Author Archives: cassandra_m

About cassandra_m

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Senator Tom Carper Wants to Hear from You on Immigration

This info comes from an email that I received from Senator Carper’s office — I imagine lots of you got this too. I’m posting this to encourage you to contact the Senator’s office and make sure he knows your thoughts on this.

As you may know, last week the U.S. Senate began debating the critically important issue of comprehensive immigration reform. On Wednesday, I took to the Senate floor to let my colleagues know what I have been working on and what I believe a successful bill will accomplish. As the Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I’ve been deeply invested in ensuring that our nation’s borders are secure. Recently, I have been working with my colleagues and other stakeholders to build on the important advances that we have made to strengthen our border over the past 10 years.

Below, I have included a few clips from my speech that outline my views on the upcoming debate. If you’d like, you can also watch my entire speech or read a complete transcript of it.


(Excerpts of the speech approx. 5 and a half minutes)

To stay up-to-date on the ongoing immigration debate underway in the Senate, I recently launched a new page on my website that will provide much-needed facts and information on provisions in the immigration bill, as well as what I’m doing to help make this critical reform effort happen. You can visit the website at:
carper.senate.gov/immigration

There’s more about sharing good ideas on his Facebook and Twitter page, but you get the gist.

So here’s the thing — we already spend $18B per year on Border Security, which is more than we spend on all other Fed law enforcement combined. Carper is advocating adding another $6.5B (a 30% increase!) and 3500 more agents and other goodies. There is nothing here about how this gets paid for. And yes, this is a retracing of old ground, if Senator Carper wants to cut back on Social Security, he owes the people who will be hit by those cuts an explanation of how he can find the money for this. Border security is important, but there is also a point at which you will get only incremental improvements on a border that is as rugged as the southern one is. Meanwhile, ports of entry are suffering — at popular points, it can take hours to get through US Customs. And really — once you have up about as much physical barrier you can put up, the next big problem is the Visa system. This pouring of money into Border Security is beginning to smell alot like the War on Drugs — we do it not because we stop the drugs, but because there are special interests who need the money we spend on it. And if we can figure out how to spend money on the Border and on the War on Drugs, we can certainly find the money to make sure Social Security is whole.

Conflict of Interest by 3 Wilmington City Council Members

Or at least the appearance of a conflict of interest by 3 Councilmembers who work for or have recently worked for Connections CSP in Wilmington. Sunday’s NJ has a great article by Andrew Staub and Beth Miller detailing the concerns that quite a few people have had over what appeared to be conflicts of interests between the roles of City Council members and Connections employees or consultants for Hanifa Shabazz, Mike Brown and Darius Brown.

Shabazz is one of three current council members to work for Connections while holding office, and a review of council actions shows she joined Michael A. Brown Sr. and Darius Brown in consistently acting in ways favorable to Connections despite their conflicts of interest.

Each has voted to send public grant funding to Connections. Michael Brown suggested legislation that would shield the nonprofit from nuisance violations. All three drew the ire of another council member who suggested ethics complaints be filed against them.

And none of them have declared their employment relationship as a potential issue:

All of them filed notarized documents – called the “affidavit of absence of conflict of interest” – with the city this year indicating they had “no conflict of interest, or appearance of a conflict of interest” that could affect their service.

Under the city’s Code of Conduct, council members and other officials can file either the affidavits or a financial disclosure report, which lists sources of income exceeding $1,000 in a calendar year. The affidavits included no employment information, simply a declaration that no conflict existed.

Of course, the City’s Ethics Commission is mostly non-functional, so there is no one watching the henhouse here. The article details some of the issues — Councilman Brown sending what appeared to be intimidating letters to property owners who complained about Connections, Councilwoman Shabazz actively defending them on the City Council floor, both Shabazz and D. Brown voting for bills that would provide grants (very small ones, admittedly) to Connections. And I have some personal experience with this too — in a meeting with a number of WCC stakeholders discussing issues around Connections with the Mayor, Councilwoman Shabazz (who was not invited, BTW, specifically because of her CoI issues) did nothing but defend her employer. Mayor Williams pointedly asked her who she was representing that day — her WCC and downtown constituents or Connections. She said she was representing her constituents, but at no time did she ever speak for anyone but her employer. This wasn’t the only time this happened, either. Mike Brown sending letters to complainers is beyond the pale too — there are plenty of folks who could use stern letters from City Council Members (slum landlords, anyone?), but expecting Council letterhead to get people to back off is especially tone deaf. If you are squandering your credibility with unresolved CoI issues, why would anyone think you are serious?

