Just How Far Behind The Times Is Congress?

The Department of Justice still insists on enforcing the drug laws that classify Marijuana as a Schedule I drug. A Schedule I drug has no medical use. Yet the National Institute of Health has just verified a study showing that marijuana may help cure aggressive cancers of the brain. I kid you not. In addition, pot is being used to treat glaucoma, pain, insomnia, nausea, depression, asthma, and PTSD, to name a few. Evidence is mounting that marijuana is a natural panacea for a whole host of ills that humans are heir to.

The National Institute of Health has admitted this. They are a branch of the federal government, of which another branch, the Justice Department keeps enforcing a drug law that is demonstrably based on falsehood.

The research on the effects of marijuana on cancers of the brain was done in Great Britain because the classification of marijuana as a schedule I drug means that little or no research can be done on it in this country. The law was passed in 1970. Evidently the elders at that time were so panicked by the sight of young people having fun dressed in brightly colored clothes, listening to loud music, and smoking marijuana that they decided to put an end to the fun immediately. The loud music is still with us, and the colorful clothing. In addition, people have put brightly colored tatoos on their skin. But the marijuana is still illegal, even more so due to mandatory sentencing and three strike laws. You can serve up to 30 years (!) in prison for selling marijuana.

All these years that the feds (and states) have been putting people in prison for holding small amounts of marijuana, the evidence about the relative harmlessness of the plant has been adding up, as have the numerous medical uses to which it can be put. The US Congress passed the law declaring marijuana in 1970. We've known about various medical uses to which it can be put the entire 45 years, but around 2000 the number of positive uses have begun to proliferate. In face, if we only count the number of diseases, conditions, and complaints that marijuana has been used to treat, it turns out that marijuana is a kind of miracle drug. It treats a number of conditions for which drugs have been developed, but it does it, for the most part, without side effects.

The greatest proof that marijuana is good for people's health is that millions of people have been using it for all these years. They risk arrest and prison and they keep using it. It doesn't just make people high. There are many legal substances that make people high. It actually helps them self-medicate. What is Congress waiting for? The evidence is overwhelming that marijuana should not be listed as a schedule I drug, because thousands of people are using it to treat various medical conditions. But Congress sits on its ass and does nothing to set this situation right. And only they can do it.

If I were an ordinary critic, I would just say, we should pass some sort of amendment that says a law's reason for existence must be valid. That could solve a lot of other problems, too. There are laws, called tort reform laws, that prevent plaintiffs from suing corporations for various reasons, not because it's a good thing to let corporations get away with crimes, but because the corporations have lobbied Congress to pass laws that let them get away with it. Those laws are clearly invalid in many cases, since corporations are getting away with harmful activities all the time. Since congress has passed such laws, there is nothing to stop corporations from doing it.

Another law that has no basis in reality in the copyright law. This law originally said its intent was

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

That sounds fine. But who holds copyrights today, authors and inventors? No. Corporations do. And what is the limited time that copyrights last these days? We're not exactly sure, because Congress keeps extending that time. Right now, the time is the author's life plus 70 years. There is no conceivable way this copyright law secures for limited Times "to Authors and Inventors" the right to profit from their creations. The law benefits corporations, not authors or inventors. Lobbyists have convinced Congress to extend the length of copyrights to over 120 years when the copyright is held by corporations.  Since the basis of this law makes no logical sense, it should be terminated by the proposed anti-stupidity amendment. In this case, Congress does not just ignore the stupidity of the law, it actually makes things worse by voting, again and again, to extend the terms of copyrights.

It might be easier to get a congress that can tell when laws are stupid. But I'm not holding my breath. We need to find a way to pass laws that benefit all the people, not just a select few. Democracy is supposed to work that way. I'm having a hard time believing that right now.

