Of course, as we drug war survivors know and the American public is starting to realize, the promised tax cuts and cuts to bureaucracy were dwarfed by the expenses of the perpetual wars (i.e., War on Drugs and War on Terror).

Trickle Down by The Tragically Hip

Lyrics: http://lyrics.duble.com/lyrics/T/tragically-hip-lyrics/tragically-hip-trickle-down-lyrics.htm

{ Old lion's dying, got left behind Cut your teeth, lose your meat And man it's just a matter of time Key's to the cuffs, you might be king That's it, that's all, that's everything Skeletons come here to dance Where barrooms beat their brothers Into a bloody trance What's the deal? What did I do? Who cops all the cops is all I asked of you

Chorus

Lining up, waiting on the trickle down Something's up, taking time to get around Belly up, all the drinks are on the crown It's just a matter of trickle down

Twenty miles before the crash That's the style for a while And man I think it's gonna last Hit the breaks is all you can say Conductor says we'll save them For another rainy day

Chorus

Lining up, waiting on the trickle down Something's up, taking time to get around Belly up, all the drinks are on the crown It's just a matter of trickle down }

Listen to Preview (MP3): http://www.last.fm/music/The+Tragically+Hip/_/Trickle+Down

Off topic (witty fun):

in this blessed world

Sometimes I dream, have bad dreams,

Rev 1:1 The revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave Him to show His slaves what must quickly take place.

Have you an master?

Have you noticed that human beings crave and need Freedom.

When the sun rises, twinkle,

It rises to this place, like every dieng Jew in the gas chambers, this life is the same, every last dieng breath is another Light.

It is Time to see your place, it is time I see my place

It is a painful birth, that son of man, can bring the strong hand justice and a handful of garlands..

Tree up. Every body's gotta learn sometime playing, no sound. LWW on. Dixie Chicks next. Maybe not. Maybe The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers. Yeah.

PPHHFFFFFFTTTT! PEACE.

Toke.

Had all businessmen been ethical, the rosy future pictured by Friedman and others would have been justified. But as Afterburner has pointed out, there's been a dark side to deregulation. The idea that the market would police itself (like cops policing themselves?) has proven to be a false hope. And as much as it pains this old Libber, I have to admit he was right. Those regulations were proven necessary recently (thanks to events like the ENRON meltdown) due to what had happened back before the Great Depression (businessmen engaging in wild speculation caused the financial collapse then as much as anything else); it was why they were developed in the first place.

I worked for a Fed bureaucracy (yeah, I was a paper-pusher, which I admit to my shame) for years and know the nature of the beast from the inside out. Patterns of behavior get set, often without the slightest shred of reason, and become policy.

Those who make their bread-and-butter from that carrying out that policy come up with all manner of justifications - rationalizations, really - after the fact to maintain it. (Wincing at memory) A civil servant who questions the rationale for the policy usually nets the a scolding at the very least for daring to challenge the bureaucratic 'orthodoxy'.

So, until circumstances force change and a re-examination of the reason for the policy in the first place, it trundles merrily along. If that policy destroys people's lives in the process, well, the 'thinking' (rationalization, again) usually goes that it is doing so because they somehow deserve that destruction. Needless to say, that's the quick-and-dirty foundation of the present DrugWar. Most DrugWarriors can't begin to tell you how the first laws got started (racial bigotry married to economic and bureacratic self-interest) or how long it's actually gone on (92 effin' years!) and would vehemently disagree with you as to it's value (Superhero echo voice: "We're sav-ing The Cheeul-drunnnnnnnnnnn!") for exactly those reasons given. So we can expect even more names added to this list at Pete Guither's site http://tinyurl.com/pgdph .

However, the Feds are reluctant to follow his sage advice regarding the folly of the drug war and its encouragement of violent crime.

Free markets and floating exchange rates for all their benefits have been exploited by big business. Free markets have victimized the North American office class and the working class by forcing them to compete globally with third world economies. Floating exchange rates have benefited investor speculators and international banks at the expense of national economic management.

Does seeing his daughter made an innocent victim of the War on Drugs hurt him any more than it has hurt others down through the years? I don't know. But I know it hurts him now.

The pet snake (The War on Drugs) he kept and nourished wouldn't hurt him...or his loved ones. Surely.

But it did, didn't it?

