Baby You Can Drive My Car

Obama’s finger wagging at Detroit is mighty curious considering that the amount of money being sought by the automakers is a mere drop in the bucket compared with the bail-out of the fat cats on Wall Street. I guess you get what you pay for. The financial sector has spent over $20 billion over the last ten years to curry favor on the Hill and in the White House, and now they’re calling in their chips.

You could also argue that the auto industry is being treated like garbage because the government blew the bank bailout badly by pouring $350 billion down the drain with no benefit on Main Street. The political reality of the moment is that somebody has to get in it in the shorts to satisfy the public's need for blood. The sheeple glued to CNN apparently buy the party line that the collapse of GM and Chrysler was the fault of the union line worker (damn those people who can afford THREE meals a day on their salary), rather than bone headed management decisions. Couple the public perception with the fact that the industry’s influence in Washington is on the wane and presto, the auto industry gets to die in place of the financial industry that caused our current problems.

Yes, the banking industry is important to the American economy, but the banking industry is not wholly composed of BofA, Citibank, et al. As long as they remain the sole focus of the discussion and the people are browbeat into believing that their rescue is absolutely necessary, it becomes clear in whose interests these banks are being saved. Hint: it ain’t ours.

Legalize It

I’m coming off hiatus to issue a stern wag of the finger at Obama’s cavalier treatment of the marijuana legalization issue in his internet town hall meeting yesterday. As anyone with ½ a brain knows, and Obama has much more than ½ a brain, the war on drugs has been a total failure. There are over 1 million Americans in jail for the victimless crime of possession of marijuana. Ending the prohibition on drugs would solve numerous problems. Crime rates would plummet (big time organized crime, small time stealing, possession), taxes go up as drugs are sold legally like liquor. The cost of the War on Drugs (billions wasted) eliminated. Prison costs cut in half. The money saved can be used to treat drug addiction as a medical condition and there would be a lot of money left over. Whole countries are now being destabilized because of drugs. Why is Obama a coward on this issue, when the solution is obvious?

Maybe because decriminalizing pot would actually be counter to his goals. Prisons create jobs. Building prisons creates jobs. Spending billions on the War on Drugs every year creates jobs. All those potheads getting locked up are just more Americans sacrificing in the name of economic recovery.

I’m starting to think that this guy is too slick for his own good. One week after the Attorney General seemed to indicate the feds would no longer raid pot clubs, DEA agents busted a medical marijuana facility in San Francisco the night before his speech. If this is the position an administration filled with intelligent thinkers is going to take on this issue, I have to question their motives. This one is a no-brainer.