‎"Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm. That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness." -Barack Obama, Jan 21, 2013

http://blogs.suntimes.com/politics/2013/01/transcript_obamas_2nd_term_inaugural_address.html

I love these words, and I hope for and wonder if he really means this.

So...

At first glance, many of those who see the situation the way I do consider it good news that Washington and Colorado are planning to legalize cannabis/marijuana.

For many valid reasons, legalization *is* good news.  However, I also think it's a minefield.

Here are some of the biggest problems with the present system(s) -- including total prohibition and the state medical marijuana systems -- and some of the biggest problems I foresee with legalization within the context of US culture.  Note that I am not here directly listing much in the way of "upsides" to any of these legal systems, though they may be inferred by looking at the problems associated with the other positions of (il)legality.

At the end, I show a path/program through the upcoming mess.


Present Problems within Total Prohibition

• 
  C: Shut up, watch your TeeVee Showz, and leave the rest to the "Big Boys" you stupid gits. Words cannot express how degrading, demeaning, and down-right maddening that attitude is.
  This defines the problem very well, as well as the arrogance that has brought us to where we are.

  10:55am (3 hours ago) · 
• 

  This piece, written in 1982 [edit: oops, published in journal in 1982], is actually quite accurate for today, if not moreso. 
  
  The statement in the box, I do believe. There is a giant mass of people in the US who are not able to (or choose not to) see the big picture and would not choose to allocate funds toward that which is needed in a complex society, and THAT is why we elect representatives and executives, who should do their jobs with as little corruption as possible when they've chosen to take on that specialized role in our society. Sadly, most of those who've been governing have been neglecting to do so with the common good front-and-center.
  
  Wieman argues that in a democracy, the people tend to argue for their own interests to the degree that for anybody to get into office, they have to kowtow to the voters' ill-informed [see 'media reform'] or myopic localized private demands; and anybody who gets into office (or tries to get in) and attempts to divert the process of governing AWAY from supporting these local interests toward the big things that only government can do is quickly voted out. Somehow military and prisons still receive support, but I imagine that's because they represent private moneyed interests whom the government is no longer able to govern, but rather now acts as a siphon of public funds.
  
  The two solutions he presents are problematic in that I can't see a way to connect the dots between the present situation and attitudes to what is required to get out of this: "1) Demonstrable truth concerning the common good which underlies and sustains the diversity of local and private interests but not identical with any part or whole of them. And 2) a form of religion which leads [people] to trust and commit themselves to the common good sufficiently to allow their government to command resources and concerted action in its service independently of local and private interests. Also this devotion of religious commitment must control the leaders as well as the people and control [men] who exercise the power of authority in high positions of government."
  
  I think he sees "religion" here secularly, in a way similar to my view of it: the way we live our life, rather than the narrow view of all the buildings, rituals. "Religion" being "that which holds us together," and "politics" being "how we choose to be in community with each other."
  
  The big problem I see with #1 is that the framework for talking about the common good needs to be rebuilt, and that won't happen until there are a preponderance of voices doing so in the media. A media revolution would be required. And with #2 the problem I see has to do with the argument that Bo has made (I here paraphrase and add my own extension): Why would you want to support a government with your tax dollars that is doing so much bad with it and NOT putting it to the common good (drones, wall street, military and prison pork projects....)? 
  
  I would rewrite #2 (CAPS are new): a form of religion which leads [people] to trust and commit themselves to the common good sufficiently to allow AND DEMAND THAT their government to command resources and concerted action in its service independently of local and private interests. Also this devotion of religious commitment must control the leaders as well as the people and control [men] who exercise the power of authority in high positions of government." IOW we have to develop the willpower to REALLY inculcate ourselves and our future generations about the importance of the common good. I don't have any idea how many people would agree with that philosophy, or would be willing to offer up that much of their energy toward that even if we did have a really accountable government. Anarchy (aside from the "if men were angels, no government would be needed" mantra) would suck. Totalitarian dictatorship would suck. Democracy IMHO, done right, would suck less.

  12:38pm (about an hour ago) · 
• 
  

  C: Military and Prisons also receive money because they are directly associated with Fear and a hypothetical lessening of fear by penalizing "bad people". Sadly the really bad people aren't always the ones incarcerated.

  12:41pm (about an hour ago) · 
• 

   I wonder just where are these really bad people hiding out?
  