No, Obama is not the worst president ever: The Big Lie and Republican politics

The big lie of the Republican party is that Obama is the worst president ever. Anyone with any critical faculties left recognizes this would be difficult to prove, even if true. Yet Republicans keep repeating the lie over and over again, never giving any facts to back it up. Or, if they do give facts, they turn out to be minor failures to fulfill campaign promises, such as when he said that if you like your health insurance you can keep it. I'm sorry, but no politician has ever kept all his or her campaign promises. 

Obama has kept most of his promises, and most of the ones he hasn't kept have been blocked by the Republicans. But Republicans never admit their complicity. They practice the propaganda tactic known as the "Big Lie", which maintains that people will believe a big lie if they hear it over and over again.

There are other, similar tactics used by Republicans to get people to follow them mindlessly.

Wikipedia discusses these practices in its article on "Big lie".

The primary rules are: 

• never allow the public to cool off 

Keep on cooking up new scandals, or repeating the old ones. Don't let the public forget "Benghazi", even if they don't know what it is. Keep forming new committees and hold hearings to rehash the old accusations.

• never admit a fault or wrong;

Never admit that Congress could have passed an immigration bill if the Republicans had joined with the Democrats. The Senate passed a bill, but the Republicans refused to bring it to a vote. It would have passed had they done so. Yet the Republicans claim it was the Democrats, specifically President Obama, who failed to pass an immigration bill. They also claim that it is Senator Harry Reid who is blocking legislation in the Senate, even though it is the Republican House of Representatives that has been blocking every Obama initiative for 4 years. 

• never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;

Be sure you mention that Obama is the worst president ever as much as possible. Use name-calling whenever you can. Call the Democrats "socialists", or "race-baiters". Call Obama "weak" and say that he needs to "grow a pair". Recall that Obama's stimulus package didn't work, though most of the spending items in it had been included in Republican bills, including G.W. Bush's stimulus package of 2008. Recall that Obama refused to compromise on the Affordable Care Act, although its basic idea was a Republican idea proposed by the Heritage Foundation and passed in Massachusetts by a Republican governor, Mitt Romney.

• never leave room for alternatives;

There were several issues, like immigration and paycheck fairness, where compromise might have produced agreement. But Republicans would rather have government fail, even though the failure causes hardship for everyone except the very wealthy.

• never accept blame;

For example, when Romney was asked about the firing of workers by Bane Capital, he said it happened after he left the company so he had no responsibility for it. When it was discovered that he employed undocumented workers as gardeners, he denied knowing about the problem. He said he fired them as soon as he found out they were undocumented, but in fact he fired them when the press found out about them.

• concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong;

Republicans pretend that Obama can be blamed for everything, even things that took place during the Bush administration.

• people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one;

I'm not so sure this is true. It would appear the Republicans will believe any lie as long as it favors Republicans. Another definition of the Big Lie may be closer to the truth: During WWII it was claimed that 

The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.

That sounds more like the way the Republicans practice the Big Lie than the original definition. 

• and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Yep. That's what Fox News and Republican talking points are for. 

Cantor's Defeat: Chalk one up for the 99 percent

Paul Krugman writes that Eric Cantor's defeat in his Republican primary signals the end of the Republican party as we know it. For decades, the Republican party has been selling itself to voters as far more radical than it actually is.

For example, Republicans preached against abortion rights since before Goldwater ran for president in 1964. The Moral Majority, founded in the 1970s, supported Republican presidential candidates like Reagan, Bush, and Dole. The Moral Majority campaigned for a ban on abortions and prayers in the schools.

Republican candidates gave lip service to social issues but ignored them once they got into office. This was an entirely practical thing to do, since there was little chance of convincing less fervent believers that these programs should be imposed on the entire population. Instead, the Republicans took the Moral Majority votes and used them to promote their own agenda, which included wars around the world to protect their financial interests and weakened regulations to protect their business interests.

The Tea Party first came to national prominence with the 2008 Presidential election. There was no clear idea of what the Tea Party stood for, primarily because Republican traditionalists quickly tried to grab its leadership. These included the corporatists, people who wanted to give more power to the corporations, and the libertarians, people who wanted to give more power to individuals as opposed to the state.

