By Stephen Webster, Raw Story
via alternet.org

Far from being a war between hippies and police, the fight to legalize marijuana in California centers on whether decriminalizing and taxing cannabis can help fill the state’s fiscal hole.

Using the drug for medical purposes has been legal for 14 years in the western state. But a new initiative that will appear on the ballot in November elections is seeking to legalize recreational marijuana use.

The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 would let cities and counties adopt ordinances authorizing the cultivation, transportation and sale of marijuana, and tax its sale just like it taxes alcohol and cigarettes. (more…)

side note: Another great article from Matt Taibbi…read this over lunch, and even though I knew some this stuff, it was filled with tidbits that blew my mind. This has been my biggest issue with President Obama. He either doesn’t understand economics, which I don’t think is correct…..or, after a few years in DC…he has fallen prey to the establishment. I highly recommend you head over to Rolling Stone’s site and check out the article there…has some links and people have already posted comments. Plus…it’s a really cool site with tons of content. We need President Obama to wake up and realize that he needs to deal with the criminals who are currently implementing their economic ideology…which is to continue to fund the rich and fuck the middle class and poor.

by MATT TAIBBI
RollingStone.com

Watch Matt Taibbi discuss “The Big Sellout” in a video on his blog, Taibblog.

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Then he got elected.

What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Whatever the president’s real motives are, the extensive series of loophole-rich financial “reforms” that the Democrats are currently pushing may ultimately do more harm than good. In fact, some parts of the new reforms border on insanity, threatening to vastly amplify Wall Street’s political power by institutionalizing the taxpayer’s role as a welfare provider for the financial-services industry. At one point in the debate, Obama’s top economic advisers demanded the power to award future bailouts without even going to Congress for approval — and without providing taxpayers a single dime in equity on the deals. (more…)

side note: Thanks Bob and Matt for sending me this article. It’s good to know that people are following this. We need to make sure that this is actually enforced. If you remember, AG Eric Holder announced after he was appointed that he was going to instruct people not to raid anyone if they are following State laws…but then the next day there was a raid. Hopefully this isn’t political bullshit…but actually moving forward and enforcing these new guidelines.

By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer Devlin Barrett
Yahoo News

WASHINGTON – Federal drug agents won’t pursue pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers in states that allow medical marijuana, under new legal guidelines to be issued Monday by the Obama administration.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law.

The guidelines to be issued by the department do, however, make it clear that agents will go after people whose marijuana distribution goes beyond what is permitted under state law or use medical marijuana as a cover for other crimes, the officials said.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

Fourteen states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. (more…)

side note: It’s great to see someone talk about one of the biggest issues in our country today…..our declining educational system. There is an assault on everything that is government funded in this country….unless it’s war related, then it’s ok…..oh ya, unless it absitence-education, then it’s ok….or trying to get government to fund that bullshit creationist belief system in school…then that’s ok……or spending 100’s of billions in tax cuts for the richest 1% in our country…then it’s ok…..or spending trillions on corporate bailouts, and then not making the people who caused this mess accountable…..actually, a lot of those pieces-of-shit financial fucks saw their savings accounts spike…………….You see, this country has been assaulted by right-wing nutjobs that think they should be the only ones with their hands out for government assistance and it has slowly whittled away our once great education system into something that would be laughed at by past generations. It’s time to reinvest in our future…..we need a lot of new bodies in DC who think about the rest of us, and not just themselves and their corporate-buddies interests!

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” In the 19th century, America led the way in universal basic education. Then, as other nations followed suit, the “high school revolution” of the early 20th century took us to a whole new level. And in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education.

But that was then. The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered.

Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual — a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis — its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington — deals a severe blow to education across the board. (more…)

side note: Reich is one smart guy…..I’m worried that he’s right and that’s not good news! This image really shows why we’re in such trouble…..

http://robertreich.blogspot.com
by Robert Reich

Unemployment will almost certainly in double-digits next year — and may remain there for some time. And for every person who shows up as unemployed in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ household survey, you can bet there’s another either too discouraged to look for work or working part time who’d rather have a full-time job or else taking home less pay than before (I’m in the last category, now that the University of California has instituted pay cuts). And there’s yet another person who’s more fearful that he or she will be next to lose a job.

In other words, ten percent unemployment really means twenty percent underemployment or anxious employment. All of which translates directly into late payments on mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans, and loss of health insurance. It also means sleeplessness for tens of millions of Americans. And, of course, fewer purchases (more on this in a moment).