  Wieman may provide an answer to this: "In all ages and among almost all peoples excepting recent Western society, a few persons had privileges traditionally established which the masses did not have. They had leisure, did no manual work, could wear ostentatious clothing permitted to no others and develop manners and qualities of mind which set them apart from the common people... which made everyone view these privileged few as a different kind of being from the rest of humanity."

  12:46pm (about an hour ago) · 
• 
  

  C: Yes, and history shows that many of these were not good people. We have the same today in the "privileged classes" of the 1%.

In time for 2016, I am convinced we need a National Election Amendment, including some semblance of the following.  Multipartisan task forces should hash this out and negotiate the details for maximum democratic process.

1. Approval-voting instead of plurality-voting (allows everyone to vote with absolute sincerity, and dismisses the problem of "lesser-of-two-evils" and ALSO eliminates the need for "primaries" and all of the weird distortions caused by insincere voting at that stage); 

2. Public money only -- no private donations, or privately-purchased advertisements (allows free speech to be equitable, and mitigates opportunities for candidates/representatives to be corporately-beholden); 

3. Democratically-elected *media*, with ~20% of the FM spectrum dedicated to news and opinion from people we elected (bandwidth and time given according to proportion of popular vote -- allows all people to have their voice heard through representatives in the public media, rather than the overwhelming skew of voices only representing corporate media ownership, and narrowly defining the bounds of discourse);

4. Eliminate electoral college (we're not delivering vote-counts via pony express anymore, and direct voting makes every person's vote count);

5. End to gerrymandering.  Set the congressional district boundaries and keep them as-is until it comes time to add or subtract.  When that happens, each of the significant parties (define at whatever threshold) in the state should get to pick counties in a rotating draft, such that the Republicans get to pick one county for the district of their choosing, then the Dems, then the third party, then R then D, etc, until they're all spoken for.  To simply have dominant state legislatures recreate district lines in ways that secures their continued dominance has an ossifying effect for democracy.
 

6. Consensually-agreed-upon secure voting (either paper or transparent, secure machines with audited paper record) with sufficient resources at every precinct (It's not who votes that counts, its who counts the votes.)  The electronic voting systems frequently used do not in any way merit public trust.

7. Adequate resources for voting.  Nobody should have to wait more than 2 hours to vote.  Ever.   A standardized system.  The secure voting system should be standardized.  Citizens in Florida shouldn't have remarkably different voting experiences than those in Iowa.

8. Penalties for intimidating, harassing, or intentionally misleading anybody about voting should be severe (e.g. 2+ years in prison), and should be enforced.  "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
 

9. No term-limits (if representatives are naturally popular, the constituency would suffer if they need to seek somebody else less qualified with less experience).

10. Everyone gets the day off for election day (this allows for people who work long hard hours to have their voice heard)!

Please, get talking in social media, until this framework gets pushed into the mass media. Another quadrennial election cycle with this kind of ramped-up toxicity and inanity, and our nation is kaput.

In order: Approval-voting, no private money, elected media, eliminate electoral college, end gerrymandering, standardized secure equitable voting, term-changes, national holiday.


OR do we not have the political will to establish true democracy and overcome corporate oppression? 

http://maps.howstuffworks.com/united-states-watersheds-map.htm

Steph Shearer tells the story about the hope Obama gave for positive change on this front, and disappointment of drastic negative bait-and-switch changes so clearly.

Regarding Obama campaigning in 2008: "I went to sleep that night excited about a new direction for this country that would include me as a recognized medical cannabis patient."

Now in 2012: "In fewer than fours years of President Obama, we have seen more raids on dispensaries than during the Bush Administration's entire eight-year tenure. The Obama Administration has taken property from landlords, threatened local officials, forced the release of patient records, used the Internal Revenue Service to bankrupt legitimate dispensaries, told banks to purge medical cannabis clients, evicted patients from low-income housing and denied a petition to recognize the well-established medical value of cannabis."

This is perfidy of the first-order.  The rallies, the political pressure, and the petitions he has either ignored or pooh-poohed.  I'm not a one-issue voter and hate the prospect of Romney in the WH, but while bending the arc of the universe toward justice on many other issues, why did Obama choose to bend it backward in this case, and what are we who care about this issue supposed to do with our vote?

Some reserve hope that he will make changes once he gets a second term, but I think of Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football, and how the best indicator of future performance is past performance....