As I hear it from a few of the City’s non-profits, being approached by City Council people who need employment is somewhat routine. It is a tough request for most of the City’s non-profits who have nowhere near the budget that Connections has. Which isn’t to say that these three haven’t done real work for Connections, because I have no way to know that. But cash-strapped non-profits seem to be viewed as easy employment, with Council people probably not bringing anywhere near the juice that they are selling.

Does it matter? I’m glad that this got some sunshine, because that is certainly not usual. What will happen from here? Who knows. I do hope that the Administration revives the Ethics Commission and lets them get to work. It would help the perception of City governance immeasurably if we took CoI and Ethics issues seriously.

John Carney Joins the SNAP Challenge Protest — UPDATED

UPDATE — courtesy of Rep. Carney’s office: The Congressman started his SNAP challenge yesterday, meaning I jumped the gun here relaying info from other sources. In any event, Representative Carney started reporting on his progress with the SNAP challenge via his Facebook page. According to that page, he’ll be meeting with various people in Delaware and DC to highlight the challenges of people who live on the SNAP program.
**********************************************************************

The House of Representatives is getting to vote on its version of the Farm Bill — this GOP led version cuts 2.5% of SNAP funds. It is estimated that this might throw about 2.5M Americans who need food help off of the program. As a protest — 26 Democrats in the House have started a week-long SNAP Challenge (some reports have some of their staff joining them), where they pledge to live on the $4.50/day subsidy SNAP provides. Our representative, John Carney, is on the list of Democrats doing this challenge.

Representative Carney’s own webpage (or his Facebook page) doesn’t have anything about his commitment to this yet, and we’ll link that when it happens. In the meantime, I commend Representative Carney for taking up this challenge, and really, each legislator should have to live only on the “safety net” for a month before they are allowed to vote on a thing. Living on $4.50 a day is hard, especially if you are trying to maintain some semblance of a healthy diet. But I wonder about the effectiveness of this as a protest. No doubt there will be much attention to their efforts over the week (complete with Twitter hashtag — #SNAPChallenge), which is a great way to inform people, but will this change any GOP minds? I read this comment (or a variant thereof) someplace, recently:

It takes a coward to ignore the poor, it takes a monster to steal their food, it takes a Republican to ridicule their misery.

Fewer people would need food assistance if they could work at jobs that paid them enough to put food on the table. Because it isn’t just people who don’t work who get food assistance — it is people making minimum wage for few hours at the Walmarts of the world, too. Helping to push back on the so-called jobs that don’t even allow these workers to stop accessing these benefits would help too. Which isn’t to denigrate Rep. Carney’s challenge here — this is plenty tough — I just wish it was a better protest.

Monday Open Thread [6.17.13]

Tales of Security Theater — the NFL has posted new security rules for attending their games starting next season. These new rules include size limits on purses, a list of prohibited items and a requirement for carrying what you do bring into the stadium in a clear bag. You get a bigger bag if you buy the special ones (with or without branding!) from the NFL or you an use a gallon-size ziplock bag. You can still have anything you want in the parking lot. The one that slays me is the prohibition against bringing in seat cushions. I don’t think that this is about security — I think that it is about making it quicker to get people in the gates. But I’m definitely rolling my eyes at this BS.

Tales of the War on Workers — A McDonald’s in Dallas Township, PA is paying its workers with Chase Debit Cards:

According to the complaint filed, the JP Morgan Chase payroll card lists several fees, including a $1.50 charge for ATM withdrawals, $5 for over-the-counter cash withdrawals, $1 per balance inquiry, 75 cents per online bill payment and $15 for lost/stolen card.

Gunshannon said she had taken her concerns to the main office of the franchise holder – Albert and Carol Mueller, trading as McDonald’s, in Clarks Summit. She was told that the card was the only option, she said.

