The SoapBoxers

Our country has been involved in quite a few wars in the last 100 years.  World War I seemed to be more or less justified, although some can claim that we timed things just right to place ourselves as the heroes riding in to save the day.  Diplomatic mistakes and overbearing surrender conditions created the perfect conditions for Hitler’s rise to power.  That lead us to World War II.  World War II was certainly justified.  Regardless of the overwhelming public sentiment in 1939 to remain neutral, the atrocities of the Nazis had to be stopped and probably wouldn’t have been stopped without American intervention. 

I won’t argue the pros and cons of the two biggst post-WWII wars, Vietnam and Korea here but it is hard to argue against the statement that they weren’t as “justified” as World War II.  During WWII, the massive industrial effort of the United States combined with the near absolute destruction of the German and Japanese industrial infrastructure set up the US to be a dominant industrial power for at least the next few decades.  American cars rolled off the lines.  American military products became the rage in nearly every country to field an army.  American companies were on a roll from the post-war boom.  A new industry practically exploded in size – defense contractors. 

War is a huge industry.  It can be easily argued that World War II was precisely what this country needed to get us out of the great depression.  World War II quickly blended into the cold war which saw active conflicts such as the Korean War, The Vietnam War, The invasion of Grenada, the invasion of Panama and many other smaller military actions.  Except for a few years in the 70’s and the 2000s (when the George W. Bush administration didn’t include the 2 wars on the budget) the percentage of US discretionary spending on military matters has been over 50%.  We have bridges falling, a sub-par electrical infrastructure, and weak public transit compared to nearly every other industrialized nation on the planet and yet we’re spending half our optional money on the military.  Diseases still run unchecked, half our population is overweight, and yet we currently have a navy that’s bigger than the next 13 navies combined – and 11 of those 13 are considered allies.  Consider that the US Navy has dramatically decreased in size since the 80’s, too.

What’s a bigger threat to the US – a massive, coordinated attack on our information infrastructure or a massive, coordinated attack by troops, planes, and ships?  War should always be the last possible option, yet major political decisions are made every day to spend money on war before spending money on citizens.

The F22 program is a perfect example of how the defense industry has a stranglehold on US politics.  Originally designed as a successor to the aging F15 fighter, the F22 won a competition between two massive teams of defense contractors.  In addition, the final product is a joint venture between dozens of different companies, with major components designed and manufactured in dozens of different states and countries.  When it was proven that the F22 was far too expensive for the results it produced, this “shotgun” style approach to manufacturing almost gave it a too-big-to-fail style argument against killing it.  The defense industry didn’t even need lobbyists in this case; almost every politician with a stake in the program argued to keep it active, despite the massive bill it was ringing up with proven flaws and extra expenses.

It might be a painful transition, but it’s time to start thinking about better peacetime expenditures.  F22s, aircraft carriers, and tanks are not going to stop terrorists.  A healthy, smart, well-equipped population with transparency in defense lobbying will be the best deterrent of all as we move forward in this new century.

How’s that “Drill, Baby, Drill” thing working out for you now?

In the popular 1984 movie Ghostbusters, there’s a scene where the mayor of New York City is trying to decide if he should trust the Ghostbusters or not. On one hand he has a bunch of popular whackos who claim to be able to deal with the rampant, bizarre paranormal events plaguing his metropolis. On the other hand, he has his adviser from the EPA saying the Ghostbusters are con artists and should go to jail. He asks Bill Murray what happens if he’s wrong, and Murray replies, “If I’m wrong, nothing happens! We go to jail – peacefully, quietly. We’ll enjoy it! But if I’m *right*, and we *can* stop this thing… Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.”

I have the same sort of feelings about climate change. Despite an overwhelming number of credible scientists (over 80%) believing that both global warming is real and human actions have caused it, there is still rampant doubt in political circles that it exists. Fox News commentators were often heard muttering that if global warming is true, how could there be such prolific blizzards this past winter? (Fox News commentators are invited to read about the first law of thermodynamics) Let’s look at this from a skeptic’s point of view. If they’re right, and global warming is just a big scientific error or big liberal hoax, we should ignore efforts to curb fossil fuels and not worry about that South American rainforest. Exxon-Mobile, BP, Haliburton, and other major corporations involved in oil have a vested interest to be able to find and sell as much oil as possible. Strange that such large, powerful corporations would need to spend so much on lobbying when they already receive such massive tax breaks from the US government.

