LDKBox

With all of the rhetoric being thrown around these days about the economy, ecology, and employment(I wish I could have thought of another e-word to use)  I find it quite interesting to find a pundit on MSNBC  that has caught my political eye since Obama has become prominent as the latest President of the USA.  This is the first time in my life that I have found a commentator that has a similar  feeling on political happenings as I do.  In fact he has reopened my eyes to standards that I must confess that have slipped in my aging years and he has most definitely recharged my thought on the law and honor and the right thing to do.

The freedoms that were taken away through the Patriot act were necessary at the time that they were implemented.  Or at least a few people with the power thought so(me included) and because of the moment we had some kind of political unity to help care for the citizens of the United States.  Be it right or be it wrong… that is what we did.  Years have passed.  Terrorists have been held without communication.  Detainees were interrogated.  Our enemies were tortured under legal views written specifically to say water boarding was not torture.  I think a rose by any other name is still a rose.  I am embarrassed to say that at some point I was aware of the water boarding and condoned it. 

When President Obama was first confronted with the subject of torture and the legality of it all he said essentially that water boarding is torture, the USA will not torture anyone under his administration and that all the officials should not be prosecuted who were involved in this illegal administration of torture.  I understood what he meant at the time that he said it.  OK , we did it.  We lost our focus on what is right due to circumstances that, at the time that they were implemented, were dire.  Desperate times require desperate measures …right?   What purpose would it serve to have our past administration worked over the coals for actions that were taken albeit illegally with the best intent  to protect and serve the needs of the United States.

Mr.  Oberman reminded me that even something done with the best intent is wrong if it is illegal.  He reminded me that when legal opinions are slanted with particular agendas that are illegal it becomes a travesty.  I am not sure that there can be a line drawn in the sand as to where the responsibility of your actions and doing your job under orders exonerate you from the law of the land.  We certainly are headed into a dirty world of politics of which I personally have never witnessed but from my years on this planet I do have memories of atrocities through the Nuremberg trial that prosecuted a lot of people that said that they were just following orders.  They were convicted of their crimes.  Are these masterminds of the Bush war on terror by way of Iraq headed for the same fate.

I have to give Keith Olbermann a hand.  I am still on the fence whether or not I will give him the back of my hand because he has opened my eyes to a great big can of worms or shake his hand for opening up my eyes to a great big can of worms.

Comments (0) May 06 2009

As I was scanning the headlines from the New York Times this morning I spied a headline that intimated that New York was changing the rules for criminal sentencing for lower grade drug crimes.  After forty years of some of the toughest laws in the country the Democratic powered senate has finally gotten the votes together to help alleviate the prison overcrowding problem that these crime laws created.

I did not read what the expected saving would be for the financially strapped government of New York.  I did get a quote of 45,000 dollars a years to house each criminal that is sentenced for any crime.  My guess would be that sending a drug related criminal offender to treatment rather than jail would be infinitely cheaper than the cost of housing them in prison which some estimate to be 45,ooo dollars a year per inmate.  Wow.  OK, I will say it again.  WOW!  and it only took them forty years to figure it out.

Personally I have been an advocate of reformed drug laws since my days as a policeman in Juneau, Alaska during the first part of the 1970″s.  At the time marijuana was illegal but was then changed to legal amounts for personal use than it was changed again.  First they legalize it.  Then a bunch of people get it into their heads that it is too lenient.  Then it is not lenient enough.  Alaskans cannot seem to make up their minds.  What I experienced as a policeman leads me to believe that they only thing criminal with marijuana smoking is the law that makes it illegal. 

As a cancer survivor I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I purchased a pack of cigarrettes at a cost over six dollars yesterday.  I would bet that there is not 50 cents worth of product in the pack.   OK, let us say that the cost of the pack of cigarettes is one dollar and the rest is in taxes.  The TV is loaded with public service announcements saying how bad smoking is in public.  The cities around the country are creating laws to stop people from smoking in public places.  There are even laws that are being considered to stop smoking in a vehicle that has a child in it.   The laws that the people in power are creating are lowering the percentage of people smoking in this country.  Yet, they keep the sin tax on smoking and in fact continue to raise the taxes to continue to exploit the ones that still smoke.  These taxes pay for many things.  I don’t know what or how much the money is spent but I do know that they rely on the taxes to create the budgets in most states if not all.