The woman in the article is suing, alleging that the deduction of all of the fees means that she is now making less than minimum wage. This doesn’t say that the owners are getting a cut or kickback for these fees, but I’d bet that they do. The lawyer handling the law suit notes that PA law says that employees can choose to get their wages via check or cash. I hope that all of the McDonald’s employees join this suit and put this one out of business. This is pretty vile.

Tales of Star Trek! — I saw this over the weekend finally. It was fine, but not as good as the last JJ Abrams venture. Star Trek as a shoot-’em-up isn’t exactly this franchise’s strong suit. Still, it was Star Trek and it was new. In honor of that, take a look at this hilarious video, Zachary Quinto vs. Leonard Nimoy: “The Challenge”:

What interests you today?

Late Night Video — Labor Pains for Dads

This is a great Father’s Day Video (even though it was made for Mother’s Day) — where two Dads take the challenge of experiencing simulated labor pains. A doctor rigged up electrodes that she strapped to the abdomens of these guys and then started the simulation. Love that their wives stroll into this thing, drinking coffee and being utterly nonchalant. Then the wives drop right into birth coaching mode. Hilarious! (Approx. 3 and a half minutes long.) More boys need to try this out.

Hiding Behind Lawyers to Hide Coastal Zone Impacts Isn’t A Good Management Strategy

It just makes people think that you are trying to hide something, which, apparently, the Markell Administration is doing. Today’s NJ brings us another story of the ongoing issues surrounding the PBF refinery at Delaware City. In the main, it looks like the refinery is expanding its operations outside of its permitted area (staging and unloading rail cars outside of the boundary of the plant; a planned barge shipment of oil over to a NJ plant), and taxpayers aren’t being allowed to see whether or not there are violations of the state’s Coastal Zonal Act here.

O’Mara ruled that the loading operation was part of a pre-existing activity covered by Coastal Zone grandfathering. But environmental groups argued that it will be used to pass-through crude oil to another refinery from a rail yard built outside the boundary of Delaware City’s allowable activities.

O’Mara also said that he viewed the sprawling rail-unloading center as a transportation facility, similar to a plant road, that would not require Coastal Zone approval.

Markell and other state officials refused to release Department of Justice correspondence on the issue, arguing they didn’t have to make it public because they considered it to be confidential correspondence between attorney and client.

Both of these rulings rather stretch the imagination. But more importantly, it makes the Markell Administration look like they will do whatever it takes to make sure that PBF can do whatever it likes on that site — no matter the pollution risk. It would be interesting to ask just what PBF could do at this site that they would say NO to. Hiding behind attorney-client privilege sends the signal that thy do have something that they do not want taxpayers to see. If anyone remembers the battle against the LNG plant in NJ, you’ll recall that there were no attorney-client privilege there. They talked to anyone who would listen about the justification in defending their case in terms of the CZA as well as in terms of defending longstanding boundaries. Now, they’re clearly in a defensive crouch, and while crouching they seem to be working at weakening exactly what the CZA is meant to protect.

It would be great to get a look at the warning prepared by the State’s Attorneys of CZ violations that the NJ claims exists. Because even if the state is going to work at undermining the regulatory box that the CZA creates to try to preserve coastal resources, that document could certainly be a starting point to get PBF to take certain actions to mitigate against those potential impacts. The State working to shield PBF (the way it looks like they are doing now — with little transparency) invites Delaware taxpayers to wonder what would happen in the event that there would be a spill or other pollution damage there. Arkansas and the Fed DOJ are suing EXXONMobil for cleanup costs and recovery of other penalties in that spill. The recent bill that eliminates the cap on spill liability here makes sure that it is possible to recover court awarded damages as a result of any spill. But the best oil spill (or pollution damage) is the one that didn’t happen, and my experience is that states that are looking to protect jobs (and profits) aren’t especially good incentivizing dirty industries to avoid this kind of pollution at any cost.