What about the flip side, though? What if environmentalists are wrong? If they’re wrong and climate change doesn’t exist, we’re spending lots of money to find alternative energy sources, specifically focusing on natural gas, solar and wind power as well as electric cars. We’ve already spent over a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq – had we used that money to fund research in alternative fuel, would we even need the middle east? Let’s face it, we didn’t really go into Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction. When it was revealed that those weapons never existed, the Cheney administration changed its tune and said we went in there to topple a horrible dictator and bring democracy to the region. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, but we have no more right to do that than Russia does to come and make this a fascist nation. We went into Iraq to gain money and oil, and at what cost? Thousands of US lives, tens of thousands of other lives are gone. Many more people horrible wounded and crippled for life, all for what? Oil. If the environmentalists are wrong, we’ll be spending less money and probably no lives than the Iraqi war to come up with new technology that may help ween us off our dependence for oil, and a lot of scientists will go down in history as having been wrong.

But if environmentalists are right, and climate change is real and we ignore it, what’s at stake? Predictions are pretty widespread on this. The amount of polar ice melting from just a few degrees of overall planetary atmospheric warming is enough to raise ocean levels by anywhere from a few inches to a few feet. A few feet would leave many of the most highly populated areas of the Earth under water. 634 million people live in coastal areas within 30 feet of sea level. About two thirds of the world’s cities with over five million people are located in these low-lying coastal areas. You think crowding is bad now? Let’s sink the bulk of Florida and see how bad it gets.

Despite recent examples of what happens when our addiction for fossil fuels goes bad, notably the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, party lines have for the most part not changed. Louisiana is right now, as I type this, having hundreds of miles of coastline covered in oil and sludge and thousands of animals are dead. Thousands more will die. The entire fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico is at risk of collapsing. You’d think that the governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal (R), would be outspoken against this. Not with oil and gas industries as his 2nd biggest contributor. He’s already called for President Obama to reconsider the ban on deep water drilling, yet every day thousands of more gallons of crude oil pour out of the broken well and pollute the water. Sarah Palin continues to speak across the country that this is an example of why we should drill more with more safety regulations, not less. The Exxon Valdez disaster happened in her home state of Alaska, and is still having an impact on Prince William Sound, over 20 years after the event. Conservative activist judges have multiple times reduced the fine Exxon received after the event to the point where Exxon has paid less than 1/10th of the original court ruling. BP still hasn’t capped the spill, do you really think they’re going to do the right thing and pay for all the cleanup and all the damage this spill has caused and will cause?

There is a Native American saying that goes, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Despite this, there is a widespread mindset that this current trend of climate change is just a rare but not unexpected anomaly in the history of the planet. If that line of thinking is right, we don’t have anything to worry about, right? Our children will simply have to work harder to live comfortably because they just happen to be in the wrong time. But what if this isn’t just part of the long-term trend? Do you really want to be leaving your kids a trashed-up planet because you wanted $2.50 a gallon gas for your huge SUV? Do you really want your kids grandchildren asking them, “what was Florida like when you were young?”

An OPEC exec once said, “The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stone and the oil age won’t end because we run out of oil.” I’m praying he’s right and it ends because we pull our heads out of our collective butts and find a better alternative to fossil fuels.

Dispelling the Health Care Rumors

I’ve seen a lot of arguments on both sides of the health care debate in the past few months. A lot of smart things have been said, and a lot of flat-out untruths have been spread. I’m here to take on the ones that bother me the most.

1) The government is just intruding on your freedom

The Truth: The mayor of East Podunk, Kentucky could sneeze and someone out there would see it as a governmental invasion of your freedom. The fact is, the government isn’t forcing you to buy health care any more than they’re forcing you to buy auto insurance if you own and drive a car, but you will pay a tax if you don’t have health care come 2014. Right now the majority of Americans have health care through their job, so if you’re reading this odds are you fall in that category. If you’re not one of those people, don’t have health insurance, and don’t want health insurance then you’re a liability on us all: if you get sick or injured to the point where you have to go to the ER, you’re a burden on everyone’s taxes, including your own.

