk at the Bank and take the telephone calls from the Big Banks and the Multinationals, telling him what to do, and providing him with experts like John Perkins, who did the actual dirty work as an economic hit man, and now writes his confessions. When the White House needs a big favor for one of its big hitters, it need only put in a call to Wolfie, who will throw the right switch. That’s exactly the way it worked with Jim Wolfensohn these past ten years, and if you don’t believe me, look around and you will note how many poor countries got poorer during his reign, and how many big bucks were made at Bechtel and Halliburton.
There will of course be complaints from various global diplomats about the obvious incompetence of Wolfowitz, just as there were puzzled head-scratchings around the world about the incompetence of Condi Rice as Secretary of State or John Bolton as UN Ambassador. But money talks in all the places where the directors of the World Bank live, and they will be advised to clam up by the local military-industrial money machines. Perle will also have his pals at The Weekly Standard and Fox News speculate that when Condi is President, Wolfie will be her veep (which is how it happened we've seen talk of Condi for President in 2008). Nor can we expect any complaints from Congress, because in one way or another there is too much money at stake, too many reputations looking toward bigtime lobbying jobs when its time to give up a seat in Congress.
If this seems harsh, as if I’m writing about something new under the rocks on which our Uncle Sam perches, I suggest you read my 1978 book, “The Way the World Works,” which describes how the British Empire worked in exactly this fashion. My best example was the first multinational corporations, the British railroad builders. Once they ran out of places to build rail lines in the U.K., they persuaded Parliament to promote railroads in the colonies, and were enormously successful in talking the Raj into criss-crossing India with railroads in the mid-19th century. It was one thing in England, where the companies could only build where there was a clear sign the line would be profitable, because it was their own money at risk. In India, the locals borrowed the money from the Bank of England and hired the builders to put in rail lines that couldn’t possibly be profitable. India was burdened with debts from these schemes well into the 20th century.
Even after it gained independence in 1948, India was persuaded by British and American economists to keep tax rates high and to devalue the rupee, to keep them poor and unable to compete with the big guys. Who did the British and American economists work for? Why the World Bank, of course, and also the IMF, whose job is to go into the poor countries when they can’t pay back their loans, and lend them the money to do so -- as long as they agree to raise taxes again, devalue their currency, and build new industrial complexes that are constructed by Bechtel and Halliburton.
So you see why it makes perfect sense to have Wolfowitz at the World Bank. He’s terrific at doing wars, and wars are much more profitable than nickel-and-dime industrial projects. That’s the way the world works. Always has been.
* * * * *
Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: A Perfect Fit
If you really don’t know what the “World Bank” is all about, you would think that President Bush was joking in nominating Paul Wolfowitz to be the new president of the Bank, replacing Jim Wolfensohn. One of the chief architects of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz is a political theorist, a 61-year-old man who spent most of his adult life at blackboards and lecterns teaching students about international politics. He may know how to operate an Automatic Teller Machine when in need of ready cash, but he knows absolutely nothing about banking. Wolfensohn, who was a New York investment banker before President Clinton named him to the post a decade ago, at least knows something about banking. His partner in New York, to which I suppose he will return, is Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, our nation’s central bank. Wolfie the Warrior, by contrast, is the lifetime sidekick, even protégé, of Richard Perle, probably the most important intellectual in the service of the military-industrial complex. If you want to know how Professor Wolfowitz got the job, follow the money.
That’s what the World Bank is all about. It was created as an adjunct of the United Nations at the end of World War II, along with its brother institution, the International Monetary Fund. On paper, its function was to lend money to developing countries to help them grow. Its real job has been to serve the interests of the major money-center banks and the multinational corporations who make the big bucks in World Bank development projects. The Bank, which is really a “fund,” persuades a poor country like Ghana, for example, to build a new industrial complex in order make stuff for export. It will lend the money to Ghana -- which it gets from global taxpayers including you and me -- and arrange for the complex to be built by one of the favored corporations in the military-industrial complex. The list always includes Bechtel Corporation, Halliburton, and Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton. These outfits go in and build the projects because the locals have no expertise.