These two forces are diametrically opposed to each other. corporatists insist on corporations having more power over individuals, through laws that discourage lawsuits against them and Supreme Court rulings that give corporations more influence over elections than individuals. Libertarians want to preserve individual rights, not just from government control, but from corporate domination as well.

These two disparate factions continued to pour money into Republican coffers during 2010 and 2012, resulting in victories for Republicans in congress and in statehouses. But rank and file Republicans saw the results of these elections as reaffirming their worst fears, namely that the Republican establishment in Washington was continuing to buy their votes with empty promises.

Cantor was one of those politicians who pretended to be populist while getting cozy with financial interests. In the area of home mortgages and financial shenanigans, the tea party and the liberal left agree. They hate the one percent. People in rural Virginia, naturally conservative but very definitely not of the one percent, see Cantor as the enemy. That's the main reason he lost his primary.

Chalk up a victory for the 99 percent of us who find ourselves struggling in difficult economic times.

Our Decrepit Constitution: When Congress Goes Wrong

In many ways, the US Constitution is like an operating system that tells a computer how to run. The Constitution tells the government how to run. Its task is far more important than an operating system, like Microsoft Windows. If Windows fails, it usually causes no more than a minor inconvenience. When the Constitution fails, it affects people's lives dramatically.

The Framers, the colonial Americans who wrote the Constitution, had some experience writing similar documents. Both James Madison and George Mason helped write the Virginia Constitution of 1776. The Framers understood how Constitutional law worked. They did not understand how Constitutional law could fail.

Software operating systems make the computer work. The authors frequently do not consider what will make the computer fail or how to escape from a failure. The Constitution shows the same kind of blindness. The Framers believed the government would work. They did not see how it could fail. They all belonged to a class of well-off gentry. Many in the South held large estates that were run by slaves. The northern framers were professionals—doctors and lawyers and businessmen. These men tended to think alike. All alike believed that they were the elite who should govern the new country.

The framers wrote a document that is particularly ill-suited for our country today. We have numerous contending classes. Each class believes it has a right to participate in government. In the past few years, the former ruling class has been pushed aside and its members are having difficulty accepting their new role. In 2012, Mitt Romney, whose father ran for president in 1960, believed that he would win because he belonged to the governing class.

The governing class, composed primarily of white males, has grown accustomed to receiving preference, in political office, in jobs, in salary, and in a whole host of other ways. This class is recipient of many government programs, including the farm subsidies that go almost exclusively to them. The class never received food stamp benefits, which accounts for its support for the former and hostility to the latter.

The old ruling class viewed the election of Barack Obama as symbolic of their loss of prestige and power. They regarded the presidency as rightfully theirs. The class considered anything that was not traditional—such as African-Americans owning homes and receiving medical care—as a threat to them. For these people, conservatism means preserving their status and prerogatives.

For the ruling class, conservatism also means moral prerogatives. They vehemently oppose legalization of abortion, legalization of marijuana, and gay rights. They see the laws governing these things as the end products of moral struggles that they fought hard to win. They are appalled to watch their America fade away.

But the old America is fading away, and faster than anyone predicted a few years ago. The Republican party has become the party of old, white men. The younger generation today grew up in an integrated society. The young are much more in touch with what is going on throughout the world, and the world is coming to our doorstep.

Past waves of immigrants took at least a generation before they integrated into white American society. The society of those days forced them to conform through discrimination and a tightly knit ruling class. The ruling class is faltering. The new Americans are demanding their rights even before they become citizens. Groups of Americans who never participated in politics before are learning that their votes make a difference.

What we are watching is the last flare-up of a dying system and the birth of a new one. Birth pangs are always painful. Let us hope most of our troubles are behind us.