2) This is just one more step toward socialism!

The Truth: The average person who says that has no clue what socialism really is. The US has, and has had for many years, socialist systems in place: Unemployment, social security, police forces, fire departments, and even the military. The military is like a little socialist bubble society within American society. Beyond that we already have socialist systems in place, you’re going to pay a tax if you’re not already receiving health care from your capitalistic job so that if you should be injured or get sick to the point of needing emergency medical services you won’t be an undue burden on the government. Gee, that tax kind of sounds like … insurance, doesn’t it?

3) This is government takeover of health care.

The Truth: No. Private insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals will still exist as private, for-profit businesses. The government is already in the health care business from Medicare and Medicaid, programs which millions of people are very happy with. Here’s two typical right-wing talking points that don’t logically work when combined: the government can’t run anything right, and health care companies are afraid the government will run them out of business. If these companies are so successful why should they be afraid of an inept and bumbling government?

4) The US already has the best health care system in the world, we don’t need any new laws or to change anything.

The Truth: The US, according to the WHO in 2000, ranked 37th in the world as far as health care goes; slightly above Slovenia and Cuba (you know, Cuba, that socialist, communist, pinko country to the south of Florida). This ranking was based on number of preventable deaths, healthy life expectancy, health performance rank, and total expenditure of percentage of GDP for health care. I know, if Canada has such good health care, why do their leaders come here to see our doctors? They don’t. The only positive proof of this I was able to find was a Canadian Parliament minister coming to the US to see a specialist for a very specific issue. I can even counter that with a personal anecdote: I had a friend go to Germany for experimental cancer treatment when his US insurance was unwilling to pay for expensive treatment that might have saved his life. Sadly, he died a few years ago because of that cancer. Yay capitalism.

5) “Death Panels” will decide when your grandma dies.

The Truth: That is so outrageously false I’m shocked that anyone actually believes it, but then I’m shocked people believe half the things that come out of Glenn Beck’s mouth. The best I could come up with is the term “Death Panel” was made up by Sarah Palin in an attempt to sensationalize end-of-life counseling and use it as a scare tactic. When people get old, they sometimes need more help from medical professionals than when they were younger. This can get expensive. To help best plan for this time often their children consult with a doctor on what to do. This is called end-of-life counseling. Here, I’ll re-label it. Let’s call it … Elderly Living Assistance Planning.

6) Non-jailed sex offenders will be able to get viagra on this plan!

The Truth: What? Are you serious? Senator Coburn of Oklahoma brought this up in yet another attempt to scare people away from the idea of health care reform. A convicted sex offender not in jail could get viagra on this new health care reform law in the same way a convicted murderer not in jail could get a gun – through someone willing to give it to them. The outrage at this issue is misplaced, as that scenario is no less or more likely 2 years ago than it is 2 years from now.

7) Costs will go up with the new health care law.

The Truth: What’s to prevent costs from going up now, say … the way they have the past 10 years? Since 2000 there has been a 100% increase in the cost of health care to the average individual while the average wage increase is a fraction of that. Yet, health insurance companies have been reporting record profits and your average health insurance company officer makes tens of millions of dollars a year. At least with an open market system we’d have a chance at real capitalistic price wars. Right now the CEO’s paycheck is padded each time a pencil-pusher gets a pat on the pack for denying you coverage on something. I’d rather have a complete government takeover – I trust the “inept, bumbling” government with my health more than I trust someone to pick my health over greed.

“Sticking to Your Values”

“If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values, they’re hobbies.”

-Jon Stewart

That might be my favorite modern quote, because it’s one that rings so true these days, on both sides of the aisle.  Every single president elect in recent times has stood up when the votes were tallied and the opposing party has conceded and given a speech about how they will change this and make that right and accomplish this.  They say they will work with the other party.  They claim we need to stick to our values, to make our country great again.  In the end, most of the things we say end up getting tossed out the window.  The context of that quote was in response to Bill O’Reilly saying that sometimes we need to compromise our values to keep our country safe.