Unemployment of this magnitude and duration also translates into ugly politics, because fear and anxiety are fertile grounds for demagogues weilding the politics of resentment against immigrants, blacks, the poor, government leaders, business leaders, Jews, and other easy targets. It’s already started. Next year is a mid-term election. Be prepared for worse. (more…)

side note: With this horrible economic downturn the world is experiencing….why not legalize marijuana and tax the shit out of it? It makes no sense to have all the money made the most profitable cash crop in the United States to end up in the hands of drug dealers and other criminal types. When I was in high school….it was easier to get a bag of weed then it was to get alcohol. Why? Because alcohol is regulated….you need an ID, purchasing is done in the open…..

by Christina Davidson
The Atlantic

A friend in San Francisco had advised I would see real live hippies hitchhiking north on US-101 through redwood country this time of year–migrant agricultural workers of a peculiar variety. Of all those drawn to northern California’s “Emerald Triangle” for the fall harvest of marijuana, the aged man I met in Eureka likely traveled the farthest, having just arrived on a Greyhound from South Carolina, fleeing depressed economic and mental states in pursuit of new opportunities in the cannabis trade.

When I first see “Pie-Dog,” as he later asks to be identified (”long story”), he appears to be struggling with an excess of baggage. I make a couple of U-turns to observe his slow progress as he trudges a short distance dragging a small bag stacked on a large suitcase with wheels, then backtracks to grab an oversized backpack and bed roll. His clothes look clean and new, as does the big suitcase, but he’s standing on the side of the road in Eureka with his destination scrawled on a tattered piece of cardboard. I sense a story.

Pie-Dog tells me he’s headed into “the heart of the hippie triangle.” It’s a small community in the tri-county area of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity, though I agree to not reveal precisely where. He has invested time and effort to get himself “on the inside” and does not want anything to disturb the fragile web of trust he has established.

Though California permits medicinal marijuana, producers exist in a legally gray area. The biggest headlines come when joint raids by local police and DEA net mass producers, whose crops far exceed even the most dillusionally generous interpretation of the law. But little guys get hit often enough to instill a self-protective atmosphere of suspicion against any outsiders, infiltrators, or spies. The paranoia induced by THC intake probably doesn’t help. (more…)

side note: This is why we at NT, plus countless other reliable news sites we’re hammering against the bailout. Not because we didn’t think the country had financial problems, but b/c we knew how tied at the hip big corporations and the bush administration were, and knew for sure that they would find some way to fuck things up and not fix the economic situation. Low and behold……the rich got richer, and the rest of us got screwed. (a huge reason why I shake my head at low and middle class Americans who keep supporting the “lets screw over low and middle class Americans” Republican Party…….the Dems, at times, aren’t too far behind though.) This is why President Obama needs to find out how and why this happened….and frankly….it didn’t happen on accident, and then make an example of the folks who allowed it.

By LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH
The New York Times

Thousands of top traders and bankers on Wall Street were awarded huge bonuses and pay packages last year, even as their employers were battered by the financial crisis.

Nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008, according to a report released Thursday by Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general.

At Goldman Sachs, for example, bonuses of more than $1 million went to 953 traders and bankers, and Morgan Stanley awarded seven-figure bonuses to 428 employees. Even at weaker banks like Citigroup and Bank of America, million-dollar awards were distributed to hundreds of workers.

The report is certain to intensify the growing debate over how, and how much, Wall Street bankers should be paid.

In January, President Obama called financial institutions “shameful” for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was faltering and the government was spending billions to bail out financial institutions.

On Friday, the House of Representatives may vote on a bill that would order bank regulators to restrict “inappropriate or imprudently risky” pay packages at larger banks.

Mr. Cuomo, who for months has criticized the companies over pay, said the bonuses were particularly galling because the banks survived the crisis with the government’s support. (more…)

By Paul Armentano, AlterNet

What could you do with an extra $14 billion dollars? Members of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and other likeminded organizations will be asking government officials that very question on Wednesday, April 15th, when they present a mock check to the U.S. Treasury Office.

“We represent the millions of otherwise law-abiding cannabis consumers who are ready, willing, vocal and able to contribute needed tax revenue to America’s struggling economy,” says Allen St. Pierre, NORML’s Executive Director. “All we ask in exchange for our $14 billion is that our government respects our decision to use marijuana privately and responsibly.”

But it’s not just NORML calling on lawmakers to tax and regulate marijuana. In today’s economic climate, the question is: who isn’t?

Late last month, during President Barack Obama’s first-ever Internet Town Hall, questions pertaining to whether legalizing marijuana like alcohol could help boost the economy received more votes from the public than did any other topic. The questions’ popularity — and the President’s half-hearted reply (”No,” he laughed.) — stimulated a torrent of mainstream media attention. In the past two weeks alone, commentators like David Sirota (The Nation), Kathleen Parker (Washington Post), Paul Jacob (TownHall.com), Clarence Page (Chicago Tribune), and Jack Cafferty (CNN) have all expressed sympathy for regulating pot. Even Joe Klein at Time Magazine weighed in on the issue, writing this month that “legalizing marijuana makes sense.”

