Left News and Views

Despite the burden that would be felt by many regular people resulting from a cap on tax-excluded benefits, some Conservative Democrats are ranting about a proposed surtax on the rich included in the House bill as a revenue-generator for health care.

The legislation proposed by leaders of three House committees would set a 1 percent surtax on couples with more than $350,000 in annual income, with higher rates taking effect for those earning $500,000 and $1 million. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said the surtax would raise $540 billion over the next decade

On July 21, seven members of the Blue Dog Coalition forced House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman to cancel debate and a vote on a health care bill already passed by two other House committees. The Blue Dogs cited their objections to the cost of the program, and Blue Dog spokesman Representative Mike Ross questioned the wisdom of taxing the wealthy.

Some conservative Democrats have taken in sizable sums from Wall Street in campaign donations; 

• Blue Dog leader Ross’ haul from the financial-services sector totalled nearly $900,000 in campaign contributions. 
• Montana’s Sen. Max Baucus counts the securities-and-investment industry as the top sector from which he gains campaign contributions, according to OpenSecrets.org; among his top five contributors are Goldman Sachs, AIG and KKR & Co.

The energy, financial services, and health care industries have accounted for nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC’s 2009 receipts according to The Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Tax Justice, a progressive think tank, laid out a variety of options [PDF] for paying for health care reform. One suggestion is a 1.45 percent Medicare tax on the capital gains and other non-wage income of millionaires – a measure that could raise billions of dollars.

 Ross reportedly objects to the measure.

Congress has been considering universal health care legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000 — that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1-percenters. This surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion, the 1-percenters received from the Bush tax cuts. In fact, it is so miniscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year — or nine-tenths of 1 percent of their 12-month haul.

But as usual lawmakers, being affluent and/or from affluent districts, are driving their luxury cars over the middle-class. Hence, the letter from Boulder, Colorado’s dot-com tycoon Rep. Jared Polis calling for the surtax’s death. Echoing that demand are those like Sen. Max Baucus, who come from the heartland’s culturally conservative and economically impoverished locales, and quietly build insurmountable campaign war chests as the biggest corporate fundraisers in Congress. They claim to be just “regular folks” from “back home.” Folks who now promise to kill the health care surtax because they say that’s what their communities want. As if their impoverished constituents would knowingly support the richest one percent of the country when they can barely support their own families.

The Media, elite journalists and opinion-mongers who represent corporate media conglomerates and/or are themselves extremely wealthy, support them in this ridiculous fairy-tale. They ignore all the data about inequality, then legitimize the claims that America’s fat cats are being unfairly persecuted. This, at a time when those fat cats are better off than they have been since 1929. NBC’s Meredith Vieira asked President Obama why the surtax is intent on “punishing the rich?” Obama responded with, “No, it’s not punishing the rich. If I can afford to do a little bit more so that a whole bunch of families out there have a little more security, when I already have security, that’s part of being a community.”

Meanwhile, reform supporters fear that the White House’s bill has been so compromised, so bent to favor the big interests, it’s less Waterloo than watered down, a mockery of the change they had hoped for and that America desperately needs, with 22,000 Americans dying each year simply because they lack health insurance.

The Republicans have more than health care reform in their sights — they want a loss for Obama so crushing it will bring the administration to its knees and restore GOP control of Congress after next year’s elections. Republican Senator Jim DeMint, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

As the Republicans fired away, big business stepped up their lobbying and advertising attacks. The Chamber of Commerce, for one, announced a major campaign to crush the White House’s plan for a competitive public option that would allow consumers to choose between a government plan and private health insurance. The media is filled with messages aimed at moving opinions away from any change that might threaten profits.

According to The Associated Press, the drug industry’s trade group PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) and the drug company Pfizer “reported spending more money than other health care organizations on lobbying in the second quarter of this year” - $6.2 million from PhRMA, $5.6 million from Pfizer. “Including its latest report, PhRMA has now spent $13.1 million lobbying so far this year. Pfizer has reported $11.7 million in lobbying expenses for 2009.”