The Markell Administration at one time opposed the deepening of the Delaware River navigation channel on environmental grounds and even joined a lawsuit to oppose it. They abandoned the lawsuit later and then embraced the project on economic grounds — but what the PBF plant is doing TODAY and plans to do in shipping crude from their facility to NJ is massively dirtier and massively more environmentally risky than any additional dredging of the main channel ever would be. And yet the Markell Administration is working at enabling some of the dirtiest and riskiest work that could ever be done on our coastlines.

I don’t object to the refinery or its operation — I just think that they should be required to do their work as cleanly as possible and as safely as possible. That means requiring certain controls on that operation and it means letting the public see what is going on between DNREC and the operators of this plant.

Saturday Open Thread [6.8.13]

Yesterday, President Obama strongly defended the NSA’s Big Surveillance program:

Obama, who ran for president in 2008 on a platform of reversing some of the Bush administration’s encroachments on civil liberties, instead defended the programs. ”I came in with a healthy skepticism about these program,” Obama said, noting his administration has strengthened some program safeguards. “My assessment and my team’s assessment is that they help us prevent terrorist attacks.”

Program safeguards. Anyone know what those are? And, of course, if you just tell people that terrorist attacks are prevented, you’re going to get a Pretty Big Pass. But this is the thing that set my teeth on edge every time I heard it yesterday:

“If people don’t trust the executive branch, and also congress and the judicial branch, then we’re going to have some problems here,” Obama admitted.

There is something very Alice in Wonderland about this statement. Because this is a government that has one branch still trying to defund ACORN — even though they no longer exist. This is a government that has one branch taking more votes on abortion and Obamacare than they are on resolving the unemployment crisis. This is a government who — at all levels — works harder at making sure that American business is better taken care of than American citizens. This is a government who can’t even come to terms on a rational budget — which is basically why they even exist — yet they spend a half of a normal work year not getting that done. We have a branch of government who is ruling that corporations have the rights of human American citizens. And yet, as completely dysfunctional as portions of this government works hard at being — because dysfunction is the point — we have the otherwise very smart President of the United States making a straight-faced case for trust in these institutions to provide oversight to a giant Big Data program that I’d bet ALOT of money, the majority of them don’t understand.

In other news, the House voted to start deporting the DREAMERS, in opposition to the President’s policy. One more outreach fail for the rebranding GOP — and given that Marco Rubio is now actively trying to kill immigration reform, I’ve yet to hear anything from activists pushing back. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t — but those reports aren’t in the news I see yet. Hope someone has batter info than I do on this.

And Rmoney is back and he is doing a public (and publicly embarassing) post mortem on his failed campaign. He thinks that Hurricane Sandy helped Obama at the end of the campaign. (Noting, of course, that if a natural disaster had somehow helped Rmoney get into the White House, we would be treated to a neverending claim that God wanted Romney to win, right?) And a “leading Democrat” thought Romney would win a week ahead of the election. I’m guessing that this was Joe Lieberman. Who else would be relying on Rasmussen to judge this election?

Anyway, I’m off to Baltimore for the day. What interests you today?

Friday Open Thread [6.7.13]

Did you know it is OK to shoot escorts who won’t have sex with you in Texas? A Texas jury acquitted a man who shot an escort he contacted via Craig’s List. She’s dead, but:

During closing arguments Tuesday, Gilbert’s defense team conceded the shooting did occur but said the intent wasn’t to kill. Gilbert’s actions were justified, they argued, because he was trying to retrieve stolen property: the $150 he paid Frago. It became theft when she refused to have sex with him or give the money back, they said.

Time to give Texas back to Mexico, I’m thinking.

Yesterday, the Senate defeated BOTH the Dem and the GOP bills to fix the student loan interest rate problem. The first thing I want to know is what happened to Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to tie student loan interest rates to the rates paid by banks to borrow from the Treasury? I guess that Democrats think that this gives them a card in the campaign against the Republicans, but seriously people — these kids are facing REAL bills here.