Every single one of us who went to grade school in the United States grew up learning the core values this country was founded on and later built upon:  freedom, opportunity, and tolerance.  We have all come to be told that justice is blind, and the law treats all equally.  If this is the case, why did the United States go against two documents it signed – the treaties of the Geneva Convention and the United Nations Convention Against Torture (signed by Reagan) – and torture captives at Guantanamo Bay?  We generally react pretty strongly when a country says one thing and does another, especially something we disagree on, why should we not expect others to do the same about us? 

In World War II both the Japanese and the Germans used waterboarding on prisoners.  This was decried as torture by our country.  This was declared as wrong by the Geneva Convention.  In spite of this the United States, under the direction of at least Vice President Dick Cheney, authorized waterboarding to be used on captives at Guantanamo Bay.  He not only admitted as much, he’s been openly critical of the current administration for their official stance against torture.  So we have a former vice president who has openly admitted to authorizing torture, and has said torture saved lives despite evidence to the contrary.

Almost as bad, we have a current president who is refusing to investigate the previous administration under the guise of extending an olive branch to the other side.  Even if no crime was technically committed, the spirit of the Geneva Convention and the UNCAT were broken giving the US a black eye in the view of the world.  Just another reason for the rest of the world to view the US as an aging bully, throwing waning power around because it’s scared.  Going right along with the scared bully image is J.D. Hayworth, running for John McCain’s seat in Arizona in 2010.  Appealing to the terrorist-fearing crowd, he recently said not only was Dick Cheney right to authorize torture, he didn’t go far enough.  We should not only be waterboarding anyone who might have information to give, we should be breaking fingers and shoving bamboo shoots under toenails.  The message I’m getting:  torture is wrong when the Japanese do it to us in WWII, but we’re allowed to use it when we feel like because we’re the US.

Dropping your values when it suits you is nothing new in politics.  Joe Lieberman claimed that he would fight for health care for everyone in Connecticut when he ran for senate in 2008, now he’s the poster child for me-first, just-vote-against-the-other-guy politics.  After the first World Trade Center in 1993, then-mayor Rudy Guilliani praised the US civillian justice system for its handling of Omar Abdel-Rahmanm.  When Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in 2006, Guilliani expressed displeasure at him not getting a death sentence from a civillian jury, but said it shows the United States is commited to fairness and law. 

Fast forward to 2010 when Barrack Obama said he wants to shut down Guantanimo Bay and try the remaining terrorists in NYC and Guilliani acts like Chicken Little and claims the trials will make a mockery of the US justice system and our country is ill-suited to handling terrorist trials.  Little Fact, Rudy:  91% of terrorist trials in the last 12 years have resulted in a conviction.  I would expect more from a man who built his pre-political career as a tough prosecutor, but since he can’t go two breaths without utterng 9/11 I’m not surprised.

It’s not all partisan, though.  One of my biggest issues with Barrack Obama is his claiming on the campaign trail that any alleged US torture needs to be investigated.  President Obama has dropped the ball on this, as there is no sign of an official investigation and I can only assume it’s both a futile olive-branch gesture to the right and a pre-emptive covering of his own butt once he gets out of office.

Sticking to your values is a rare, rare thng in politics these days.  To finish up here, I’d like to salute two very, very different men in politics who have stuck to their values in recent times:  Dennis Kucinich and Ken Starr.  Congressman Kucinich as spoken out against the current health care bill being tossed around for a “reconciliation” vote because it does not contain a public option or a single-payer system.  He has been steadfast on the issue to the point of being willing to be the deciding vote against it.  Ken Starr recently spoke out against Liz Cheney for attacking US Justice Department lawyers as an Al-Quaeda sympathists because they defended terrorists in the US justice system.  Mr. Starr says that lawyers have a fine tradition of trying their best no matter who they’re assigned to defend, and he would do the same.  Sticking to your values may be rare in politics these days, but it need not be one side or the other.  In the end it makes you look like a far, far better person.

Ask any republican politician and they’ll tell you we’re fighting a war, regardless of the fact that no war was ever declared by congress.  Despite this, combating terrorism is something that is often on top of the list of priorities of things to do when you’re running the United States, or attempting to scare the general public into submission.  You’d think we’d want the top intelligence possible when fighting terrorism, and to do so clearly we’d want the best linguists in both the Farsi and Arabic languages.  Yet more than a few linguistic experts have been dismissed from the military for being gay in the past few years alone.  Don’t believe me?  Do a Google search with the phrase “how many military experts have been dismissed for being gay?”