This is part of the reason, as Alicia Mundy and Laura Meckler recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, that “the pharmaceuticals industry… is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul.”

Healthcare part two tomorrow.

The corporate media monopoly is dying, and they know it. They are losing their power to control information because of blogs and alternative media, which is why people like Hartigan are fuming. 

The establishment is aggressively attacking the old Internet and pushing to replace it with Internet 2. This internet will be a corporate, controlled, electronic Berlin wall. Alternative voices will be silenced and giant corporate propaganda will dominate once again.  

Darryl Mason writes, John Hartigan is full of shit. Bloggers have gone to jail for their work, and to protect their sources, in North Korea, Iran, Egypt, the list of countries persecuting bloggers grows longer by the week. And the CEO of Australia’s biggest news corporation doesn’t know this? The jailing of bloggers for speaking too much truth is obviously not the kind of news that John Hartigan, a Rupert Murdoch CEO, is interested in. How could he not know about those jailing and prosecutions? Remember those words: Political extremism. You will hear that call more and more as the major news corporations scale up their war against independent media, and bloggers.

The source of the establishment’s move to claim that bloggers and alternative media outlets are extremists or at worst terrorists was a White House strategy document that the government had been following since 9/11. In a September 5, 2006 speech President George W Bush referred to the document as an unclassified version of the strategy we’ve been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001. The strategy paper on how to win the “war on terror” cites conspiracies as one of the well-springs of terrorism. It also threatens to address and diminish the problems they are causing the government in fulfilling their agenda.

This notion then reappeared in a March 2009 Homeland Security document entitled Domestic Extremism Lexicon, in which the alternative media is listed alongside other radical extremist groups with the implication that people who disagree with the mass media’s version of events are potential domestic terrorists. The DHS document was almost immediately rescinded, but the groups listed alongside Neo-Nazis, Aryan prison gangs and black power extremists again prove that the federal government is targeting American citizens who are merely knowledgeable about their rights and up on current issues as potential domestic terrorists to be treated as a threat to law enforcement.

I’ll admit to having my “extreme” moments (just ask my husband), but I’m no terrorist. I don’t think like a terrorist, I don’t commit terrorist acts, I am not a terrorist, whatever Hartigan and his ilk may say. They can call me anything they like, I’m an American and I’ll say what I like (as long as it doesn’t cause physical harm), and the government and corporate amerika can blow me.

Hartigan implies that bloggers should be jailed as they are in oppressive police states like China and Burma.

In a speech to the National Press Club, John Hartigan,  CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, savagely dismissed blogs as, “Something of such little intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.”

“Bloggers don’t go to jail for their work. They simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters….It could be said the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insights,” barked Hartigan.

“In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting. It really is time this myth was blown apart.”

“Blogs, and a large number of comment sites, specialize in political extremism and personal vilification. Radical sweeping statements without evidence are common.”

The reason mainstream media is always found wanting is because they blatantly lie about news events. They spin stories to suit the demands of their corporate owners. Blogs and alternative media outlets have become so popular because people are sick of being lied to and manipulated by the corporate media (which is what “mainstream” or “mass” media really is), and are desperately looking for people who will tell them the truth.

In addition, while many in the mainstream media routinely use anonymous sources and little more than bluster and hot air to back up their stories, many respected bloggers provide links to almost every claim they make so readers can research the source evidence for themselves. This is completely opposite to Hartigan’s claim that blogs make “radical sweeping statements without evidence.” Indeed, this phrase more perfectly characterizes the tactics used by the mass media on a daily basis.

Talk about massive ignorance.

Injections of THC, the active principle of cannabis, eliminate dependence on opiates (morphine, heroin) in rats deprived of their mothers at birth. The findings could lead to therapeutic alternatives to existing substitution treatments.