Why Young People Don’t Vote Republican

In January, the CNRC asked identified “winnable” young people who had voted for Obama, the words that came to mind when hearing the words “Republican Party.” Four of the most common responses: “closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.” Democrats, by contrast, were “tolerant,” “diverse,” and “open-minded.”
Young voters don’t consider elected officials to be the Republican Party’s leaders. A focus group in Ohio selected Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Bill O’Reilly as the most iconic figures they identify with the GOP. By contrast, they identified Barack Obama, the Clintons, and Nancy Pelosi, along with other prominent current and former elected officials.
The report accused Republicans of not having any “substance behind” a vague message of economic growth. “Economic growth and opportunity policies cannot just be about tax cuts and spending cuts,” the report says. It needs to be backed up with specific policy prescriptions on health care, immigration, and education.

This was a brutal report — largely pointing out how incredibly narrow the GOP appeal is. And if they continue on, the appeal will be smaller — the CW of voting is that you tend to vote over your lifetime the way you voted when you started out. It seems pretty clear — especially as Marco Rubio now seems intent on killing the immigration bill he once championed — that they aren’t going to learn a thing from this.

What interests you this rainy Friday?

Thursday Open Thread [6.6.13]

The news of the day seems to be the blockbuster story reported by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian of a court order that authorized the NSA to collect a good deal of phone call information from Verizon customers:

The order directs Verizon to “continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this order”. It specifies that the records to be produced include “session identifying information”, such as “originating and terminating number”, the duration of each call, telephone calling card numbers, trunk identifiers, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, and “comprehensive communication routing information”.

The information is classed as “metadata”, or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access. The document also specifies that such “metadata” is not limited to the aforementioned items. A 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order.

While the order itself does not include either the contents of messages or the personal information of the subscriber of any particular cell number, its collection would allow the NSA to build easily a comprehensive picture of who any individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively.

Over the course of the morning, we’ve been treated to a number of Senators who have been asked about this largely noting that this surveillance is NORMAL. TPM has both Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss weighing in — here’s Senator Feinstein:

“It is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress,” Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told reporters at an impromptu news conference in the Capitol. “This is just meta data. There is no content involved. In other words, no content of a communication. … The records can only be accessed under heightened standards.” […]

“It’s called protecting America.”

Chambliss:

Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) backed up Feinstein, saying, “This is nothing particularly new. This has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the FISA authority, and every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this.”

Then there’s Harry Reid:

“Right now I think everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn’t anything that’s brand new — it’s been going on for 7 years,” Reid said.

Reid said the program authorizing collection of meta-data on phone records has helped stop terrorist acts. He said senators will continue to review the law in that regard and work to make it better.

The White House has given a defense of the program, without committing to reasons. (And seriously, The Guardian has a really good package of articles on this.)

Then we have the author of the Patriot Act — Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Koch Bros.)– who makes this comment (unironically, I presume):

The Bureau’s broad application for phone records was made under the so-called business records provision of the Act. I do not believe the broadly drafted FISA order is consistent with the requirements of the Patriot Act. Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.”

Translation — Yes I know I left all of those loaded guns on the table, but I told those kids to play with the waterguns on the *other* table! Sheesh.

Sure, there are people out there trying to attack us. But I STILL don’t believe handing the government a ton of detail about my phone usage can possibly be a cost effective or especially efficient way to stop these plots. I DO think that handing over this data wholesale lets the NSA (and other law enforcement) off of the hook from specifically targeting the so-called Bad Guys. I don’t care that this has been going on for 7 years, the Patriot Act continues to enable the government to have way more access to our lives in a way we have no recourse to either stop or inspect. (There’s a Terry Gilliam movie in there somewhere.) The thing that makes me mad about the Patriot Act is that it presumes that we are ALL terrorists until the Government can clear us. And if they are routinely collecting up this kind of data, it seems fair to assume that you never get cleared. That eagle on my passport is supposed to mean something and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean Terrorist Until Proven Otherwise.

And how heartbreaking is it that the majority of our legislators seem to think that this is AOK? Except maybe Bernie Sanders. And perhaps this numbnuts GOP rep who seems to be interested in this to find out if the NSA is spying on Congress.

So anyway, I’m sorry this thread was posted late. What interests you today?

Monday Open Thread [6.3.13]

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way — the Holy Trinity Greek Festival starts tomorrow at 11AM. If you are in town (even if not, my office orders carry out once during this week), you can FAX in an order and pick it up curbside for a killer lunch. And there is even a shuttle bus to bring cubicle dwellers from downtown to the festival for lunch.