I’m sure there are a ton of boilerplate arguments as to why we need to keep gays out of the military, or at the least keep them from coming out.  Let’s go over them one by one, and if I missed your argument please feel free to express it in the comments after this article.

1)  “Homosexuality destroys unit cohesion”

A recent article from UC Davis shows that this is simply not true.(1)  The TL:DR of this article is that task focus is greater than social acceptance and the military is a task-oriented organization.  Our military got over integrating minorities.  It got over integrating women.  It will get over integrating homosexuals.

2)  “Homosexuality is bad for morale”

As early as the mid 1990’s, the American Psychological Association stated this simply isn’t true.  Based on studies of foreign military systems that allow homosexuals, there is little to no evidence that there is disruption or loss of effectiveness.  (2)

3)  “Military leaders have expressed in the past that allowing homosexuals to serve would be disruptive”

Many of those military leaders have now changed their mind.  Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili and former Senator and Secretary of Defense William Cohen, who both spoke against gays in the military as recently as 2007 have since changed their minds.  (3)

4)  “Most members of the military would oppose homosexuals in their unit”

 There are some polls that show a sizable percentage of military members oppose openly homosexual fellow soldiers, but those polls are generally from 2006 or earlier.  A Zogby poll of recent veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan showed that 3/4 of them were comfortable interacting with homosexuals in their military life.  (4)

Now a few pros:

The cost savings alone should be worth it to the right, who continually try to label themselves as fiscally sound.  In a 2006 report the Pentagon stated that discharging gays from the military cost well over a quarter of a billion dollars in lost training, re-training and recruiting. (5) 

A bigger issue to your average republican politician, who continually bash the current administration for being “too soft” on terrorists, should be the loss of much-needed linguists.  In May of 2007, the Pentagon discharged 57 Arabic linguists for being gay.  Iraq was perhaps at its most fragile at that time, and Afghanistan was just beginning to flare up – should this have been the time to bend rules and keep some of your most valuable intelligence assets on hand?  For you sports fans, this seems to me to be like firing half your scouts a month before the draft.

Finally, there’s the moral issue that some will argue.  America was founded on moral principals and needs to stand by those principals while we fight those who seek to undermine us and destroy our way of life.  I counter that by say this country became great by embracing diversity and being open about change.  Some of our greatest moments include the abolition of slavery and the women’s rights movement.  If we don’t allow gays to openly serve in our military, what does that say about us?  I say it makes us no better than the intolerance and hate we claim to fight in the name of fighting terrorism.  To those who still oppose gays in the military, why do you hate America?

1)  http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/HTML/military_cohesion.html

2)  http://www.apa.org/about/governance/council/policy/military.aspx

3)  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/us/30military.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

4)  http://www.gaymilitarysignal.com/071106Steinman.html

5)  http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-02-14-dont-ask-report_x.htm

I used to live in New York City, Court Street in Brooklyn to be exact.  One fine Tuesday morning I woke up late and decided to take the subway in, rather than riding my bike.  It was a pretty typical, boring subway ride.  I came up out of the subway to a big booming sound followed by thousands of people screaming.  While I had been underground a group of fanatical extremists decided to murder thousands by crashing an airplane into World Trade Center 1, more commonly known as the North Tower.  I had come up the subway station stairs just after 9:03, right as another airliner was flown into World Trade Center 2.  We all have our own stories for that day, but I’d like to talk about the thing that makes me almost as angry as the attacks themselves that followed in the weeks and months after; the political football that was played.

A lot of us were swept up with the emotions following 9/11 – even I found my self not completely disagreeing with the angry mobs and their internet toughguy cries of “glass parking lot!” – a reference to using nuclear weapons on those responsible.  After the initial anger passed I realized how stupid I was, since the likelihood of any single nation perpetrating attacks of that magnitude was slim to none.  I calmed down and went on with my life, but there was an agenda to be pushed and fear is a powerful tool.  The Cheney administration deceitfully guided the United States into a war in Iraq under the guise of pre-emptively stopping Saddam Hussein’s completion or acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.  It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that no such weapons were found in Iraq and proven with modest doubt that Dick Cheney deliberately moved us toward war using fear to complete the stated goals of his neoconservative think-tank Project for a New American Century.  The extreme left-wing blogosphere also speculates that Cheney and his friends at Haliburton had a lot to gain financially from such a war, speculations that I certainly don’t disagree with.