Paris, France: The administration of oral THC in rats suppresses sensitivity to opiate dependence, according to preclinical findings published in the June 24 issue of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

An international team of researchers from France and Canada assessed the impact oral THC (dronabinol) exposure in maternally deprived rats.(Rats that are deprived of their mothers immediately after birth are far more vulnerable to opiate dependence than non-deprived subjects.)

“Dronabinol treatment on maternally deprived rats normalized morphine consumption and suppressed sensitivity to morphine conditioning,” researchers reported. “These findings point to the self-medication use of cannabis in subgroups of individuals subjected to adverse postnatal environment(s).”

The study was carried out by Valérie Daugé and her team at the Laboratory for Physiopathology of Diseases of the Central Nervous System (UPMC / CNRS / INSERM).

Daugé’s team analyzed the effects of maternal deprivation combined with injections of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main active principle in cannabis, on behavior with regard to opiates.

Previously, Daugé and her colleagues had shown that rats deprived of their mothers at birth become hypersensitive to the rewarding effect of morphine and heroin (substances belonging to the opiate family), and rapidly become dependent. In addition, there is a correlation between such behavioral disturbances linked to dependence, and hypoactivity of the enkephalinergic system, the endogenous opioid system.

To these rats, placed under stress from birth, the researchers intermittently administered increasingly high doses of THC (5 or 10 mg/kg) during the period corresponding to their adolescence (between 35 and 48 days after birth). By measuring their consumption of morphine in adulthood, they observed that, unlike results previously obtained, the rats no longer developed typical morphine-dependent behavior. Moreover, biochemical and molecular biological data corroborate these findings. In the striatum, a region of the brain involved in drug dependence, the production of endogenous enkephalins was restored under THC, whereas it diminished in rats stressed from birth which had not received THC.

Such animal models are validated for understanding the neurobiological and behavioral effects of postnatal conditions in humans. In this context, the findings point to the development of new treatments that could relieve withdrawal effects and suppress drug dependence.

The enkephalinergic system produces endogenous enkephalins, which are neurotransmitters that bind to the same receptors as opiates and inhibit pain messages to the brain.

The clinical data  published this month in the July/August issue of the American Journal on Addictions reported that drug treatment subjects who used cannabis intermittently were more likely to adhere to treatment for opioid dependence

Commenting on the studies, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said, “These findings undermine the notion that cannabis is a so-called ‘gateway’ to hard drug use. Rather, these results indicate that in certain populations marijuana may be a useful tool for deterring the initiation or continuation of hard drug abuse.”

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org . Full text of the study, “Adolescent exposure to delta-9-THC blocks opiate dependence in maternally deprived rats,” appears in Psychopharmacology.

In yesterday’s post I mentioned two patients dying, simply because they were poor and uninsured.One of those patients went to the ER because he had suicidal ideas. Because of worsening economic conditions, this kind of patient is on the increase–being poor or unemployed are common causes of depression.

Hospitals that don’t have an in-patient psych facility hold these patients until a bed opens up at one of the publicly funded psychiatric hospitals. This process can sometimes take several days, as these institutions are consistently overcrowded. Typically an ER technician or nurse is assigned to watch the patients to make sure they don’t harm themselves or others. This is referred to as a “one to one.” But there’s never a time when the ratio is actually one to one–the hospital worker assigned to these critical cases will often be responsible for six, seven or even eight patients.

Because no one was really watching this particular individual, he took an overdose of medicine and died. He was a young person who asked for help because some part of him still wanted to live, despite the hardship he was suffering. Our system failed him, and now, parents will have to bury their child because of this failure.

The other death was equally tragic and preventable. This person was in his 50s and was in the ER because of chest pain. Family members repeatedly went to the desk to ask for help, stating that their relative was in severe pain and needed to see a doctor. But with so many people in the waiting room, this is an all-too-common request–and people are told, sometimes callously, that nothing can be done, and they’ll just have to wait. After 14 hours of waiting, the pain had become too much, and the family member insisted he be brought into the hospital. The patient collapsed before he reached a bed to be seen, and attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.