I like him in SO MANY WAYS, and just want him to do the right thing here.  Instead he (and most democrats, actually) appears to be kowtowing again and again to corporate sponsors in the pharmaceuticals industry, in oil, in alcohol and tobacco, in law enforcement, and others, who give hundreds of millions to keep things as they are.  The MMJ industry doesn't have that kind of money--they're not even allowed to put their money in banks!--and in today's post-Citizens-United decision, doesn't have access to their inner ear.  In the meantime, Americans for Safe Access is losing access because of this perfidy.


pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

In the end, the question that needs to be asked is, "WHY are we needlessly creating and maintaining a criminal class, when the law as it stands undercuts people's healthcare options, when it perpetuates economic differences across race, class, and culture, and when it is driving us deeper in debt while supporting a prison industry that shrinks the economy, and not really creating anything of value?"

chant/prayer/mantra: stay on it. pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

Here's an interesting and compelling reason for legalizing marijuana.  The children.  And the adult users.

Regarding children and young adults (and probably older adults as well), there are a portion of them that are going to want to escape, or just to try something new.  You probably have somebody among your family and friends for whom this applies.

Here are a few of the dangers of NOT legalizing, and NOT regulating:

1. There is nobody checking for IDs, so at present, it is READILY available to any high school of middle school student if they want to get it.
2. It remains unregulated which has two inherent problems.
1. A user doesn't have a clue how strong it is, and may get too much effect.  Would you do this with aspirin or alcohol?  No--the strength is printed right on the side of the bottle.
2. Your children and friends could be breathing in dangerous molds and chemicals.  Cannabis grown indoors attracts mold, and many growers use chemicals to combat it, and also to help the plants grow faster and bigger.  In this world where the things we get at the grocery store are grown using pesticides, we've already lowered our standards of what we put in our bodies.  If you wouldn't allow your children and friends to eat chemicals on apples, would you want them to get it here without regulation?
3. It's known that people, especially children who lack adult capacity for judgment) will try substitute drugs to get high if Cannabis is illegal.  
1. One such substitute is huffing glue and gasses that can cause hypoxia which can permanently destroy brain cells.
2. Another substitute is the K2 stuff, a.k.a. "spice" which is incredibly dangerous, and has a variety of chemicals sprayed onto leaves.  People are going to emergency rooms as a result of this.  It's called "synthetic marijuana" but that's a terrible misnomer.  A person cannot overdose on marijuana.  K2/spice would better be called a variant of meth.  In other words, prohibition is a gateway drug.

And of course, this all needs to start from a place of LOVE.  Do you love your neighbor?  Then you want them to eat good food.  You want them (if they choose to imbibe at all) to intoxicate themselves safely.  You want them to transport safely to and from their work, play, and home.  And you want them to have a clean planet.  You don't want them in prison.  You don't want their families devastated by being separated from their loved ones.  You don't want their future employment opportunities destroyed by laws that do harm.  It starts from a place of love.  It starts from a place of love. pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

Here's an interesting piece by a writer with a bit of a smarmy attitude. If you're interested and can get past the attitude, read his long "job interview" narrative.  Otherwise, here's a good list he wrote at the end (Search on "Now for the point of the article").

So while the War On Drugs continues with no end in sight, did allowing this piece of [blanket illegalization] legislation to pass with no debate, actually lead to the down fall of America?
Consider for a moment what it has caused to happen;
• Pollution on a world wide scale, not just in America.
• Becoming dependent on a finite fuel source from mostly foreign imports.
• Inflation due to an inability to become self sufficient.
• Crime in our cities due to the criminalization of a natural resource.
• Farmers inability to raise a cash crop.
• The rise in health care mostly due to obesity and inflated drug prices.
• Deforestation from the need for trees in the manufacture of paper products.
• Millions of jobs lost due to the criminalization of one plant.
• Allowing the monopolies to continue to make policy in America.
• Cheaper more cost efficient products that actually biodegrade, cutting down on garbage.
• The rise in prices of pharmaceuticals. 

Ask yourself, does anyone really know what is in those drugs? I know I don't, how many of your friends or family members takes some sort of pharmaceutical on a daily basis.
The bottom line is they want you to spend money on drugs, but just the ones they make and can control.