In my January 23 memo in this space, ”Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” , I remarked on the recent book by John Perkins, who explains in some detail the mechanics of this gigantic money machine. It not only promotes unnecessary industrial complexes in Ghana, which rust away in bankruptcy when they prove to be uneconomic. The aim of the military-industrial complex is not only “industrial,” but also military. The name most closely associated with Halliburton, of course, is Vice President Cheney, who was Defense Secretary in the first Gulf War, with Paul Wolfowitz even then at his side (urging all-out war with Iraq even after Saddam put up the white flag and retreated to Baghdad before the war began!!) Rats.
The name most associated with Bechtel is George P. Shultz, once its top dog, now a mere director. Shultz was Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon (helping talk him into floating the U.S. dollar), Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, and currently a member of the Defense Policy Board, which until last year Richard Perle chaired.
Shultz also introduced Governor George W. Bush to Condoleezza Rice, who in turn introduced Paul Wolfowitz to Governor Bush back in 1999. Shultz of course knew at the time that Wolfie and Perle and their neo-con Cabal were planning a war in Iraq, and we know nice, little “doable” wars (Wolfie’s word), are meat and potatoes for the military-industrial complex. Instead of squeezing nickels and dimes out of the taxpayers to persuade Ghana to build a steel mill it doesn’t need and can’t run, even little wars run into the billions. And everyone gets into the act. The arms makers who produce airplanes, tanks, guns, jeeps and humvees get to blow up a country (like Iraq) and Bechtel and Halliburton come in right behind to rebuild it. In announcing the Wolfowitz appointment today, President Bush said the World Bank is a big organization and Wolfowitz has experience running a big organization, the Pentagon!! As far as the military-industrial complex is concerned, Wolfowitz did a FANTASTIC job. He was only expected to plan for a $30 billion war and he screwed up so badly that it is now a $200 billion war, and counting. Anyone who can screw up that badly deserves a promotion, to the World Bank.
So you see it doesn’t really matter that Wolfowitz doesn’t know the first thing about banking or the economics of development projects. He will sit behind the biggest desk at the Bank and take the telephone calls from the Big Banks and the Multinationals, telling him what to do, and providing him with experts like John Perkins, who did the actual dirty work as an economic hit man, and now writes his confessions. When the White House needs a big favor for one of its big hitters, it need only put in a call to Wolfie, who will throw the right switch. That’s exactly the way it worked with Jim Wolfensohn these past ten years, and if you don’t believe me, look around and you will note how many poor countries got poorer during his reign, and how many big bucks were made at Bechtel and Halliburton.
There will of course be complaints from various global diplomats about the obvious incompetence of Wolfowitz, just as there were puzzled head-scratchings around the world about the incompetence of Condi Rice as Secretary of State or John Bolton as UN Ambassador. But money talks in all the places where the directors of the World Bank live, and they will be advised to clam up by the local military-industrial money machines. Perle will also have his pals at The Weekly Standard and Fox News speculate that when Condi is President, Wolfie will be her veep (which is how it happened we've seen talk of Condi for President in 2008). Nor can we expect any complaints from Congress, because in one way or another there is too much money at stake, too many reputations looking toward bigtime lobbying jobs when its time to give up a seat in Congress.
If this seems harsh, as if I’m writing about something new under the rocks on which our Uncle Sam perches, I suggest you read my 1978 book, “The Way the World Works,” which describes how the British Empire worked in exactly this fashion. My best example was the first multinational corporations, the British railroad builders. Once they ran out of places to build rail lines in the U.K., they persuaded Parliament to promote railroads in the colonies, and were enormously successful in talking the Raj into criss-crossing India with railroads in the mid-19th century. It was one thing in England, where the companies could only build where there was a clear sign the line would be profitable, because it was their own money at risk. In India, the locals borrowed the money from the Bank of England and hired the builders to put in rail lines that couldn’t possibly be profitable. India was burdened with debts from these schemes well into the 20th century.
Even after it gained independence in 1948, India was persuaded by British and American economists to keep tax rates high and to devalue the rupee, to keep them poor and unable to compete with the big guys. Who did the British and American economists work for? Why the World Bank, of course, and also the IMF, whose job is to go into the poor countries when they can’t pay back their loans, and lend them the money to do so -- as long as they agree to raise taxes again, devalue their currency, and build new industrial complexes that are constructed by Bechtel and Halliburton.
So you see why it makes perfect sense to have Wolfowitz at the World Bank. He’s terrific at doing wars, and wars are much more profitable than nickel-and-dime industrial projects. That’s the way the world works. Always has been.