One could certainly place blame on the workers at the hospital who were supposed to be responsible for these two patients. But if this seems fair on the surface, it’s misplaced. Even the best health care workers, given a bad situation, make mistakes, and in an overly crowded hospital, it’s a miracle that mistakes like these don’t happen more often. This is little solace to the families and loved ones of the tens of thousands who die unnecessarily every year.

The statistics are staggering, even mind numbing–but every person who dies is someone’s mother, father, daughter or son. Every one of these people had a life that was cut short because it isn’t “good business” to provide health care to those who can’t afford it. This is nothing short of mass murder taking place on a yearly basis, and it’s all in the name of profit. We can’t be satisfied with the answer that this is just “the cost of doing business“. Something must be done, and we can’t wait any longer. We NEED universal health care and a health care system that actually CARES about people and not just about profits.

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence. A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 people died every year because of a lack of health insurance. It’s one thing to read these statistics and be astounded by them, especially considering that we pay more per capita for health care than any other country in the world. It’s another to see the impact of this system on people’s lives every day.

As the number of people who lose their jobs increases, so do the number of people who lose their health insurance. This has only added to the strain on an already strained system. Public hospitals serve as safety nets. Many hospitals will treat patients for emergency situations, as they are required by law to do, and then refer them to a public facility for follow-up surgery, doctor’s visits and prescriptions. The clinics connected to the hospital are only able to see so many patients every day, so the overflow is sent to the ER. This means that wait times to be seen by a doctor regularly grow to unbelievable lengths.

The Emergency Room waiting area can become so crowded that over 50 people can be waiting to be “triaged” by a nurse at any given time. This is a recipe for disaster. Triaging is the first filter to make sure that critically ill patients get priority. The wait time to see a doctor can easily exceed 24 hours.

One in five people who have jobs are uninsured–around 27 million people in all, accounting for about two-thirds of 44 million people who are without coverage in the U.S. Four in five of the uninsured come from a family where at least one person is employed.

But when you have to wait an entire day to see a doctor, taking the time to come to the hospital becomes a full-time job. It’s not uncommon to see young children and infants at the hospital, not because they’re sick themselves, but because their parents are, and they have no one to care for their children.

So many people don’t come in when they need medical help because they can’t afford to take the time off work to wait a day to see a doctor, or they cannot get someone to care for their children. This often only delays the inevitable, and they end up coming in when they have no choice because their health situation has worsened.

Patients asked how long they were suffering from whatever brought them in, frequently answered that it had been many months. Not infrequently, they have a poor prognosis only because they waited so long to come in for treatment. There’s no legitimate reason that people should be forced to suffer like this.

We find ourselves far in advance politically from the era of the Great Depression. The struggles against oppression that took place in the 1960s–for civil rights and Black Power, for women’s liberation and for gay liberation–left a lasting imprint on U.S. society.

You can see this not only in the fact that an electoral majority elected an African American president in November, which would have been impossible even a decade or two ago, but also the fact that John McCain’s campaign manager has come out in favor of same-sex marriage–and is urging the Republican Party to do the same. That speaks volumes about the changes in mass consciousness in today’s world. 

The vast majority of people in this country have broken with the hate-based and conservative politics that allowed the Republican Party to dominate for the last 30 years, and instead, people are embracing tolerance and social change.

What we already see is that the struggle for gay marriage and immigrant rights is a synthesis of the fight for civil rights and a working-class demand. What we saw on May Day 2006, when millions of immigrant workers came out for a day without an immigrant, is just a glimpse of what’s possible in the coming years–in building a working-class movement that stands for strong unions and also social justice.

The rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s was a qualitative advance from the limits of craft unionism. But it didn’t challenge Jim Crow segregation in the South; it didn’t challenge lynching, which was still the order of the day in the Deep South. It didn’t even succeed at challenging the fact that the National Industrial Recovery Act allowed Southern employers to pay Black workers lower wages than white workers.