It makes cents too. (more…)

side note: nice to see a republican thinking with his brain.

Sam Stein
huffingtonpost.com

Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood hit back hard on Monday to charges from White House critics that President Barack Obama’s economic policies — focused on leveraging government spending to stimulate demand — had exacerbated the recession and constituted a form of socialism.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, LaHood, one of the few Republican members of the Obama administration, scoffed at the recent talking points emanating from the congressional leaders of his own party. His voice rising at times with emotion, the transportation czar tackled first the notion that the president was a socialist in disguise.

“I don’t agree with it,” LaHood said. “If you go out and interview these people working on this road in Maryland… these people are thrilled. They are thrilled that they are working in March on a good paying job building roads, which is what they were trained to do. That’s going to be happening all over America. So the idea that this is socialism — it is not socialism, it is economic development. It is going to provide an economic engine around communities all over American for jobs; good paying jobs; and help people pay their bills. I don’t call that socialism…. We are the model for the world when it comes to infrastructure. We are the model for the interstate system. I don’t call that socialism. Our $40 billion [for the Department of Transportation]: not socialism. It is good paying jobs that is going to drive the economies in a lot of states and a lot of communities.” (more…)

side note: great article from Herbert. he again points out that our economic meltdown didn’t happen on accident. it is the direct result of conservative policies.
By BOB HERBERT
NY TIMES

Working families were in deep trouble long before this megarecession hit. But too many of the public officials who should have been looking out for the middle class and the poor were part of the reckless and shockingly shortsighted alliance of conservatives and corporate leaders that rigged the economy in favor of the rich and ultimately brought it down completely.

As Jared Bernstein, now the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, wrote in the preface to his book, “Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)”:

“Economics has been hijacked by the rich and powerful, and it has been forged into a tool that is being used against the rest of us.”

Working people were not just abandoned by big business and their ideological henchmen in government, they were exploited and humiliated. They were denied the productivity gains that should have rightfully accrued to them. They were treated ruthlessly whenever they tried to organize. They were never reasonably protected against the savage dislocations caused by revolutions in technology and global trade. (more…)

side note: I sort of agree with Professor Feldstein, who teaches economics at Harvard. There doesn’t seem to be any way, at the present moment, to fall back slowly towards economic reality. I have a lot of confidence in our new President and have great hope that he’ll put us back on the right track.

TaipaiTimes.com
By Martin Feldstein

The massive downturn in the US economy will last longer and be more damaging than previous recessions because it is driven by an unprecedented loss of household wealth. Although the fiscal stimulus package that US President Barack Obama recently signed will give a temporary boost to activity sometime this summer, the common forecast that a sustained recovery will begin in the second half of the year will almost certainly prove to be overly optimistic.

Previous recessions were often characterized by excess inventory accumulation and over-investment in business equipment. The economy could bounce back as those excesses were absorbed over time, making room for new investment. Those recoveries were also helped by interest rate reductions by the central bank.

This time, however, the fall in share prices and in home values has destroyed more than US$12 trillion of household wealth in the US, an amount equal to more than 75 percent of GDP. Previous reactions to declines in household wealth indicate that such a fall will cut consumer spending by about US$500 billion every year until the wealth is restored. While a higher household saving rate will help to rebuild wealth, it would take more than a decade of relatively high saving rates to restore what was lost.

The decline in housing construction has added to the current shortfall in aggregate demand. The annual number of housing starts has fallen by 1.2 million units, cutting annual GDP by an additional US$250 billion. While this will eventually turn around as the inventory of unsold homes shrinks, the recovery will be slow.

So the US economy faces a US$750 billion shortfall of demand. Moreover, the usual automatic stabilizers of unemployment benefits and reduced income tax collections will do nothing to offset this fall in demand, because it is not caused by lower earnings or increased unemployment.

Although the recently enacted two-year stimulus package includes a total of US$800 billion of tax reductions and increased government spending, it would be wrong to think that this will add anything close to US$400 billion a year to GDP in each of the next two years. Most of the tax reductions will be saved by households, rather than used to finance additional spending.

Moreover, a substantial part of the spending will be spread over the following decade. And some of the government spending in the stimulus package will replace other outlays that would have occurred anyway. An optimistic estimate of the direct increase in annual demand from the stimulus package is about US$300 billion in each of the next two years. (more…)

By Stephen Gutwillig,

Marijuana already plays a huge role in the California and national economies. It’s a revenue opportunity we literally can’t afford to ignore.

It looks like the pot debate just got real. As the nation faces its worst economic crisis in generations, California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced a trailblazing bill to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol. Hard on the heels of Michael Phelps’ nationally-resonant bong demo, Ammiano’s gesture is a whole lot more intentional. One hopes it will stir the long-overdue national examination of the financial and human price that we pay for criminalizing pot.