* * * * *
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
From the Wanniski website:
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach.
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
Nature abhors a moron.
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
...the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom respectable. No virtuous man--that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense--has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading...
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable.
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
Remorse--Regret that one waited so long to do it.
...school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of menial workers.
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
A man may be a fool and not know it -- but not if he is married.
Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach.
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
Nature abhors a moron.
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution.
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.
Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
...the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom respectable. No virtuous man--that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense--has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading...
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable.
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
Remorse--Regret that one waited so long to do it.
...school teachers, taking them by and large, are probably the most ignorant and stupid class of men in the whole group of menial workers.
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing.
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
A man may be a fool and not know it -- but not if he is married.
Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
John Fund on the Trail
"High Taxes Wither Away
Former communist countries lead the way in abandoning progressivity."
Don't hold your breath, but an interesting story.
"High Taxes Wither Away
Former communist countries lead the way in abandoning progressivity."
Don't hold your breath, but an interesting story.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Friday, January 14, 2005
GOP willing to take hike for reform
Novak writes that Sen. Lindsey Graham's proposal to raise the social security tax as part of a compromise in order to secure some private accounts is getting legs. Once again the stupid party is about to get rolled.
Novak writes that Sen. Lindsey Graham's proposal to raise the social security tax as part of a compromise in order to secure some private accounts is getting legs. Once again the stupid party is about to get rolled.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
The Drug War Toll Mounts
Excellent quick summary of the drug war insanity:
The Drug War Toll Mounts
by Radley Balko
Radley Balko is a policy analyst for the Cato Institute.
In Washington, D.C., a 27-year old quadriplegic is sentenced to ten days in jail for marijuana possession, where he dies under suspicious circumstances. In Florida, a wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis patient now serves a 25-year prison sentence for using an out-of-state doctor to obtain pain medication. And in Palestine, Texas, prosecutors arrest 72 people -- all of them black -- and charge them with distributing crack cocaine. The scene bears a remarkable resemblance to a similar mass, mostly-black drug bust in nearby Tulia five years ago.
These examples aren't exceptional. They're typical. America's drug war marches on, impervious to efficacy, justice, or absurdity. Drug prohibition was nowhere to be found in Election 2004. There was no mention of it in the debates, the conventions, or the endless cable news campaign coverage.
In some ways, that was a blessing. Campaign discussion of drug prohibition has too often focused on which candidate took what drugs when, and who was more sorry for having done so.
While it's refreshing that we've moved beyond apologies, it's also true that under the laws many of today's politicians support, a kid who experiments with illicit drugs the same way many of them once did may not get the chance to finish school or go to college, much less run for political office.
The number of policymakers who've dared to question any aspect of the drug war could comfortably fit on the back of a pocket-sized edition of the Bill of Rights. This needs to change. America should reexamine its drug policy.
Today, federal and state governments spend between $40 and $60 billion per year to fight the war on drugs, about ten times the amount spent in 1980 -- and billions more to keep drug felons in jail. The U.S. now has more than 318,000 people behind bars for drug-related offenses, more than the total prison populations of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain combined.
Our prison population has increased by 400 percent since 1980, while the general population has increased just 20 percent. America also now has the highest incarceration rate in the world -- 732 of every 100,000 citizens are behind bars.
The drug war has wrought the zero tolerance mindset, asset forfeiture laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and countless exceptions to criminal defense and civil liberties protections. Some sociologists blame it for much of the plight of America's inner cities. Others point out that it has corrupted law enforcement, just as alcohol prohibition did in the 1920s.
On peripheral issues like medicinal marijuana and prescription painkillers, the drug war has treated chronically and terminally ill patients as junkies, and the doctors who treat them as common pushers. Drug war accoutrements, such as "no-knock" raids and searches, border patrols, black market turf wars and crossfire, and international interdiction efforts, have claimed untold numbers of innocent lives.
For all that sacrifice, are we at least winning?