It looks like today is the day the Supreme Court starts clearing its desk for the summer — it upheld today a Maryland law that lets the police collect your DNA if you’ve been arrested, with no warrant. It was a 5-4 decision, but the dissenters this time were Scalia, Ginsberg, Kagen, Sotomayor. What is interesting to me is that a conservative court isn’t just privileging corporations with the rights if individuals, but it also doesn’t see much government overreach that they want to curtail, either. Say hello to the national DNA database, people.

Last, but certainly not least — Senator Frank Lautenberg from NJ died today. He was the oldest member of the Senate and the last to have served in WWII. He may have made his greatest mark in helping to improve highway safety regulations. RIP, Senator Lautenberg. Gov. Christie gets to pick a placeholder until there is a special election to replace Lautenberg.

What interests you today?

Sunday Open Thread [6.2.13]

This Sunday’s NYT provides a must-read for those of us interested in resolving the long-term problem of reducing health care costs. This piece take a look at how colonoscopies are performed and charged to demonstrate the scope of the problem. And basically the scope of the problem comes down to Profit incentives, rather than health incentives. It also shows how hard it is to even get cost data for procedures — even by a physician doing the procedure. Certainly our health care system pays dearly for heroic end-of-life care, but it certainly looks as though basic procedures done by our physicians in their offices or their physician centers are ripe for cost review.

Google has to hand over requested information to he FBI. Good for them for at least pushing back:

In the latest case, [Judge] Illston sided with the FBI after Google contested the constitutionality and necessity of the letters but again put her ruling on hold until the 9th Circuit rules. After receiving sworn statements from two top-ranking FBI officials, Illston said she was satisfied that 17 of the 19 letters were issued properly. She wanted more information on two other letters.

It was unclear from the judge’s ruling what type of information the government sought to obtain with the letters. It was also unclear who the government was targeting.

If the news outlets I listen to all day are any indication, there is certainly no mass media freakout over this completely opaque intrusion to someone’s online data. Wonder why that is?

I was a liberal mole at Fox News — From Salon and is excerpted from “An Atheist in the FOXhole: A Liberal’s Eight-Year Odyssey Inside the Heart of the Right-Wing Media”:

Case in point: In summer 2011, a story surfaced on the right-wing blogs that an auditor for the Justice Department had found out some DOJ employees attending a meeting at the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC, had been served refreshments, including muffins for which the hotel charged sixteen dollars apiece.

It’s no surprise that the story spread like wildfire on the blogs and was soon picked up by cable news. It was a great story for the right, reinforcing preexisting notions of government excess and willingness to waste taxpayer money, the incompetence of the Obama Justice Department, etc.

One problem: It wasn’t true.

A few days after the story broke, a representative from Hilton Hotels came out and said that the auditor had misread the bill, that the sixteen dollars referred to a full breakfast—coffee, tea, fruit, muffins, plus tax and gratuity. Not a bargain by any means, but also not too bad for a hotel continental breakfast.

A producer named Steiner Rudolf was line producing — assembling the stories in the rundown and making sure they all timed out correctly — on the day that Bill wanted to include the muffin anecdote in a Talking Points Memo. “Actually, Bill, the muffin thing got debunked,” Steiner started to tell him. “A guy from the hotel came out and said —”

“I don’t give a shit what the guy said,” Bill interrupted, suddenly angry. “It’s the same old thing. They come out and deny it, but the story is there. We know it’s true. We have the proof.”

HAHAHAHAHAHA! How conservative “news” works.

What interests you today?

Saturday Open Thread [6.1.13]

Today’s Open Thread is in the form of a Chart of the Day. Chart of the War on Drugs era, most probably. But this chart comes from a 2005 study, taking a look at trends in incarceration of drug offenders. It was cited over at Wonkblog this week, noting some of the small changes in the War on Drugs:

The Failure of the War on Drugs

Lots of people are going to jail or prison with drug offenses, yet the price of heroin and cocaine continues to drop. Meaning that the War on Drugs isn’t making even a dent in the supply of (or demand for) illegal drugs.

What will it take for policy makers to come to grips with this failure?

And what interests you today?