Markets in Free Fall Again?

After a week of Obama picking his economic advisors, Monday had the shocking announcement the economy has been in a recession since December 2007. Since investors apparently just got the memo, today had a huge drop in stock prices. Just a side not, if investors are getting their information from a organization that takes a year to decide if a recession happened, investors have a real common sense problem here. I wonder what they will tell us a year from now... Barack Obama was elected president, and Sarah Palin was never qualified to be nominated?

How much worse will this crisis get?
Daily Kos Users polled on Monday night, think the Dow will drop below 6500 [http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/12/1/193527/513/940/668264].





PS
Today, George Bush in an interview on ABC News said his biggest failure during his presidency was the intelligence failure leading up to Iraq.... You would think he would regret not stopping the 9/11 attacks. No, it was the failure that exposed him for being for being a deceptive fool. Not the inaugural failure of the Bush Administration.

Time to Rethink our National Drug Policy

Is it time to end the drug war once and for all? Is it time America takes a more educated approach to the issue? Young Adults are dying in our country, while Europe takes a more logical approach to fighting the problem of drug abuse. The War on Drug's have not produced the outcomes Reagen promised in the 80s, yet we still are basing our nations policy on the issue on his initial plan. After the jump, I discuss two articles published in the past week about Heroin use in Switzerland and Virginia, and their vastly different results.

I read an article this week how Switzerland has addressed the Heroin epidemic in their nation. While once they had hundreds of Heroin addicts shooting up in their parks, overdosing, and creating an unsafe environment, they now have ended the problem. Today, an addict can go to a doctor’s office and shoot-up in a safe environment, with a doctors approved dosage. Not only does this result in a safe environment, it takes the crime aspect of acquiring the drug out of the equation, and gets these addicts into a safe environment to try and address the issues they face, why they use drugs to begin with. The Swiss, as do most industrialized, modern nations, have national health care, where the government will pay for health insurance if the individual cannot afford it. So with the government’s money, they are actually addressing the issue of drug abuse, instead of fighting it as an invisible enemy.
[Article on Switzerland's new Policy]

Contrary, in our nation, the Washington Post published a story last week about how Heroin has become an epidemic in Virginia’s Suburban High Schools. Ignoring the probably CIA connections to the location and demographic, there is no disputing the "drug war" has failed. Alicia Lannes, 19, overdosed for the 4th time, and died, in March. Her friends didn’t call the police at first, but called friends to try and help her, afraid of getting in trouble themselves. Eventually they placed an anonymous call to report her unconscious state. She was dead when the paramedics arrived. This is far from an isolated situation.

"Alicia Lannes's death was one of 18 related to heroin in Fairfax County this year, many involving people between 18 and 24 years old, and it prompted a joint police and FBI investigation into how the hard-core drug has permeated the wealthy suburb and killed young users." [Washington Post]

If Barack Obama brings one sweeping change to our nation, it should be a reworking of our nations Drug Policy. The racist and deadly drug policy America has been using for the past 30 years needs a radical change. With our economy already in turmoil, the majority of the world wanting to liberalize restrictions on Marijuana, the Pharmaceutical Companies rampant hypocrisy and deceptive marketing of their drugs, the time is ripe for a real change.

The truth about the world’s Drug Trade is far to complicated and convoluted for the average American to understand or believe, but the real life stories of how this effects the average American family is what is needed to educate the population how a real Change needs to occur.

If after Alicia’s first overdose, she were able to go to a doctor’s office and address her addiction, be given safe Opium/Heroin, speak with doctors about it, and address her issue, she would be alive today. Instead due to our illogical, profit driven, embarrassing drug policy, this 19-year-old is DEAD, along with millions of others who have died or who are in jail for crimes that only affected their own life. Lets hope the Obama Administration addresses this issue as urgently as we address the economic crisis and the wars, because in the end, they are all the same problem.