Even by the government's own standards for success, the answer is unquestionably "no." The illicit drug trade is estimated to be worth $50 billion today ($400 billion worldwide), up from $1 billion 25 years ago. Annual surveys of high school seniors show heroin and marijuana are as available today as they were in 1975. Deaths from drug overdoses have doubled in the last 20 years.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the price of of a gram of heroin has dropped by about 38 percent since 1981, while the purity of that gram has increased six-fold. The price of cocaine has dropped by 50 percent, while its purity has increased by 70 percent. Just recently, the ONDCP waged a public relations campaign against increasingly pure forms of marijuana coming in from Canada.
So despite all of the money we've spent and people we've imprisoned, despite the damage done to our cities and the integrity of our criminal justice system, despite the restrictions we've allowed on our civil liberties, despite the innocent lives lost and the needless suffering we've imposed on sick people and their doctors -- despite all of this -- the drug trade isn't just thriving, it's growing. Illicit drugs are cheaper, more abundant, and of purer concentration than ever before.
Like alcohol prohibition before it, drug prohibition has failed, by every conceivable measure. Isn't it about time for America to take a hard look at its drug policy?
Excellent quick summary of the drug war insanity:
The Drug War Toll Mounts
by Radley Balko
Radley Balko is a policy analyst for the Cato Institute.
In Washington, D.C., a 27-year old quadriplegic is sentenced to ten days in jail for marijuana possession, where he dies under suspicious circumstances. In Florida, a wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis patient now serves a 25-year prison sentence for using an out-of-state doctor to obtain pain medication. And in Palestine, Texas, prosecutors arrest 72 people -- all of them black -- and charge them with distributing crack cocaine. The scene bears a remarkable resemblance to a similar mass, mostly-black drug bust in nearby Tulia five years ago.
These examples aren't exceptional. They're typical. America's drug war marches on, impervious to efficacy, justice, or absurdity. Drug prohibition was nowhere to be found in Election 2004. There was no mention of it in the debates, the conventions, or the endless cable news campaign coverage.
In some ways, that was a blessing. Campaign discussion of drug prohibition has too often focused on which candidate took what drugs when, and who was more sorry for having done so.
While it's refreshing that we've moved beyond apologies, it's also true that under the laws many of today's politicians support, a kid who experiments with illicit drugs the same way many of them once did may not get the chance to finish school or go to college, much less run for political office.
The number of policymakers who've dared to question any aspect of the drug war could comfortably fit on the back of a pocket-sized edition of the Bill of Rights. This needs to change. America should reexamine its drug policy.
Today, federal and state governments spend between $40 and $60 billion per year to fight the war on drugs, about ten times the amount spent in 1980 -- and billions more to keep drug felons in jail. The U.S. now has more than 318,000 people behind bars for drug-related offenses, more than the total prison populations of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain combined.
Our prison population has increased by 400 percent since 1980, while the general population has increased just 20 percent. America also now has the highest incarceration rate in the world -- 732 of every 100,000 citizens are behind bars.
The drug war has wrought the zero tolerance mindset, asset forfeiture laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and countless exceptions to criminal defense and civil liberties protections. Some sociologists blame it for much of the plight of America's inner cities. Others point out that it has corrupted law enforcement, just as alcohol prohibition did in the 1920s.
On peripheral issues like medicinal marijuana and prescription painkillers, the drug war has treated chronically and terminally ill patients as junkies, and the doctors who treat them as common pushers. Drug war accoutrements, such as "no-knock" raids and searches, border patrols, black market turf wars and crossfire, and international interdiction efforts, have claimed untold numbers of innocent lives.
For all that sacrifice, are we at least winning?
Even by the government's own standards for success, the answer is unquestionably "no." The illicit drug trade is estimated to be worth $50 billion today ($400 billion worldwide), up from $1 billion 25 years ago. Annual surveys of high school seniors show heroin and marijuana are as available today as they were in 1975. Deaths from drug overdoses have doubled in the last 20 years.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the price of of a gram of heroin has dropped by about 38 percent since 1981, while the purity of that gram has increased six-fold. The price of cocaine has dropped by 50 percent, while its purity has increased by 70 percent. Just recently, the ONDCP waged a public relations campaign against increasingly pure forms of marijuana coming in from Canada.
So despite all of the money we've spent and people we've imprisoned, despite the damage done to our cities and the integrity of our criminal justice system, despite the restrictions we've allowed on our civil liberties, despite the innocent lives lost and the needless suffering we've imposed on sick people and their doctors -- despite all of this -- the drug trade isn't just thriving, it's growing. Illicit drugs are cheaper, more abundant, and of purer concentration than ever before.