In the end, industrial unionism failed when it came to organizing the South because it failed to make the fight for unionization also a fight against social injustice–and for that reason alone, the South has remained a non-union, low-wage noose hanging around the neck of the U.S. labor movement. Long before capital moved to the Global South to escape unions, it was able to move to the Deep South.

If we want to address the needs of today’s labor movement, we have to move forward toward social justice unionism–which makes the fight against oppression central to the class struggle.

We have seen glimpses of this already. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO backed same-sex marriage, helping Massachusetts to become the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. U.S. Labor Against War represented an important attempt toward putting the strength of organized labor behind opposition to the Iraq War.

If we begin to view the class struggle in this respect, then surely we will be able to fully appreciate why, even though the struggle for same-sex marriage does not involve a workplace struggle or a strike, winning it will mark the first victory for our class in the battles that lie in the years ahead.

Just try to imagine a future moment when a major Fortune 500 company finds its Internet completely shut down, not, this time, by a computer virus, but by a strike of its computer technicians, who are joined on the picket line by a walkout of clerical workers, who then convince the UPS delivery drivers to go out on a sympathy strike–all of them ready to fight to the finish to win their main demand: an end to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

Then maybe we can begin to imagine the future face of the class struggle in a history that has yet to be determined, and a new left that has yet to be built.

Class Struggle is About Equality for All of Us.

From a speech by Sharon Smith　

Sharon Smith is a SocialistWorker.org columnist and author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States and Women and Socialism: Essays on Women’s Liberation.

The election of Roosevelt in 1932 brought hope for millions of working-class families that relief was on the way. But Roosevelt didn’t immediately bring the kind of change that would put food on the table for workers or keep them in their homes.  

On the contrary, Roosevelt conducted a delicate balancing act. His rhetoric was very generous toward workers, but his budget was not. In fact, only big business got significant relief in the early 1930s. After the class struggle began to rise, and the labor movement scored some real victories in 1934, then Roosevelt, facing the possibility of not being re-elected, began to consider it necessary to grant the first major reforms of his administration.

On August 14, 1935, Roosevelt signed The Social Security Act, the first acknowledgement that the government has a responsibility to provide material aid to the poor. The original 1935 law contained the first national unemployment compensation program, aid to the states for various health and welfare programs, and the Aid to Dependent Children program. (Full text of the 1935 law.) He also signed the Wagner Act, finally making it illegal for employers to refuse to recognize unions chosen by their employees to represent them.

The size of the left at the start of the Great Depression was far larger than what exists in the U.S. today. In addition, large sections of workers at the start of the 1930s had either themselves been trained, or had parents and grandparents who trained them, in the traditions of the class struggle, and even the left-wing traditions of the IWW or the Socialist Party. The vast majority of young workers today not only work in low-wage, non-union jobs–or, in reality, multiple low-wage non-union jobs–but they have been cut off from the radical traditions that built the U.S. labor movement in the first place.

That radical tradition must now be learned through reading and discussion, rather than stories handed down from one generation to the next.

There are lessons from the Great Depression that are tremendously useful for us as we build a new left today. Some of the lessons that are most useful for us aren’t simply that the Great Depression was the single greatest era of class struggle and advance for the U.S. working class, but also what it took to get to that point.

There’s often a false impression that the stock market crashed in 1929, and by 1930, the working class was on the offensive. In reality, it took some years for the class struggle to advance. It wasn’t until 1933, that the level of strikes began to rise significantly.

It isn’t desperation alone that drives workers to struggle; there has to be some sense of confidence that it is possible to win–and that sense of confidence often does not occur until at least some sections of the economy begin to pick up and begin hiring again.

Even after the tide began to turn in 1934, with the three strike victories in Toledo, San Francisco and Minneapolis, it wasn’t as if, from that point on, labor was on the offensive.