America's Unspoken Dark Side: The CIA Drug Trade

To begin, secret government activities need secret and sometimes illegal source of funds. An illegal trade like drugs has the potential for huge profits. The drug trade also is one of the largest parts of the cash economy, estimated at over 1/5 of all cash transactions. From the High School kid buying a $20 bag of weed to the big city dealer buying $50,000 of coke, these cash transactions help the economy by increasing the transfer of wealth from one person to the next. With the international drug trade, huge exports of drugs from one nation leads to foreign, corporate investment in the nation. If a drug cartel has $100,000,000 in cash from a large deal, they do not put this money in a vault, they invest it by opening a Wal-Mart or Home Depot in their nation.
The CIA has been rumored for years to help facilitate this trade. With the "Big Brother" security abilities our intelligence agencies have today, it would be easy for the drug trade to grind to a stop pretty quickly. From monitoring cell phone calls to tracking known dealers, the ability to end the drug trade would be fairly easy in our modern society. The government has no desire to do this though, because the economy and the CIA funding would dry up.
An ex-acquaintance of mine who was a heavy pot smoker introduced me to his dealer, who was arrested numerous times, yet never spent a day in jail. His father was a top investigator in the local police force. He admitted to me that he works as an informant for the local police department. If someone wants to buy a large amount, he reports it, otherwise, the police do not take further actions. They do track each person who this dealer has dealings with by monitoring his phone, but no criminal action is taken. The most curious part of the story was his source of his marijuana. After buying from shady dealers for years, he was put in touch with a "police approved" supplier. So with the police’s full knowledge, this dealer buys drugs, and sells them to the public, with no action being taken. I have heard similar stories from individuals from across the nation.
I know many will think this is just a tin-foil hat conspiracy theory, and I admit, I have no indisputable proof of the government/CIA complicity in the drug trade. There have been numerous known CIA airplanes that have crashed with massive amounts of Cocaine. Past "drug wars" during the 80s never had the effect of lessening the drug usage in America, but eased the flow of drugs in most cases. Many people "in the know" have discussed the secret CIA involvement in the drug trade, but other then the Internet, a great deal hasn’t been discussed or published about it.
Barack Obama appears to have no deep connections to this drug trade or people who have made their livelihoods from it. Will he investigate these covert actions? Will he legalize some drugs while having an actual war on other drugs? With a president who appears to care more about the truth then protecting his buddies, The Obama Administration could be transformative for the Dark Side of America and its secret actions.

Of The Grand Old Party - The Three Types of Republicans

After closely watching the past eight years, I’ve learned a few things about the Republican party. Though much of the past eight years is beyond rational explanation, it can be pieced together to form some sort of irrational logic. First though, the big picture, what makes up the Republican party. It takes a master of marketing to have seamlessly connected corporate America, evangelicals and much of the religious population, and the “patriots” into the same political party. They have done a mighty successful job in creating this “coalition.” If some of the members were aware of the planned deception to create this coalition, it would dissolve rather quickly.
As I see it, there are three types of Republicans. The driving force behind the party are the ones in it for economic reasons, mainly lower taxes. The People in this group can be the top 1%, but can also include anyone who is “well-off” and feel they don’t need the government taking a percent of their money. They feel they do just fine with or without the government. The top 0.1% who are the backbone of the modern Republican party have had great benefits from electing politicians who implement their deceptive economic policies into law. I could go into detail about this, but I’m sure you can think of your own favorite example. These wealthy Republicans fund the majority of the Party’s activities, but don’t care to be the foot-soldiers or get involved in the politics. They want their lower taxes and their “corporate friendly” policies implemented.
Then there are the Religious crowd. To understand this group, you first have to realize that these religious people believe the Bible is factual. They feel their morals and ideas are right, and there is no question in their minds. They feel a need to spread the message of “Jesus” and they are in a “holy war” to do it. Obviously the leaders, Pastors and other Fallwell-likes, realize it’s bullshit, but they are making millions and millions off it, so they just continue to lead the heard and distort the meaning of religion for their own profit. This group is dedicated to their beliefs, so they become very active in the Republican party, they are defending their values after all... Talk radio and Fox News (to some extent) has connected the religious values to the Republican party. In this groups mind, voting for a Democrat is as horrendous as saying Jesus isn’t real. That’s what years of Rush and the Evangelical Church can do to a trusting mind.
Finally there are the “Patriots” who care so deeply about America, they are convinced half of the country is out to destroy it. The Republican party has done an amazing job of dressing themselves up in the flag over the past 60 years, and have sold this group that only the Republican party will make America the best it came be. The motivation for this is to connect a better America with a stronger Military. This plan was devised by the Military Industrial Complex to encourage spending on the Military when none is necessary. The Strongest America would be one where we no longer need a military budget at the levels we have today, but then how would we prove to ourselves we were the strongest?
In future diaries I will explain how events of the past 8 years have fit into each of these three categories. They have started with the Economic reason, and then used the other two to get the ideas implemented. We live in a complex and unclear world today, but it has become that way because the full explanation of events has not been shown to the average citizen. When the scheming nature of it all is laid out, it will hopefully make many on the political-right question their allegiance.... or maybe I’m just a dreamer...