Like alcohol prohibition before it, drug prohibition has failed, by every conceivable measure. Isn't it about time for America to take a hard look at its drug policy?
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
The Real Crimes of the UN in Iraq
Looking the Other Way
By KATHY KELLY
Shortly before sunrise, this morning, a small band of us gathered at a busy Chicago intersection and unfurled vinyl banners bearing enlarged pictures of Iraqi children. One banner called for an end to US warfare in Iraq. On my banner was Johan, smiling wanly, a 14 year old child who weighed 75 pounds shortly before she died of cancer in the oncology ward of a Baghdad hospital on September 21, 2003. As our banners flapped in the wind, I tried to compose a letter in my head to her teenage brother, Laith, who recently wrote to tell me how much he misses her.
Had Johan lived in a country that wasn't reeling from 13 years of economic sanctions, she might have survived childhood leukemia. She is one of hundreds of thousands of children who died while economic sanctions and war shattered Iraq's health care delivery system.
Writing my mental letter, I thought of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's words of comfort to bereaved parents of four little girls who were murdered when the Birmingham Baptist church was bombed on September 18, 1963. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan was convicted of the crime. Addie, Carol, Cynthia and Carole had been praying inside the church.
"These children-unoffending, innocent, and beautiful-were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity." Dr. King said. But he offered comfort. "In a real sense," he continued, "they have something to say to each of us in their death. . .they did not die in vain. . .Indeed, this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience."
This morning, columnists in major US papers will continue alerting US people to possible wrongs, even crimes, committed by UN officials in the course of the "oil for food" program which coordinated and monitored sales of Iraqi oil, while economic sanctions ravaged Iraq. These economic sanctions constituted the most comprehensive state of siege ever imposed in modern history. It's not likely that Saddam Hussein ever missed a meal, but children, hundreds of thousands of children, suffered gruesomely. Their suffering and death can be likened to child sacrifice, certainly the most egregious instance of child abuse in modern times. They'd committed no crime, yet they were brutally--and lethally--punished for the government of the country into which they were haplessly born. You aren't likely to find this story in the current exposés of UN wrongdoing.
In fact, many UN officials tried valiantly to put an end to the economic sanctions. Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday resigned their posts and crisscrossed the globe educating people about the effects of the economic sanctions which Halliday termed "genocidal." UNICEF's Executive Director, Carole Bellamy, held a 1999 press conference to announce the release of a "Situation Analysis of Women and Children in Iraq" which carefully explained that the economic sanctions contributed to the "excess deaths" of over 500,000 Iraqi children, under age five. Not one US television network aired coverage of the press conference. Only two of 50 leading US papers reported the actual shocking number of one half million "excess deaths" of children. The Wall Street Journal asserted that it was all Saddam's fault. The New York Times echoed this in an 800 word story quoting Jamie Rubin of the State Department questioning the study's methodology.
The sanctions punished children while Saddam's regime profited through smuggling: Many Westerners who traveled to Iraq tried to communicate this to people in their home locales. The smuggling and the rake-offs were no secret, especially in the final years of the sanctions when there were many reports of lucrative kickbacks and inflated prices. Many witnessed the sanctions actually strengthening Hussein's control, as the regime became the only source of food and stability for an increasingly desperate and disempowered population.
The children were punished. When the pictures of those little ones, writhing in pain, wrinkled with wasting, desperate and bewildered, ...held by equally despairing and tortured parents...when those pictures were held up, sometimes as we fasted, sometimes while we were being led off in plastic handcuffs, sometimes at press conferences in front of the UN in Baghdad, sometimes in the middle of Basra cesspools and cemeteries...when those pictures were held up, many people looked the other way.
When I try to understand why columnists in far away places wouldn't take on the story of these worthy victims, I try to remember that there are many worthy victims and one person can't undertake care and concern for every devastating, brutal injustice. Pick your battles. But I can't for the life of me understand how a steady stream of columns have appeared on op-ed pages, in the NYT and other papers, alerting us to possible crimes committed by UN officials in the course of the "oil for food" program while there has been no mention of the crime of child sacrifice in Iraq.