Genocide in Syria: The world must put an end to it

The Syrian civil war is a particularly horrendous one. It is comparable to the Rwandan civil war of 1990-1994 in which over 500,000 people were killed by the government and another two million forced to flee the country. Both wars were started by rogue governments who used propaganda to incite violence against minority populations. There have been over 100,000 deaths in the Syrian civil war, and perhaps a million refugees, who have fled to Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.

The war in Rwanda was called a genocide. The war in Syria is now approaching the same level of violence. The UN failed to stop the former. Right now, the UN is standing by and watching the slaughter of Syrians by the thousands.

The civil war is between the Government of Syria and its opposition, which calls itself the Free Syrian Army. The primary supporters of Assad are the Allawites, a Shi'ite sect that comprises only 10 percent of the population. Assad receives weapons and money from Russia and Iran, whose rulers are also Shi'a, and military assistance from Hezbollah. Hezbollah, founded by Iran, are a state within a state in Lebanon, with perhaps 200,000 supporters and a battle-hardened militia.

The Free Syrian Army and its allies forces are primarily Sunni. They receive weapons primarily from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Syrian Government forces, supporters of Bashar Al-Assad, have used all the weapons of a modern military state in their campaign to remain in power. The US has condemned them for their use of chemical weapons, including the nerve-gas rison, but most of the deaths have been caused by conventional means, especially artillery shells and cluster bombs. Government forces are targeting civilians in hope of convincing them to stop sheltering the rebels.

The grotesque spectacle of a government killing its own people to stay in power has aroused the anger of much of the world. Russia and Iran are unmoved, however. The United Nations is powerless to provide military aid because Russia holds a permanent seat on the Security Council. At news that Assad may have used sarin gas against his people, Vladimir Putin said it didn't make any sense that Assad should use sarin against the rebels in a war that he was winning. Therefore, Putin theorized, the attacks, though real, were actually provocations intended to draw other nations into the war on the side of the rebels.

Putin's logic is faulty. Chemical weapons will not help Assad win the war, but that is not Assad's problem. He must win the peace. Since Assad's power base is the Allawite minority, just 10 percent of Syria's population, he needs to find some way to exercise authority over the Syrians after the war is over. Assad has chosen terror, as his father and Saddam Hussein did before him. Saddam used chemical weapons successfully to win his war with Iran and terrorize his own countrymen.

President Obama announced that the use of chemical weapons is a red line that Assad must not be allowed to cross with impunity. The US president says that chemical weapons pose a threat to the entire world, and that other countries will use them unless the US takes military action to “punish” Assad. Obama cannot seriously believe that the US can make a surgical strike and withdraw from the engagement. His military commanders must have told him that would be impossible. Assad has been telling his countrymen that Obama delayed his plans because he feared the reprisals that Assad would make.

Obama asked friday, "What's the purpose of the international system that we've built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world's people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?" In this sentence, as in others, Obama has spoken not just for himself and the American people, but for peace-loving people everywhere.

Obama never actually intended to do anything without Congressional approval. Right on cue, over 100 house members signed a letter to the president stating that engaging the military without prior congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers delineated in the Constitution. Twenty-one Democrats joined Republicans in signing the letter. But Obama knew that House Republicans would oppose any action he might take. Many of them were waiting to see what would happen before making any statement. By delaying any action, Obama forces his political opponents to take a position on the record. He also emphasizes the fact that they are all on vacation and unwilling to return, while he is on the job in Washington.

Obama has given the English parliament what it asked for when it defeated Prime Minister Cameron's motion to support a strike against Syria. The English opposition insisted that Cameron should wait for the UN inspectors to file their report on the evidence of chemical weapons. Now they have their wish.

Finally, Obama has put pressure on the United Nations. It is the UN that proposed and ratified the international system that is supposed to safeguard human rights. But the UN system for enforcing its treaties depends on unanimous consent and is therefore seldom invoked. Outside observers have declared that the US cannot interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. The UN has declared that chemical weapons must not be used in warfare. Now would be a good time for the UN to prove that it, not the US, enforces international law. Genocide, not just chemical weapons use, is a crime against humanity.