The most widely used illicit drug in the western world, marijuana is a fact of life that’s been sampled by upwards of 100,000,000 Americans. Officially prohibited since 1937, we finally seem on the threshold of a promising moment in our nation’s tortured relationship to the drug. On November 4 alone, Massachusetts decriminalized personal pot use, Michigan became the thirteenth state to allow its medical use, and we elected a president who’s openly admitted to smoking it. National polls and the yawn that greeted the Phelps media frenzy indicate that Americans are reconciled to pot’s largely benign role in our culture. (more…)

side note: This is incredible and I’m wondering if this will even be a big story today…..especially after seeing the dismal numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on how many jobs were lost in February, over 650,000. But when you see a sentence like this, you tend to raise your eyebrows and say to yourself, ” I hope these guys know what the fuck they’re doing! : this will “involve the government lending nearly $1 trillion to these investors, exceeds the size of every other federal effort to address the financial crisis so far”

By David Cho
Washington Post Staff Writer

The government is seeking to resuscitate the nation’s crippled financial system by forging an alliance with the very outfits that most benefited from the bonanza preceding the collapse of the credit markets: hedge funds and private-equity firms.

The initiative to revive the consumer lending business, outlined by officials this week, offers these wealthy investors a new chance to make sizable profits — but, thanks to the government, without the risk of massive losses.

The idea is to entice them to put their huge cash piles to work to stimulate the financial system. They would be invited to buy up recently issued, highly rated securities. These securities finance consumer lending, such as credit cards and student and auto loans.

The program, which could involve the government lending nearly $1 trillion to these investors, exceeds the size of every other federal effort to address the crisis so far. The initiative’s approach could be the model for future federal efforts to aid the credit markets, sources familiar with government planning said. Officials call this strategy a “public-private partnership,” but in essence the government is offering good deals to private investors to draw them into its rescue efforts.

Architects of this initiative have long been sensitive to the political challenges of teaming up with hedge fund managers and private-equity firms. But officials see these private investors as among the few who have ample cash available. In public statements, officials have sought to focus attention on the ultimate goal of freeing up credit for consumers.

The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve will continue to lean on these private investors as officials expand their aid to more segments of the lending markets each month, moving from consumer credit possibly on to commercial mortgages and financial derivatives, the sources said. But there is vigorous debate between the Treasury and the Fed and within them over how the program should evolve and at what speed.

This approach will culminate in a separate program that aims to relieve banks of toxic assets, backed by distressed loans, that are clogging the firms’ balance sheets, sources said. This second initiative, which officials are hoping to unveil in the coming weeks, is also expected to reach at least $1 trillion. It may create multiple investment funds, financed by wealthy investors with matching dollars from the Treasury and loans from the Fed, to buy toxic assets, sources said.

These two programs, focused on reviving consumer credit and clearing troubled assets, each exceed the size of the other elements in the financial rescue package being developed by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. These also include a $75 billion effort to aid homeowners and an effort to inject capital into banks, which has already involved hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds. (more…)

side note: I like David Shuster….he has been one of the most straight forward voices on cable news. He is extremely knowledgeable and doesn’t tip toe around any repubs….just ask that tool Joe Scarborough, whom Shuster has torn into on occasion.

side note: Yes, we need to get this going ASAP. Lets go Mr. President, we need a leader who is not afraid to take the necessary steps that will lead out us out of this black hole. And to Mr. Greenspan who helped dubya push through his tax cuts at the very beginning: FUCK OFF, we want nothing to do with you! Harsh you may say, but if that guy had any political backbone, he would’ve stood up to dubya and his cronies!

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

Comrade Greenspan wants us to seize the economy’s commanding heights.

O.K., not exactly. What Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman — and a staunch defender of free markets — actually said was, “It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring.” I agree.

The case for nationalization rests on three observations.

First, some major banks are dangerously close to the edge — in fact, they would have failed already if investors didn’t expect the government to rescue them if necessary.

Second, banks must be rescued. The collapse of Lehman Brothers almost destroyed the world financial system, and we can’t risk letting much bigger institutions like Citigroup or Bank of America implode.

Third, while banks must be rescued, the U.S. government can’t afford, fiscally or politically, to bestow huge gifts on bank shareholders.

Let’s be concrete here. There’s a reasonable chance — not a certainty — that Citi and BofA, together, will lose hundreds of billions over the next few years. And their capital, the excess of their assets over their liabilities, isn’t remotely large enough to cover those potential losses.

Arguably, the only reason they haven’t already failed is that the government is acting as a backstop, implicitly guaranteeing their obligations. But they’re zombie banks, unable to supply the credit the economy needs.

To end their zombiehood the banks need more capital. But they can’t raise more capital from private investors. So the government has to supply the necessary funds. (more…)