http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/04/third-party-us-presidential-debate-deceit
http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/01/will-pot-become-legal
Some other topics you might want to familiarize yourselves with that are touched upon here are the electoral college, Citizens United, the NDAA, drones and Iran/Israel. I've copied and pasted the two articles below. See you all Thursday.
The US presidential debates' illusion of political choice
The issue is not what separates Romney and Obama, but how much they agree. This hidden consensus has to be exposed
In part this is because presidential elections are now conducted almost entirely like a tawdry TV reality show. Personality quirks and trivialities about the candidates dominate coverage, and voter choices, leaving little room for substantive debates.
But in larger part, this exclusion is due to the fact that, despite frequent complaints that America is plagued by a lack of bipartisanship, the two major party candidates are in full-scale agreement on many of the nation's most pressing political issues. As a result these are virtually ignored, drowned out by a handful of disputes that the parties relentlessly exploit to galvanise their support base and heighten fear of the other side.
Most of what matters in American political life is nowhere to be found in its national election debates. Penal policies vividly illustrate this point. America imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation on earth by far, including countries with far greater populations. As the New York Times reported in April 2008: "The United States has less than 5% of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners."
Professor Glenn Loury of Brown University has observed that these policies have turned the US into "a nation of jailers" whose "prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history". The New Yorker's Adam Gopnik called this mass incarceration "perhaps the fundamental fact [of American society], as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850".
Even worse, these policies are applied, and arguably designed, with mass racial disparities. One in every four African-American men is likely to be imprisoned. Black and Latino drug users are arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned at far higher rates than whites, even though usage among all groups is relatively equal.
The human cost of this sprawling penal state is obviously horrific: families are broken up, communities are decimated, and those jailed are rendered all but unemployable upon release. But the financial costs are just as devastating. California now spends more on its prison system than it does on higher education, a warped trend repeated around the country.
Yet none of these issues will even be mentioned, let alone debated, by Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. That is because they have no discernible differences when it comes to any of the underlying policies, including America's relentless fixation on treating drug usage as a criminal, rather than health, problem. The oppressive system that now imprisons 1.8 million Americans, and that will imprison millions more over their lifetime, is therefore completely ignored during the only process when most Americans are politically engaged.
This same dynamic repeats itself in other crucial realms. President Obama's dramatically escalated drone attacks in numerous countries have generated massive anger in the Muslim world, continuously kill civilians, and are of dubious legality at best. His claimed right to target even American citizens for extrajudicial assassinations, without a whiff of transparency or oversight, is as radical a power as any seized by George Bush and Dick Cheney.
Yet Americans whose political perceptions are shaped by attentiveness to the presidential campaign would hardly know that such radical and consequential policies even exist. That is because here too there is absolute consensus between the two parties.
A long list of highly debatable and profoundly significant policies will be similarly excluded due to bipartisan agreement. The list includes a rapidly growing domestic surveillance state that now monitors and records even the most innocuous activities of all Americans; job-killing free trade agreements; climate change policies; and the Obama justice department's refusal to prosecute the Wall Street criminals who precipitated the 2008 financial crisis.
On still other vital issues, such as America's steadfastly loyal support for Israel and its belligerence towards Iran, the two candidates will do little other than compete over who is most aggressively embracing the same absolutist position. And this is all independent of the fact that even on the issues that are the subject of debate attention, such as healthcare policy and entitlement "reform", all but the most centrist positions are off limits.
The harm from this process is not merely the loss of what could be a valuable opportunity to engage in a real national debate. Worse, it is propagandistic: by emphasising the few issues on which there is real disagreement between the parties, the election process ends up sustaining the appearance that there is far more difference between the two parties, and far more choice for citizens, than is really offered by America's political system.
One way to solve this problem would be to allow credible third-party candidates into the presidential debates and to give them more media coverage. Doing so would highlight just how similar Democrats and Republicans have become, and what little choice American voters actually have on many of the most consequential policies. That is exactly why the two major parties work so feverishly to ensure the exclusion of those candidates: it is precisely the deceitful perception of real choice that they are most eager to maintain.
Will Pot Become Legal?
Weed would remain illegal under federal law, but good luck to the feds trying to enforce that ban if a state abandons it.
Judging from recent history, any young person who aspires to be
president should be aware that certain attributes seem to be
critical. You have to be male. You have to have an Ivy League
degree. You have to have been a governor or senator. And, don't
forget, you have to have smoked marijuana.
Barack Obama said, "When I was a kid, I inhaled. That was the
point." Presumably, Mitt Romney never did, and who knows? Maybe
he'd be ahead in the polls if he had -- though, he might note, it's
never too late.
Logicians will quarrel with my reasoning, arguing that drug use did not propel these men to high office. That's true. But it obviously didn't hinder them.
For decades, champions of the drug war have trumpeted the dire risks of marijuana. But millions of Americans have used and even enjoyed it -- nearly 100 million, in fact. Most of them have gone on to lead responsible, well-adjusted lives.
If anything related to pot would have kept them from being elected to office, it would be the laws against it. An arrest or a conviction could derail a political career before it even got started. Yet these presidents went on putting people in jail for something they got away with.