Let me sum up that previous paragraph, TL:DR it for you internet meme fans:  Dick Cheney lied to get us into war in Iraq.  I won’t deny that Saddam Hussein was a disgusting man and overthrowing him – in and of itself – isn’t a bad thing, but at what cost?  Over 4000 Americans have lost their lives in combat operations in Iraq.  Over 30,000 have been wounded.  One trillion dollars has been spent on war since 2001.  Trillion.  1,000,000,000,000.00.  Figures like that should be pretty sobering, yet we continue to allow politicians play political football so that they can gain at our expense.

There is a growing trend in US politics to sensationalize a contrary position simply to oppose the other party even if it’s on a subject you agree with them on.  While that is disgusting in and of itself, playing politics for your own benefit is far worse.  A perfect current example:  Joe Lieberman.  Here’s a quote from the Connecticut senator from 2006:

“My proposals were to basically expand the existing successful public health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid…. When it came to Medicare I was very focused on a group — post 50, maybe more like post 55. People who have retired early, or unfortunately have been laid off early, who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare. What I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early and again on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost. If you’re 55 or 60 and you’re without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older … you’re rated as a risk so you pay a lot of money…”

Yet as was reported in the past few months, he has vocally and almost singularly derailed any expansion of Medicare or Medicaid.  The health care industry sees Medicare or Medicaid expansion as a bad thing, a threat to their profits.  Joe Lieberman has received almost two and a half million dollars in campaign contributions from the health care sector and his wife is a lobbyist specializing helping health care companies make more money at your expense.  A majority of Connecticut residents have said they want not only a public option but a single-payer system.  Do the math in your head:  Joe Lieberman, elected to represent Connecticut is playing political football, and he’s doing it for personal gain.

Both these examples, Lieberman and Cheney, show people’s willing to put other’s lives on the line so they can get more money.  This is the political environment we live in today:  your votes are bought by advertising paid for by corporations that care more about making money than about your well being.  The dystopian future presented in the cyberpunk genre of corporations running the world with a monolithic, uncaring, capitalistic face is not so far off, we merely have puppets named Lieberman, Cheney, or Gingrich as a pretty public face to make the hard pill of political football easier to swallow.

Traffic is getting worse. People have less patience and shorter tempers. Americans are willing to nearly kill each other in the name of bargains. Yes, the holiday season is once again upon us. In this time of religious remembrance, I’d like to talk about things I’m thankful for and things I’d like to see in my lifetime.

I’m thankful I live in a country where write my opinion with little or no fear of reprisal from those who disagree. While some would argue that freedom of speech is being slowly trampled on in the United States, we must all remember that the privilege to speak freely must be tempered by rational thought and realization of consequences.

In my lifetime I’d like to see certain “taboo” subjects able to be discussed without people looking at you with the same face they make when one smell sour milk. Sex is the big one. Americans have a strange love/hate relationship with sex that stems from being a country with exceptional freedoms but still having Puritanical roots.

I’m thankful I live in a country where I can proudly proclaim my agnosticism and have only minimal reactions. There are places in this world where not dressing the “correct” way can get you killed, so freedom of religion is a pretty big deal.

In my lifetime I’d like to see an even bigger separation of church and state. For all you right-wing Christians who just freaked out over that, imagine this: You’re driving down main street in your town and pass by town hall. There is a lovely display out front of Muhammad fasting for Ramadan, proudly bowing toward Mecca with his prayer book … wait, what? That brief bit of outrage you may or may not have felt is not unlike what many Muslims or Jews or Atheists feel when the government has any kind of religious display over another. We can’t continue to call ourselves the land of the free and the home of the brave as long as we fear religious equality and cower under 1800’s conventions.

I’m thankful for the Internet. Yes, I’m a geek. Yes, I’m probably addicted. But hey, you’re reading this online right now so you might be too. The internet is an amazing tool that allows anyone to get nearly any piece of information. It’s a wonderful diversion from life. It’s a way to communicate with people across vast distances.