Again, in reality, the three victories in the spring and summer of 1934 were immediately followed by the defeat of the textile strike up and down the East Coast, which was one of the bloodiest assaults ever suffered by the U.S. working class.

It wasn’t until the victories of the sit-down strike-wave in 1936-1937–and in particular, the victory of the Flint sit-down strike that unionized General Motors (which was the equivalent of what would today be the unionization of Wal-Mart)–that you could safely say the labor movement was taking the offensive in the class struggle. That was some seven or eight years into the Great Depression.

More on moving left Monday…

Periods of social upheaval and change are inevitable. When the majority of people are left to suffer and die, while a very small minority enjoy unlimited wealth, power and comfort rebellion becomes inevitable. The contradictions of the capitalist system are on full display for everyone to see. Now should be the perfect time to make much-needed changes to a corrupt system that “works” for only a very small percentage of the world’s population.

To be sure, large sections of the capitalist class still don’t seem to realize this. It’s still unclear, for example, whether John McCain now realizes that when he accused Barack Obama of being a socialist during the election campaign, all he did was make Obama all the more appealing, however untrue the accusation. As one of the working poor in this country, I wish Obama was a socialist. Unfortunately for me and the majority of us barely scraping by, Obama is NOT a socialist.

This is not only the worst economic crisis, but also the worst ideological crisis for U.S. capitalism since the 1930s–when the profit system has been completely discredited in the eyes of so many millions of working-class people. For this reason alone, it’s not an exaggeration to say that we now face the greatest prospects for rebuilding the U.S. left since the Great Depression, on the basis of massive class consciousness and class anger.

To state the obvious, it is to our advantage that so many people under the age of 30 believe socialism is a better system than capitalism. There can be little doubt that social conditions tilt far in favor of the left over the right at this particular historical juncture. To say that the far right is marginalized today is not a recipe for complacency, but rather to emphasize that there is no excuse for the left not to grow significantly in this new era, just as the socialist movement did in the 1930s.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court to reject bogus copyright claims in a ringtone royalty battle that could raise costs for consumers, jeopardize consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation.

Millions of Americans have bought musical ringtones, often clips from favorite popular songs, for their mobile phones. Mobile phone carriers pay royalties to song owners for the right to sell these snippets to their customers. But as part of a ploy to squeeze more money out of the mobile phone companies, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) has told a federal court that each time a phone rings in a public place, the phone user has violated copyright law. Therefore, ASCAP argues, phone carriers must pay additional royalties or face legal liability for contributing to what they claim is cell phone users’ copyright infringement.

EFF pointed out that copyright law does not reach public performances “without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage” — clearly the case with cell phone ringtones. If phone users are not infringing copyright law, then mobile phone service providers are not contributing to any infringement.

“This is an outlandish argument from ASCAP,” said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “Are the millions of people who have bought ringtones breaking the law if they forget to silence their phones in a restaurant? Under this reasoning from ASCAP, it would be a copyright violation for you to play your car radio with the window down!”

ASCAP has responded by saying that it does not plan to charge mobile phone users, just mobile phone service providers. But if ASCAP prevails, consumers could find themselves targeted by other copyright owners for “public performances.” Worse, these wrongheaded legal claims cast a shadow over innovators who are building gadgets that help consumers get the most from their copyright privileges.

“Because it is legal for consumers to play music in public, it’s also legal for my mobile phone carrier to sell me a ringtone and a phone to do it,” said von Lohmann. “Otherwise it would be illegal to sell all kinds of technologies that help us enjoy our fair use, first sale, and other copyright privileges.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology and Public Knowledge also joined the EFF brief.

For the full amicus brief:

http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/US_v_ASCAP/US%20v%20ASCAP%20EFF%20ATT%…

For more on this case:

http://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-ascap

Contact:

Rebecca Jeschke
Media Relations Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation

press@eff.org.

This scary story appeared in my email inbox:

Mayor of New York City Proposes Demolition of Statute of Liberty

New York City. — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg today proposed an expedited plan to demolish the Statute of Liberty, to ease that city government’s beleaguered finances.