The concern generating reams of verbiage at this point is that UN officials may have looked the other way as Saddam Hussein and a number of collaborators pocketed rake-offs in underhanded dealings using profits from Iraqi oil sales. I'm not equipped to comment on those charges. But is there no columnist who will remind us that 500,000 children under age five died as the US used the UN to wage economic warfare against children?
Let's consider the UN workers who stood a chance of getting food and medicine into Iraq were they to look Iraqi families straight in the eyes and say, "sorry, we'll have to prevent these contracts from going through because you, in your pitiful weakness, can't prevent the dictator that rules you from getting rake-offs on the deal. We can't compromise our principles...
They looked the other way. I looked the other way myself. We in our delegations looked the other way even as we knew that normally we'd be hopping mad and demonstrating in front of any government bastion that inflicted so much fear on its people...but that would have been the wrap-up for our entry into neighborhoods, families, hospitals, schools, ... it was a trade-off.
King said, "And so I stand here to say this afternoon to all assembled here that in spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not despair. We must not become bitter . . . Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality." But this said, what words of comfort can I offer to Johan's brother Laith? I can tell him where we stood this morning, and whose picture I held. People looked.
Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to nonviolently resist U.S. militarism at home and abroad. Her book, Other Lands Have Dreams: Letters From Pekin Prison, will be published in the spring of 2005 by CounterPunch Books / AK Press. She can be reached at kathy@vitw.org
Looking the Other Way
By KATHY KELLY
Shortly before sunrise, this morning, a small band of us gathered at a busy Chicago intersection and unfurled vinyl banners bearing enlarged pictures of Iraqi children. One banner called for an end to US warfare in Iraq. On my banner was Johan, smiling wanly, a 14 year old child who weighed 75 pounds shortly before she died of cancer in the oncology ward of a Baghdad hospital on September 21, 2003. As our banners flapped in the wind, I tried to compose a letter in my head to her teenage brother, Laith, who recently wrote to tell me how much he misses her.
Had Johan lived in a country that wasn't reeling from 13 years of economic sanctions, she might have survived childhood leukemia. She is one of hundreds of thousands of children who died while economic sanctions and war shattered Iraq's health care delivery system.
Writing my mental letter, I thought of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's words of comfort to bereaved parents of four little girls who were murdered when the Birmingham Baptist church was bombed on September 18, 1963. A former member of the Ku Klux Klan was convicted of the crime. Addie, Carol, Cynthia and Carole had been praying inside the church.
"These children-unoffending, innocent, and beautiful-were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity." Dr. King said. But he offered comfort. "In a real sense," he continued, "they have something to say to each of us in their death. . .they did not die in vain. . .Indeed, this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience."
This morning, columnists in major US papers will continue alerting US people to possible wrongs, even crimes, committed by UN officials in the course of the "oil for food" program which coordinated and monitored sales of Iraqi oil, while economic sanctions ravaged Iraq. These economic sanctions constituted the most comprehensive state of siege ever imposed in modern history. It's not likely that Saddam Hussein ever missed a meal, but children, hundreds of thousands of children, suffered gruesomely. Their suffering and death can be likened to child sacrifice, certainly the most egregious instance of child abuse in modern times. They'd committed no crime, yet they were brutally--and lethally--punished for the government of the country into which they were haplessly born. You aren't likely to find this story in the current exposés of UN wrongdoing.
In fact, many UN officials tried valiantly to put an end to the economic sanctions. Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday resigned their posts and crisscrossed the globe educating people about the effects of the economic sanctions which Halliday termed "genocidal." UNICEF's Executive Director, Carole Bellamy, held a 1999 press conference to announce the release of a "Situation Analysis of Women and Children in Iraq" which carefully explained that the economic sanctions contributed to the "excess deaths" of over 500,000 Iraqi children, under age five. Not one US television network aired coverage of the press conference. Only two of 50 leading US papers reported the actual shocking number of one half million "excess deaths" of children. The Wall Street Journal asserted that it was all Saddam's fault. The New York Times echoed this in an 800 word story quoting Jamie Rubin of the State Department questioning the study's methodology.
The sanctions punished children while Saddam's regime profited through smuggling: Many Westerners who traveled to Iraq tried to communicate this to people in their home locales. The smuggling and the rake-offs were no secret, especially in the final years of the sanctions when there were many reports of lucrative kickbacks and inflated prices. Many witnessed the sanctions actually strengthening Hussein's control, as the regime became the only source of food and stability for an increasingly desperate and disempowered population.