In my lifetime I’d like to see a bigger government stance on what exactly net neutrality is and should be. I have no problems with communications companies making a buck off the wires they worked hard to string. I have a big problem with communications companies not clearly presenting the terms of service they will deliver while more or less being a monopoly. There are quite a few places where the company who offers a stable and reliable internet connection is the only gig in town, and with the Internet becoming almost as necessary as telephone, television, the local library, and the post office all in one, we need to prevent abuse. Any company that has stockholders to answer to will gladly screw over their own customers in a devious way if it means a few extra points on their shares.

I’m thankful for a democratic system of representation. It’s no where near perfect, but it’s better than most. The mayor of the town I live in will be sworn in tonight and he won by less than 100 votes. Knowing your vote counts is a good feeling.

In my lifetime I’d like to see more rules on political donations, lobbyists, and campaign transparency. It’s nice that we have a 2 party system when some countries still have 1 party or a dictatorship. It’s a shame the majority of both those parties are more or less owned by their corporate masters. William Gibson has written quite a few books about a dystopian future where corporations are the most powerful things on the planet and governments are more or less puppets of them, and the common man suffers. What he writes is fiction, but that concept is not. Every day lives are ended because someone cut corners because someone told them money needed to be saved. We’re almost at 2010, we should be growing more away from capital greed and more toward racial enlightenment. Do you really think Joe Lieberman is against a public health care option because of personal convictions? He’s listed as an independent, but he really should be the Etna senator.

Finally, I’m thankful I’m still employed. I have a degree in music and I’ve been lucky enough to have a job in computers that is reasonably interesting and fairly stable. My spouse has been out of work for a while and while things are tight, we’re not struggling nearly as bad as many.

In my lifetime I’d like to see this country get serious about infrastructure replacement and rebuilding. It would be expensive, yes, but it needs to be done. The I-35 bridge collapse is probably the most glaring example of infrastructure failure at the cost of lives, but it’s certainly not the only one. There are many other bridges, tunnels, roadways, etc across the country that are in even worse shape and just waiting to fail. Each one of those is also an opportunity to put people to work. Yes, it costs money to do so, but do we really need another stealth bomber or another year fighting a war on drugs that is unwinnable?

Regardless of if you agree or disagree with anything I said, may you and the people you hold dear find peace and happiness this holiday season.

The two big wars the US is involved in these days are getting less and less popular by the minute, thanks in part to the 24-7 news coverage modern technology brings us.  I personally was fine with our invasion of Afghanistan and very much against our invasion of Iraq, but that’s not the topic I’m going to rant about today.  I want to talk about a “war” that the US has been losing for decades:  The War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs fought its first losing battle in 1969, when Richard Nixon used the term to describe a plan to intercept marijuana at border crossings in Mexico.  That lasted 20 days because of the burden on state border guards who had better things to do than inspect legitimate traffic for illegal materials.  Thanks in part to Nancy Reagan, the anti-drug campaign saw a huge media push in the 80’s – we all remember “Just Say No.”  It’s received quite a large amount of funding, too:  $600 dollars.

Yes.  $600 dollars.

A second.[1]

The Federal government alone spent $19 billion dollars in 2003 fighting illegal drug use.  When you combine state spending the figure for this year is already over $40 billion dollars.  Surely those large sums of money are doing some good, right?  85% of high school seniors say it would be “very easy” for them to get drugs if they wanted, and that figure has never dropped below 82% in the last 3 decades.[2]  Doesn’t congress hold budget inquiries for misused or misspent federal funds?  We’ve had our elected officials in Washington get involved with professional sports multiple times in the last decade, yet none of them are questioning why we’re spending billions a year on a war that has seen no improvement.  Imagine if McArthur was still trying to re-take the Philippines in 1951, appearing before congress like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel.  That would have gone over well.

Add this economic sinkhole to a controversial yet widely accepted fact that marijuana, in terms of lung health only, is less harmful than cigarettes.[3]  In addition, the United States Department of Health and Human Services published a study in 2002 that showed less than 1 percent of Americans smoke marijuana on a daily basis, and just a small percentage of those were considered dependent.[4]  Personal anecdote time:  I know at least a dozen people who smoke pot multiple times a year.  All of them are productive members of society, holding jobs or making good grades in school.  Cigarette smoking cost the US almost 200 billion dollars a year between health care costs and lost productivity time (those smoking breaks add up!).  Pot doesn’t look so bad compared to your average Camel or Kool now, huh?