Due to concerted pressure from environmentalists, now in their third week of sitting in the Mayor’s Office downtown, that plan cites the worldwide copper shortage that has resulted from union labor disputes at copper mines all around the world.

“We desperately need new wiring for the new World Trade Center,” stated Bloomberg. “And, our corporate sponsors in Taiwan are now making heavy use of copper thermal layers in their latest motherboard designs. They need our help too.”

The Statute of Liberty is currently situated on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor.
Over the years, that Statute has become an international icon of freedom and liberty, “the most recognizable symbol of democracy in the world,” according to Wikipedia.

Bloomberg was not entirely clear about the future fate of that Island, after the Statute of Liberty is removed entirely. He did, however, mention the need to save money by reducing the travel time of garbage skows that originate from downtown Manhattan on a daily basis, particularly the offices at 33 Liberty Street.

Recent big increases in fuel costs have added extraordinary expenses to the City’s garbage skow operations.

“My preference is to install an efficient incinerator on that Island, to help the City save money on garbage disposal,” added Bloomberg. A sullen silence fell upon the City Council meeting where the Mayor made that comment.

“We can use the excess energy to generate electricity,” Bloomberg clarified. At that, a unanimous sigh was heard by all in attendance.

The Federal Government has submitted its own unsolicited proposal to melt the Statute of Liberty into as many copper pennies as possible. Currently, the pennies being minted by the United States Mint are “clad” with only a thin layer of copper.

The new pennies proposed by the Federal Government would be solid copper, further exacerbating the worldwide copper shortage. Also, environmentalist pressures have now stopped all forest logging worldwide, making it impossible for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to issue any more paper money, also known as fiat money.

Current Federal Regulations prohibit the engraving of Federal Reserve Notes upon recycled newspaper stock.

A google search found nothing on the demolition of the Statue of Liberty. I did find a few links to Mayor Bloomberg’s plans for Governor’s Island.

Turns out that in December of 2007, Bloomberg and then-governor Eliot Spitzer, announced the selection of internationally renowned design firms West 8 / Rogers Marvel Architects / Diller Scofidio + Renfro / Quennell Rothschild / SMWM to design Governors Island’s future open space, including a new park and promenade. The team was one of five finalists chosen last January by the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC) for a competition to plan three new open spaces on the Island: a two mile Great Promenade along the water’s edge; a new major park located on the southern half of the Island; and an improved park design within the northern Historic District.

It doesn’t seem logical for Bloomberg to spend the time and money improving Governor’s Island’s views of the Statue only to tear the Statue down before the plans are even completed. Not that government hasn’t made totally illogical decisions before, I just think it unlikely that Bloomberg would make a financial mistake like that given the current economic climate.

Portugal has been the subject of a lot of attention lately over its decriminalization of drug possession. Although decriminalization has been in place for eight years now, it is only this year that it has caught the world’s attention. The success of Portugal’s approach was the subject of a piece by Salon writer Glenn Greenwald commissioned by the Cato Institute that was widely read and commented on earlier this year, and it earned praise from an unexpected place: the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which could find little to complain about for its 2009 World Drugs Report.

But Portugal isn’t resting on its laurels, and at least one political party there is preparing to take the country’s progressive approach to drug reform to the next level. The Leftist Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda) is preparing legislation that would legalize the possession, cultivation, and retail sales of small amounts of marijuana, as well as providing for regulated wholesale cultivation to supply the retail market.

 The Bloc is also now actively encouraging the participation of ENCOD, the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies, in developing new drug laws. The alliance comes too late to influence the marijuana bill, but will provide an entree for drug reformers in the process in future drug legislation, or even revising the current marijuana bill if it does not make in through parliament this year.

“The contacts between ENCOD and the Bloc were arranged by common activists and members,” explained ENCOD steering committee member and Portuguese law student, journalist, and activist Jorge Roque.

 Read more here