The children were punished. When the pictures of those little ones, writhing in pain, wrinkled with wasting, desperate and bewildered, ...held by equally despairing and tortured parents...when those pictures were held up, sometimes as we fasted, sometimes while we were being led off in plastic handcuffs, sometimes at press conferences in front of the UN in Baghdad, sometimes in the middle of Basra cesspools and cemeteries...when those pictures were held up, many people looked the other way.
When I try to understand why columnists in far away places wouldn't take on the story of these worthy victims, I try to remember that there are many worthy victims and one person can't undertake care and concern for every devastating, brutal injustice. Pick your battles. But I can't for the life of me understand how a steady stream of columns have appeared on op-ed pages, in the NYT and other papers, alerting us to possible crimes committed by UN officials in the course of the "oil for food" program while there has been no mention of the crime of child sacrifice in Iraq.
The concern generating reams of verbiage at this point is that UN officials may have looked the other way as Saddam Hussein and a number of collaborators pocketed rake-offs in underhanded dealings using profits from Iraqi oil sales. I'm not equipped to comment on those charges. But is there no columnist who will remind us that 500,000 children under age five died as the US used the UN to wage economic warfare against children?
Let's consider the UN workers who stood a chance of getting food and medicine into Iraq were they to look Iraqi families straight in the eyes and say, "sorry, we'll have to prevent these contracts from going through because you, in your pitiful weakness, can't prevent the dictator that rules you from getting rake-offs on the deal. We can't compromise our principles...
They looked the other way. I looked the other way myself. We in our delegations looked the other way even as we knew that normally we'd be hopping mad and demonstrating in front of any government bastion that inflicted so much fear on its people...but that would have been the wrap-up for our entry into neighborhoods, families, hospitals, schools, ... it was a trade-off.
King said, "And so I stand here to say this afternoon to all assembled here that in spite of the darkness of this hour, we must not despair. We must not become bitter . . . Somehow we must believe that the most misguided among them can learn to respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality." But this said, what words of comfort can I offer to Johan's brother Laith? I can tell him where we stood this morning, and whose picture I held. People looked.
Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to nonviolently resist U.S. militarism at home and abroad. Her book, Other Lands Have Dreams: Letters From Pekin Prison, will be published in the spring of 2005 by CounterPunch Books / AK Press. She can be reached at kathy@vitw.org
Monday, November 29, 2004
Raich v. Ashcroft - A Guide to the Supreme Court Case: "Raich v. Ashcroft - A Guide to the Supreme Court Case"
Oral argument today in Raich v. Ashcroft, the California medical merijuana case. Here is an opportunity for the Court to do something right. A reasoned decision reigning in the Federal government just might be a first step toward lessening the unreasoning hysteria surrounding the drug war.
Oral argument today in Raich v. Ashcroft, the California medical merijuana case. Here is an opportunity for the Court to do something right. A reasoned decision reigning in the Federal government just might be a first step toward lessening the unreasoning hysteria surrounding the drug war.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Toronto Sun Columnist: Eric Margolis - Ukraine flirting with a civil war
Understanding what is going on in the Ukraine. Solution: Decentralization (i.e., secession).
Understanding what is going on in the Ukraine. Solution: Decentralization (i.e., secession).
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Leithner&Company Pty Ltd - The Leithner Letter
Poor Principles, Phony Recoveries and Festering Problems
Follow the links.
Poor Principles, Phony Recoveries and Festering Problems
Follow the links.
Monday, November 22, 2004
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Politics (H. L. Mencken)
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Dick Morris -- How were the exit polls so wrong?
Interesting analysis. Curious commentary last night as all the pundits "knew" the results and spent at least the early evening explaining the Bush "defeat."
Interesting analysis. Curious commentary last night as all the pundits "knew" the results and spent at least the early evening explaining the Bush "defeat."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uR7hniGCBGS15cK_Ah7m5fPCKeGWpg3eYC2_VtVRk6bAN0ZpPyTy0GBXlhu3MnhMawAoS-h2iOZKOBFH39gmKCKoZ0HvhOiEHs_a0JBJaf_wGZ9prujoZrkws0RUc2CtlI-w=s0-d)
Posts