Of The Failure of The American Press

A free, democratic society needs an informed public to function properly. Information about the events within a nation needs to be available to all citizens, from the CEO of a top Wall Street firm, to the college student, to the WalMart greeter.
In each segment of society, individuals are exposed to different information. People in one segment might be caught completely unaware of how things are in another segments. The Press should unify these segments by reporting on important information from all aspects of society. The divergent knowledge bases of our nation have instead been used to divide us, profit off others who are kept uninformed, and keep people from understanding society from a greater perspective.
When different segments of society get information from very different sources, the differing perspectives become solidified from years of being informed in only one perspective. This results in divisions and anger at other perspectives, which only makes ones beliefs stronger.
This is what happens when informing the public is left to profit driven corporations. Capitalism in certain parts of society results in exploitation of human nature.
When the motivation is to get advertisers to pay the most money to reach their audience, the organization does not want to upset the current balance that might damage the profitability of the news organization or the corporation as a whole. Having the greatly segmented society helps advertisers reach their intended audience more precisely.
This division of society has increased in recent years, party by consolidation of news organizations, and partly because of the success of overtly slanted news coverage. In a free society, these types of news coverage cannot be censored, but this cannot be how the majority of the nation learns about events. It does not allow for a society to remain free.
First, the general public has to realize and accept that the news they are getting has strong motivation behind it, and these motivations are not to be the best journalists. If society only valued getting the “best” reporting, the system would function well, but this is not the case. When entertaining or captivating news and news that reinforces already held beliefs is more valued, the system becomes disturbed. This is the easy way to increase profits, but destroys the value of having a free press in a free society. The public does not have access to the editor’s office that makes the decision on what is reported, what gets prominent coverage and what is buried. Since all we know is their motivation is to be profitable, these decisions have motivation beyond the best coverage of events and discussion of issues. The reason behind their decision can be even more nefarious, but jumping to further conclusions is all in the realm of conspiracy theories and do not do much good.
If the press’s coverage of stories is biased in some situations, how can we put our trust in any subject covered? Is NBC reporting the truth about China during the Olympics or do they just want to have the public have a good vision of China so their massive profits GE makes from the nation wont be looked down upon as supporting a torturous regime? Does the nightly news fail to investigate the FDA and prescription drugs because the majority of their commercials comes from prescription medication? Did the media report the truth about the events in the Russian Georgian conflict or did we only get the US/NATO side of it? Why does Exxon, Chevron, and Boeing advertise excessively on NBC's Meet the Press and during the Olympics? They don’t seem to be selling a product to anyone… maybe it's just a payoff to GE? When truthiness becomes the accepted way of reporting, how can we know what is true and what is being reported to keep us entertained, captivated, or marching in line?
The solution to this problem is no easier to arrive at then accepting the faults in the current system. A government run press leads to government influence on coverage by controlling funding or by direct influence. In our current society, there has to be a better way to achieve a well-informed citizenry. If only the individuals who America has put their trust in to inform them about the news did their job to the best of their ability, and stood up to their corporate bosses…. I know I am a dreamer…