We have a war on drugs that is wasting vast sums of money and a drug that doesn’t appear to be overly harmful.  What is the point I’m trying to make?  We should legalize marijuana and tax it.  A recent Frasier Institute study showed that the price of .5 grams of weed on the street is about $8.60 while the cost to produce it was only $1.70.[5]  While that’s quite a profit, there are reasons for it, the biggest being it is illegal and not currently industrialized in this country.  But imagine if the government could get a decent sized chunk of that revenue.  In 2005 the Federal Government made 7.7 billion dollars on tobacco tax, and the state governments took in over 13 million combined.[6]  While not as many people would immediately jump to smoking pot, a big chunk of money would be simply saved from that $600 dollars a second in addition to the tax revenue you would generate.  A recent projection showed nearly a billion dollars a year could be made from the taxation of marijuana.[7]

I would think the tax revenue and savings alone would have Republicans jumping on the bandwagon to support this cause, but I fear pandering to the religious right and socially conservative crowd is the reason they don’t.

[1]  http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
[2]  http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/data/05data/pr05t13.pdf
[3]  http://www.healthline.com/blogs/smoking_cessation/2007/07/is-cannabis-smoking-more-harmful-than.html
[4]  http://www.drugpolicy.org/marijuana/factsmyths/
[5]  http://economics.about.com/od/incometaxestaxcuts/a/marijuana.htm
[6]  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17170991/
[7]  http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/taxes_marijuana/revenue.html

We are happy to announce the debut of a new feature, The Political Observers. Writers from each side of the political spectrum will share their views in the column, which will appear on Thursdays. Zarberg kicks it off today.

Health care seems to be the dominant story on the news these days, and for very good reason:  the changes being proposed will have some sort of impact on the vast majority of all American citizens.  Since I have spouse with a chronic disease, and I’m government employee for a state that now has the worst rated state health plan in the US, I’m paying pretty close attention to what’s going on. 

One thing in particular that caught my attention about my current health plan is a penalty that will go into effect in 2010 that says if you smoke or are obese you will get dropped from the 80/20 plan to the 70/30 plan.  This means that your health plan will pay 10% less of your claims if you smoke or are obese.  Since I don’t smoke and as an average height American male am only 165 lbs, I don’t fall into either category so my first thought was, “great, I won’t be penalized.”  Ever the optimist.  I didn’t think much of it after that until one of my co-workers pointed out that they’re applying the stick rather than offering the carrot.

The bleeding heart in me says rather than give them a punishment, offer them incentives they can’t refuse to lose weight.  The capitalist in me says hit ’em where it hurts if they’re costing the system, and hit ’em hard.  I’m still mulling over which part of myself I agree with more.  On the one hand, people who are already in shape will not have anything change, other than the standard increases in cost.  On the other hand, what if those obese state employees are genuinely trying to lose weight and simply don’t have the body type or biological makeup?  Interestingly enough, I have a co-worker who if this plan went into effect today, would be considered obese and not eligible for the lower cost plan.  He was vocally upset about it when first informed, but now has used this as an incentive to join a gym and work out 2 days a week.  He’s already lost 10 lbs, and is a shining example of exactly what the state health care plan wanted to achieve with this.

But what about those smokers?  I’ve never smoked more than a cigar on New Year’s with some friends, so I don’t know how addictive nicotine is but based on the large sums of money being made by stop smoking programs and patches and gum and so forth, I’m sure it’s pretty darn addictive.  Will 10% be enough to get them to kick the habit?  I’d rather see something where if they start a doctor-approved plan to stop smoking and it succeeds, the insurance company picks up the tab.  If they fail, the smoker pays. 

In the end, the part of me that is bitter about how broken the current system is will win out over the capitalist and bleeding heart parts of me.  I have a wife that continues to struggle with her health and we’re paying thousands a year above and beyond our health care plan while CEO of our not-for-profit health insurance company just gave himself a $3 million bonus.  We’ve been giving the health insurance companies the carrot for so long, they could stand to have a little stick applied to where it hurts them.