Browsing PBH By Articles

An Attorney Makes His Case For Legalizing Marijuana

The Article: Marijuana is safer than alcohol by Dan Riffle in CNN.

The Text: Anti-marijuana crusaders like Kevin Sabet, while well-intentioned, are promoting policies that lead to more violence and disease in our society. In his recent CNN.com op-ed, Sabet argues we should keep marijuana illegal. But as long as marijuana remains illegal, profits from sales go to criminals and drug cartels, and adults will continue to be punished for using a substance less harmful than currently legal drugs.

Confused? Let’s back up. For more than 80 years, our government has spent tens of billions of taxpayer dollars fighting a war against marijuana. We arrest three-quarters of a million adults every year, 87% for simple possession rather than production or sales of marijuana. Courtrooms turn into assembly lines churning out probationers — mostly minorities — with convictions that will make it virtually impossible to find employment.

The result? Marijuana is universally available, used by almost half of Americans at some point in their lives, and we’ve enriched murderous drug cartels fueling violence in Mexico that has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

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The Anatomy Of The Tea Party

The Article: Tea Party is an anti-populist elite tool. And it has progressives fooled by Michael Lind in Salon.

The Text: In recent essays for Salon I have argued that progressives and mainstream pundits are making a profound mistake by treating Tea Party radicalism as an outburst of irrationality by moronic “low information” yokels, rather than understanding it as a calculated (if not necessarily successful) strategy by the regional elite of the South and its allies in other regions. In an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “The Tea Party and the GOP Crackup,” William Galston presents data that reinforces this conclusion:

Many frustrated liberals, and not a few pundits, think that people who share these beliefs must be downscale and poorly educated. The New York Times survey found the opposite. Only 26% of tea-party supporters regard themselves as working class, versus 34% of the general population; 50% identify as middle class (versus 40% nationally); and 15% consider themselves upper-middle class (versus 10% nationally). Twenty-three percent are college graduates, and an additional 14% have postgraduate training, versus 15% and 10%, respectively, for the overall population. Conversely, only 29% of tea-party supporters have just a high-school education or less, versus 47% for all adults.

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The Good News About Canada’s Death Panels

The Article: Canada Has Death Panels by Adam Goldberg in Slate.

The Text: Last week Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that doctors could not unilaterally ignore a Toronto family’s decision to keep their near-dead husband and father on life support. In the same breath, however, the court also confirmed that, under the laws of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, a group of government-appointed adjudicators could yet overrule the family’s choice. That tribunal, not the family or the doctors, has the ultimate power to pull the plug.

In other words: Canada has death panels.

I use that term advisedly. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made it famous in the summer of 2009, when Congress was fighting over whether to pass Obamacare. As Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over health care, we should pause to wonder why millions of Canadians have come to accept the functional equivalent of an idea that almost sank health care reform even though, in this country, it was imaginary.

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The Earnings Of An Average Wall Streeter Versus An Average New Yorker

The Article: Here’s How Much the Average Wall Streeter Makes Compared to the Average New Yorker by Linette Lopez in Business Insider.

The Text: Every year the Office of the New York State Comptroller does a deep dive into Wall Street employment and compensation. The office released its report for 2012 this morning, and as usual, Wall Street salaries trounced those of average New Yorkers. From these stats, you’ll understand how healthy the industry is and how it’s contributing to city and state’s finances. Plus, two words: income gap.

Here are highlights from the full report:

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Who Stands To Profit From Keystone? The Koch Bros, Of Course

The Article: Study: Koch Brothers Could Make $100 Billion if Keystone XL Pipeline Approved by Kevin Grandia in The Contributor.

The Text: A new study concludes that Koch Industries and its subsidiaries stand to make as much as $100 billion in profits if the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is granted a presidential permit from U.S. President Barack Obama.

The report, titled Billionaires’ Carbon Bomb, produced by the think tank International Forum on Globalization (IFG), finds that David and Charles Koch and their privately owned company, Koch Industries, own more than 2 million acres of land in Northern Alberta, the source of the tar sands bitumen that would be pumped to the United States via the Keystone XL pipeline.

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