I include it here because that is one of the most comprehensive lists of simple economic injustices (not including the more obvious social injustices) created by illegalization of hemp and cannabis.
This all makes sense, considering the way that corporate America has turned any/all questions on codified morality into concerns for the growth of the economy and the profit motive's bottom line. 


The legality of cannabis is most certainly debatable in a moral sense.  However, simply put, for hemp (with little to no THC content) to be illegal in this dark hour is a repugnant abomination of blatant injustice.


pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

Pic from here.

"You can't evict an idea whose time has come!" 

I first came across this OccupyWallSt list of points when Michael Moore copied it to his own post which was on a link from the OccUUpy group on Facebook. (Funny how information gets around.)







Anyway, here is the text of the most recent draft:

We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society; [2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus; [3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.

What excites me about this? Any visionary counter-statement from those who would instead be corporate overlords will pale in comparison if it even dares to mention money.  This vision statement, and this movement are an idea whose time has come, democratically and wondrously.  Seems that the tyranny of "power-over" only knows how to respond with more and greater tyranny.



lyrics: "Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play.  Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.  How often at night when the heavens are bright with the light from the glittering stars, have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed if their glory exceeds that of ours.  
(Thanks, Gramster Hamster!)


colors: red, white, blue, green, yellow, orange, purple, black, indigo. 
mood: really okay.  a little stressed over an upcoming career interview. 
chant/prayer/mantra: om, om on the range.... 

pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

. .

This white paper written by the CMA, representing 35,000 doctors in California is clear as a bell about what needs to be done.  I could not have said it better, and agree with their assessment wholeheartedly.

pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

I haven't gotten to watch this yet, but a friend recommended it and it looks informative.

pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

1. Government giving away licensing of public airwaves FM frequency bands  to private corporations, while not providing sufficient bandwidth to public discourse.
2. Two party system forces people to vote for the lesser of two evils, and not their real choice.  Switch to Instant Runoff Voting
3. Electoral College and gerrymandering when redistricting disenfranchise certain voters and candidates.
4. Marijuana laws, including federal-level obstinacy with continued status as a Schedule 1 drug despite preponderance of evidence
5. Private banks of Wall Street controlling money supply, overleveraging, and being massively bailed out
6. Unfair tax structure allows richest to pay lower percentage than regular people, and dramatically less than rich had to pay during other periods
7. Campaign finance reform
8. The right to bear arms
9. Wars of empire
10. For-profit healthcare -- single payer now!
11. Disparities in public education
12. Privatization of the commonwealth
13. Immigration rights
14. US aid to Israel
15. End fossil fuel subsidies, invest in sustainable energy R&D
16. Against GMO foods and bogus organic standards for food
17. Equal marriage rights for all, regardless of gender.
18. Guarantee accessible clean water for all
19. ....

. . lyrics: colors: mood: chant/prayer/mantra: pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

These homes look kind of like what I am planning.  I want our house to be two-stories, and perhaps a bit less organic.  Then again, I could be sold on the organic element as well.  I noted in the comments that it may be difficult to get a home like this to pass the US housing code inspections.  

pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

Before we get too far into this post, I will say that I've been checking out some of the YouTube footage of the protests so far, and the thing most striking (since the police brutality is kind of expected in this culture nowadays) is the astounding amount of venom in the comments.  Two things come to mind: First, that there is a segment of our culture who have been highly brainwashed to believe that people who would protest against this paramount injustice are somehow subhuman and that the banks and corporations are still doing good things (or these commenters are paid plants with plenty of time for trolling and seeding disparaging opinions); and Second, that the protesters must be doing something right, as the vitriol usually increases in intensity when something important is being defended.

Now, from a comment here (credit goes to Lloyd J Hart) in response to the the rhetorical post about "Our one demand"....

The above are good demands but they are not going to reinstate the living wage in America. Demands must also be easy for the public to get behind.
Public financing would be great but American elections are run at the county level where it is very easy to bribe elections supervisors to allow the theft of elections with electronic Jim Crow voting machines.

• Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

• Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

• Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

• Demand four: Free college education.

• Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

• Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

• Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

• Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

• Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

• Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

• Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

• Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.
by Lloyd J Hart

This is very radical.  It is also what must be done.  Right about now, much of the numbers that used to indicate how much money a person has have been manipulated by leveraging in the debt industry, and also by political corruption where $100k to members of the US congress turns into tens or hundreds of millions. 

