TOUGH policing of the illegal drugs market may have the perverse effect of making drugs more affordable and thereby encouraging people to use them, according to a new model of the dynamics of this market.
Diesel Civil Trust
The US and Russia are digging in for a fight over American plans for missile defence bases in eastern Europe in spite of efforts by both sides to create a positive atmosphere before next week’s summit between Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev.
Many of the people who attend this year’s God and Country Festival will arrive at the event in SUVs whose stereos resound with talk radio harangues denouncing the expansion of the welfare state under Obama. Yet those same people are blind to the ironic fact that the government institution they uncritically adore, the United States Military, has been the greatest factor in the growth of the welfare state.
As Bruce D. Porter explains in his valuable book War and the Rise of the State, each American military conflict, beginning with the War for Independence, has expanded the domestic power and redistributive reach of the government through what he calls “Titmussian linkages” between veterans and their dependents on the one hand, and the central government on the other. That somewhat inelegant phrase refers to the work of socialist British academic Richard Morris Titmuss, “A vigorous advocate of social welfare reforms” and, therefore, of the militarization of society in the interest of expanding the welfare state.
In fact, as Timuss noticed and Porter points out, the very “origins” of the welfare state are found in the military. Veterans and their dependents, who are guaranteed pensions and various disability, health, and housing benefits provided the first permanent clients of the redistributionist state. Both world wars abetted the breakdown of conventional family norms, and offered valuable field experience for promoters of sexual emancipation and related social “reforms.” And the WWII-era conscription of millions of men, and the recruitment of their wives into war-related industries, led to the enactment of the first federal child care legislation.
COLIMA, Mexico — The candidacy of Mario Anguiano, running for governor in a state election here Sunday, says a lot about Mexican politics amid the rise of the drug cartels.
Don’t get your hopes up. That’s the signal the job market seemed to send economic pontificators on July 2, as U.S. employers cut a larger-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, according to the Labor Dept. The U.S. unemployment rate hit a 26-year high of 9.5%.
The complaint about Zelaya from the people who have taken over the country was that the legitimately elected president of Honduras wanted to hold an advisory referendum on whether to consider altering the constitution to allow elected executives to serve two terms. In order to prevent the referendum vote, the coup kidnapped an elected president, spirited him out of the country and installed a new unelected president. Then they suspended civil liberties. Outside of an Orwellian novel, or the mid-day slot on talk radio stations, some basic principles still apply: Getting elected. Organizing referendums. Proposing constitutional amendments. These are the sorts of things that happen in a country that is experiencing democracy. Kidnapping the president. Installing an unelected strongman. Suspending civil liberties. These are the sorts of things that happen in a country that is experiencing a coup.
John Nichols (via azspot)
The organization pays women who are drug addicts or alcoholics a one time amount of $300 to get permanent birth control. [viaI was hoping this was going to be about C.R.A.C.K. but I guess we are still pushing forward on this great and totally non racist/misogynist/classist/otherwise discriminatory plan.
Also, Plan B is ‘the abortion pill’ but sterilization is just ‘permanent birth control’? Nice word choice.
I want to say a couple of things as a disclaimer. First, I strongly disagree with any policy or program that pays certain groups of women to be sterilized, particularly those who are in a vulnerable place and might use funds given to them for things that only further hurt them. Second, I strongly disagree with any policy or program whose only concern is preventing pregnancy, not in helping the women who could become pregnant. Treating women like they are no more than their reproductive organs is offensive and degrading and dehumanizing, period.
I think that if such organizations are really interested in helping women and their children, the organizations should do two things: 1) provide free temporary birth control, such as the pill or the shot, to women who request it, and 2) help these women (and their children) receive treatment, counseling, and a safe environment and support group in which rehabilitation can take place.
However, on this comment:
No one thinks that taking drugs or drinking to excess during pregnancy is a good idea — though it is worth repeated reminding that the crack baby myth is just that, a myth.It’s worth noting that children born to addicted parents (that includes both) not only run the risk of higher birth defects (other illegal—and legal—drugs are associated with birth defects), but also get to look forward to a life of coming second to their parents’ addiction. These children are vulnerable to exploitation, multiple kinds of abuse, neglect, and even worse things that I do not even want to talk about here. I’ve seen it firsthand, and it is incredibly tragic to watch what addiction does not only to the people who are addicted, but also to their children who often end up becoming addicts themselves. And while I don’t think enforced sterilization is ever a solution, I don’t want to underplay how bleak a child’s chances are when they are born to an addicted mother and/or father for the sake of making my own argument about reproductive choice look better.Really, though, the important thing is that enforced sterilization, apart from being beyond wrong, isn’t going to solve the problem of addiction’s negative effects on adults or children. The focus needs to be on providing treatment, counseling, support, and safety…factors which often keep addicts in a cycle of addiction, and keeps their children there with them.
He suspected Joe Cassano didn’t understand what he had done, but even so Park was shocked by the magnitude of the misunderstanding: these piles of consumer loans were now 95 percent U.S. subprime mortgages. Park then conducted a little survey, asking the people around A.I.G. F.P. most directly involved in insuring them how much subprime was in them. He asked Gary Gorton, a Yale professor who had helped build the model Cassano used to price the credit-default swaps. Gorton guessed that the piles were no more than 10 percent subprime. He asked a risk analyst in London, who guessed 20 percent. He asked Al Frost, who had no clue, but then, his job was to sell, not to trade. ‘None of them knew’, says one trader. Which sounds, in retrospect, incredible. But an entire financial system was premised on their not knowing — and paying them for their talent!
Michael Lewis in his Vanity Fair article The Man who Crashed the World (via quotingthecrisis) (via financegeek)
WTI crude below $67/bbl. on rising gasoline supplies, less robust global demand for oil: http://tinyurl.com/mxzbbg *oil 4*
Dangerous mental health patients are to be fitted with state-of-the-art GPS trackers by the NHS after a mental patient on the run murdered a pensioner.
Sometimes the best fuckin’ rock and roll is the album tracks. Holler if you want me to post the iTunes playlist. #music #inspiration
Normally I’m a king’s English guy, but today I’m fired up over all manner of things, mostly America’s 233rd year of independence! #freedom
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