Hey, I have an idea.  Let us reform the drugs laws of the United States.  The war on drugs, which for the most part is forty years old …or more… moves on.  Not one battle has been won much less the war.  Only skirmishes and sorties.  The money created by the cartels is so vast I wonder how many states would be able to balance their budget if there criminal sentencing guidelines  were changed, prison sentences commuted for time served, and a sin tax was placed on a product that is less invasive that its legal counterpart booze.  Why not legalize it, control it, manufacture it, distribute it, and sin tax it.  It would be a boon to the entire economy of the US.  It would lessen stress in our over crowded judicial system as well as the prison system. 

Of course I am  a simple guy who liked getting high in the seventies when it was legal in Alaska.  I am that same guy that quit because someone created the need for drug tests.  If one doesn’t know,  marijuana can stay in your system for up to three months so testing for it is not really a barometer of how the individual is feeling or how it affects them.  I have to laugh when I see in police blotters that a policeman pulls over a suspect and does a field sobriety test.  After completing the field sobriety test the officer brings in a drug recognition officer that evaluates the suspect as to whether or not this person is on drugs.  This is even after the suspect has passed the field sobriety test.  Just because someone evaluates me and comes to the conclusion that the person is on drugs does not make them right.  Marijuana does not work that way.  I smoked for over twenty years.  I never committed a criminal act because of it(aside from using it).  I never took advantage of another person to get it.  I never missed a day of work because I had smoked it.  In fact I can remember some jobs that were so unpleasant that it took a few tokes on a pipe just to get the job done. 

I hope that New York sets a trend for the rest of the states.  I also hope that the public view of marijuana becomes more educated.  Smoking marijuana is not a criminal act by itself.   Acts such as laying an ax to a neighbors house or punching someone in the face are.   Those acts need to be controlled, prosecuted and sentenced accordingly.   Marijuana does not effect anyone but the individual.  But the governments laws on marijuana sure effect everyone.  Costs of prosecuting and housing a marijuana criminal are criminal.  Legalize marijuana.  Regulate it just like booze.  Then tax the heck out of it.  It is my bet that there would be a lot of money in the state coffers if this were to be done.  Plus the reduction of housing costs for detaining these people after prosecuting them in court would help in balancing the budget of every state.  Don’t say…What about our youth?…one can get either booze or marijuana no matter the age if one chooses.  Making it illegal does not stop anyone from using anything.  It just makes them a criminal if caught.     

Let get into the 21st century and act like it.  Marijuana is not the demon that it is purported to be.  Only the laws that control it are in my opinion.  Marijuana will always be with us.  You can choose to not use it as I do alcohol.  I never arrested a person that was smoking marijuana who was belligerent.  I never spoke with a battered wife that said that her husband beat her up because he was high on marijuana.  I have arrested individuals that were drunk and they were belligerent every time.  Funny how booze effects a person.   No one is asking Coors to stop brewing beer.  Even though the toll that beer produces is monumental.

Comments (0) Mar 26 2009

I am not a political pundit but I have to make a comment about an article that I read in the New York Times this very morning.  Our esteemed elected officials are in congress at this moment considering taxing health benefits given to those people that worked hard to not only negotiate a good health plan but finance it as well. 

I can tell you that I would be in a pickle,  as far as my finances are concerned, if after my cancer treatmets the government would require a percentage of the money that was spent on my treatment to be paid in taxes.  I have not worked for several years trust me my saving s is not what is should be.  If after receiving the successful treatment of the cancer that I had I would be required to pay money to the government fo rthe services you might as well get out a gun and shoot me before I get the treatments.  There is absolutely no way that I would be able to pay any tax on the medical treatments that I received.

We are are talking thousand and thousands if not 100′s of thousands of dollars.  I have no idea what the cost of my treatment would have been since I was miraculously introduced to my wife.  For if I had not met her I would not be alive today.  I only went to the doctor because I had insurance.  Had I not had a wife that had insurance I would have taken a lot of aspirin until  d I would have died. 

Hey,  if they are really wanting to make money on taxes,  they mite as well start taxing everyone that dies.  They should be taxed for what they are not providing since they went and died and left all the rest of us here to pay taxes on things that are going higher and higher.  Death tax …now your talking.  I guess that they should go one step further and tax all births as well.  If they did that by golly, they sure would have us coming and going…would they not?

Comments (0) Mar 15 2009