At this point, it's impossible to tell how much money any person should have, also because the leverage and corruption has caused your average Joe Plumber's life savings to be cut by a third or a half in some cases.  We need to reconnect people to actual resources, and not gum up the system by means of all of the money (and supposed lack thereof).  There's plenty of money to go around.  

The problem is that the people with the MOST money are afraid that they're not going to keep all of it, or are not going to be able to gain more money fast enough, and so they're being very tight with it.  This includes banks, who are not loaning money out.  There's plenty of housing for everybody.  There's plenty of food for everybody.  There's plenty of clothes for everybody.  But apparently there's not enough money to actually purchase any of it.  

A caveman or alien who showed up on the scene would be bewildered by the state of this world.  They would walk into the grocery store and walk out with food to hand to the person begging outside.  They would cut the lock off the door of the foreclosed house and invite the homeless person in.  They would go into Macy's and grab carts of clothes and hand them to the people dressed in rags.  AND THE WORLD WOULD NOT END as a result of doing so!

Sadly, the radical solution above will not be entertained by those in power.  It will not be mentioned in the media, and it will be repressed until either there is no other option, or until it's too late.

BTW, I think his numbers of "one trillion" in points six and seven are a little high.  I think we could get the job kick-started well enough to be maintained with about five-hundred billion toward each.
lyrics: "The revolution starts now." by Steve Earle colors: Still red, white, and blue. mood: transparent. chant/prayer/mantra: There there be light. pax hominibus, agape to all, joel

text msg from Obama for America: 

And it can create a ton of jobs.

I think that is one reason why solar energy is being resisted.  The other reason is that it frees the consumer from being tied to rising fossil fuel prices, which the energy industry magnates do not want.  Here is a brilliant comment which explains how our economy's capitalistic primary driver leaves  from slashdot user fuzzyfuzzyfungus:

There is are a couple of unfortunate wrinkles in what would otherwise be true:

If you don't have money, it scarcely matters what the price of goods is. You are still fucked. For virtually everybody this impecunious, having money = having a job, not selling some bonds or re-allocating your portfolio in the direction of a higher-dividend asset assortment. Given the er... not exactly small... number of people who have fallen off this particular bus(with the additional fun that periods of joblessness do wonders for one's future prospects of being re-hired...) "jobs" as something close to an end in itself does represent a net gain for a substantial number of people.

Secondly, you say that "Ideally you would want a world where you have unlimited energy that required no money (ie jobs). This is true If and Only If the gains from increased efficiency are allocated in a manner that gives you a slice of the expanding pie. If, however, the pie is expanding; but your share of it is shrinking even faster(because whatever you do is an "inefficiency", you are quickly sliding toward point #1.

Empirically, a great many people have reason to be concerned, and to have no particular room to hope that even steady encheapening of goods will allow them to do better than tread water, since labor is definitely one of the goods being encheapened. As this [investorvillage.com] cheery little J.P. Morgan report notes, in a discussion of the improvement of corporate margins: "There are a lot of moving parts in the margin equation, but as shown in the second chart, reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in margins. This trend has continued; as we have shown several times over the last two years, US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP (see EoTM April 26, 2011)."

Improvements in efficiency do you absolutely no good if somebody with more market power than you have is capturing them. This would appear to be the case. Under such conditions, the people with less market power(ie. about the bottom 95%) don't have a rational interest in efficiency; because they won't capture the gains from it. While(from the perspective of people's actual state of knowledge) the fascination with "jobs" might be largely sentimental populism, it is arguably not economically irrational. If essentially all gains from efficiency(which includes reduction in human resources costs) are being captured by people who aren't you, it is very much in your interest to demand greater inefficiency and attempt to roll back the reduction in demand for you.

Only in a society where everybody has a boat is the fact that the 'rising tide lifts all boats' a comforting one. If a substantial portion of the population is stuck in the mud, the rising tide is not a welcome development...

Here's a good link on how little subsidies the solar industry gets from the US government.  It's as if the government WANTS solar to wither and die on the vine, and would prefer to have an untenable and security-problematic fossil fuel system as long as it can.  Hey, what gives, America?
. . 

lyrics: "it would be so fine to see your face at my door, it wouldn't have to last very long" -flaming lips
colors: green
mood: okay
chant/prayer/mantra: this is a beautiful garden, it has a dangerous guardian.

pax hominibus, 
agape to all, 
joel