Their fellow citizens, however, are increasingly skeptical about the drug war. Last year, Gallup found that 50 percent of Americans now favor legalizing cannabis, with only 46 percent opposed.
The sentiment may lead to action. On Nov. 6, residents of Colorado, Oregon and Washington will vote on ballot measures to allow the regulated production, sale, and use of pot.
In Colorado, which already has a large network of medical marijuana dispensaries, familiarity has bred acceptance. One of the most noteworthy headlines of 2011 came on a news release from Public Policy Polling: "Colorado favors gay marriage, marijuana use, loves Tebow." Affection for the Denver quarterback may have ebbed since he went to the New York Jets, but the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act of 2012 is leading in the polls.
Weed would remain illegal under federal law, but good luck to the feds trying to enforce that ban if a state abandons it. As the Drug Policy Alliance notes, medical marijuana has gotten established over the objections of Washington.
Critics raise the usual alarms. Obama's Office of National Drug Control Policy charges that "political campaigns to legalize all marijuana use perpetuate the false notion that marijuana is harmless. This significantly diminishes efforts to keep our young people drug free and hampers the struggle of those recovering from addiction."
But very few people portray marijuana as harmless. The claim, grounded in fact and experience, is that it is far less harmful than the effort to stamp it out.
Marijuana prohibition means the arrest of some 750,000 people every year for simple possession -- double the number 20 years ago. It means spending an estimated $7.7 billion on enforcement. It means the enrichment of urban gangs and Mexican drug cartels that depend on the illegal trade. And the whole effort has been a complete failure.
Nor does a permissive approach necessarily undermine efforts to protect kids. For high school kids, dope is just slightly harder to get than Skittles. In the Netherlands, which permits regulated sales through "coffee shops," adolescents are far less likely to try pot than here.
Marijuana use, it's true, can be damaging. A recent study found that people who begin using it heavily as teens and continue as adults can reduce their IQ. It can cause dependency. Like any mind-altering substance, it may foster dangerous behavior.
But the same things are true of alcohol, a drug that inflicts far more damage to users and the rest of us than marijuana could ever do. We accept those risks as the price of personal freedom -- while focusing law enforcement on combating abuse, not use. A similar respect for individual prerogative ought to govern in the realm of cannabis.
Young people should realize that, despite the example of Obama and his predecessors, smoking pot doesn't mean you'll grow up to be president. But be warned: It is one of the risks you take.
Logicians will quarrel with my reasoning, arguing that drug use did not propel these men to high office. That's true. But it obviously didn't hinder them.
For decades, champions of the drug war have trumpeted the dire risks of marijuana. But millions of Americans have used and even enjoyed it -- nearly 100 million, in fact. Most of them have gone on to lead responsible, well-adjusted lives.
If anything related to pot would have kept them from being elected to office, it would be the laws against it. An arrest or a conviction could derail a political career before it even got started. Yet these presidents went on putting people in jail for something they got away with.
Their fellow citizens, however, are increasingly skeptical about the drug war. Last year, Gallup found that 50 percent of Americans now favor legalizing cannabis, with only 46 percent opposed.
The sentiment may lead to action. On Nov. 6, residents of Colorado, Oregon and Washington will vote on ballot measures to allow the regulated production, sale, and use of pot.
In Colorado, which already has a large network of medical marijuana dispensaries, familiarity has bred acceptance. One of the most noteworthy headlines of 2011 came on a news release from Public Policy Polling: "Colorado favors gay marriage, marijuana use, loves Tebow." Affection for the Denver quarterback may have ebbed since he went to the New York Jets, but the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act of 2012 is leading in the polls.
Weed would remain illegal under federal law, but good luck to the feds trying to enforce that ban if a state abandons it. As the Drug Policy Alliance notes, medical marijuana has gotten established over the objections of Washington.
Critics raise the usual alarms. Obama's Office of National Drug Control Policy charges that "political campaigns to legalize all marijuana use perpetuate the false notion that marijuana is harmless. This significantly diminishes efforts to keep our young people drug free and hampers the struggle of those recovering from addiction."
But very few people portray marijuana as harmless. The claim, grounded in fact and experience, is that it is far less harmful than the effort to stamp it out.
Marijuana prohibition means the arrest of some 750,000 people every year for simple possession -- double the number 20 years ago. It means spending an estimated $7.7 billion on enforcement. It means the enrichment of urban gangs and Mexican drug cartels that depend on the illegal trade. And the whole effort has been a complete failure.
Nor does a permissive approach necessarily undermine efforts to protect kids. For high school kids, dope is just slightly harder to get than Skittles. In the Netherlands, which permits regulated sales through "coffee shops," adolescents are far less likely to try pot than here.
Marijuana use, it's true, can be damaging. A recent study found that people who begin using it heavily as teens and continue as adults can reduce their IQ. It can cause dependency. Like any mind-altering substance, it may foster dangerous behavior.
But the same things are true of alcohol, a drug that inflicts far more damage to users and the rest of us than marijuana could ever do. We accept those risks as the price of personal freedom -- while focusing law enforcement on combating abuse, not use. A similar respect for individual prerogative ought to govern in the realm of cannabis.
Young people should realize that, despite the example of Obama and his predecessors, smoking pot doesn't mean you'll grow up to be president. But be warned: It is one of the risks you take.
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