Took the Puritans 80 years to admit that killing "witches" was against God's will. The Germans still don't admit the Holocaust was wrong. Those who have authority, have the power to coerce others, have a tough time admitting THEY are the ones in the wrong. Look at this year's elections, they had a hard time coming clean about their breaches of conduct.

Lately I've been getting this feeling. Most Americans obey ONE law, the one prohibiting drugs, and disobey literally every other one. By obeying the War on Drugs, Americans believe--sincerely believe--they are morally sound and eternally justified.

No it doesn't make any sense.

"We agree with safe schools, but feel common sense should be considered when discipline is applied," Gaworski wrote in a written appeal of his daughter's punishment.

Gaworski also stated in the appeal that the amount of marijuana found in the girl's car was "minuscule and unusable."

"We have an innocent child who has been removed from her honor classes and placed into an environment that could delay her educational goals," he wrote. "She is embarrassed, humiliated, scared and just wants to disappear. One week ago she was full of energy and excitement about her future. Now she wants to drop out of school and get her GED.

Screw the Stock Market. It is going to fall, no matter what we do. There is no other way for our Government to change, than for the People to change it. Since WWII, they have been doing all the changing, and we have been doing all the accepting of these changes. Or not. But we have not Resisted to any degree of success. Now, we are burdened, since 9-11, with KEEPING our Constitutional Republic. And, with the destruction of the middle class, we have to do this by resisting this two class society, the Profiteers, and the Producteers. Or, to be more precise, The Haves (Not Working but Profiting from Control of Wealth) and the Have Nots (Working but not Profiting according to their work).

I'm ordering a V costume. I think a few thousand of us wearing them up Pennsylvania Avenue would be very Inspiring for the rest of us to get off our asses and DO something.

He knew much about the lies and deceit ...

It is a market mover. The drug war will not end; the 'powers that be' need it for their financial benefit.

There has been a great deal of body counting in Iraq. The tune has changed since General Franks crowed, "We don't do body counts."

Doing the right thing costs too much money. Expect the all of the wrong choices being made to continue as such.

After reading the article, I just kept thinking of Frank Zappa's song, "Help, I'm A Rock!" - with its included variation of "Help, I'm A Cop!" - denoting what a monstrous thing it is to be a part of the oppressive police state.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/frank+zappa/help+im+a+rock_20056544.html

I hope I didn't over-explain. 8^)

Looked up and almost died

could not believe

the filth and disgrace

is this my place at the table?

Knockin On Heavens Door

Dawn arises and good people everywhere

Rise and Breathe

When it comes to redneck monkeys

I gather my pity with comfort

It Is Time

To Gather and receive "new orders

It Is Time to cleanup

that 'PRISONERS

Accessed the Internet

That Information Highway

Forget Not

To Press The Button

Here and in every Land

Have you a gentle hand

A careful eye

Have you seen this filth and destruction?

Maybe some man in a suit has my' medication,

Then I can wonder, what the fuck has happened?

http://tinyurl.com/y2k836

I can only wonder about the mind and soul of the arresting officer, who followed orders, did he see that deep pit?

That crack that every wise person avoids falling into, dogs come around and sniff and steer clear of that black hole.

There is a campfire in the US, where you can lay your head down and sleep and dream, where you can say what troubles your soul, There Is One God, and he rules the stars, and we' are all his children.

http://tinyurl.com/vld6y

Her California medical marijuana card will not protect a Hayward woman from going to jail for a marijuana charge in Washington state, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

and here I thought that it was the Sunni and Shiite who were not getting along...

Police charge teen with drug possession

An 18-year-old woman faces three drug charges after police arrested her Friday night after finding marijuana in her vehicle...Her bail has been set at $5,000 cash, and she will answer to all three charges in court Monday.

Glory Glory Hallelujah may Milton Friedman rest in peace.

I see that even in Kiplings Days, people could see.

http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/kipling/kipling.html

***

"Hello, is this the FBI?"

"Yes. What do you want?"

"I'm calling to report about my neighbor Billy Bob Smith! He is hiding marijuana inside his firewood."

"Thank you very much for the call, sir."

The next day, the FBI agents descend on Billy Bob's house. They search the shed where the firewood is kept. Using axes, they bust open every piece of wood, but find no marijuana. They swore at Billy Bob and left.

The phone rings at Billy Bob's house.

"Hey, Billy Bob! Did the FBI come?"

"Yeah!"

"Did they chop your firewood?"

"Yep."

"Merry Christmas Buddy."

Well, we've ...tried everything else. We've tried claiming to be moral exemplars to the world, by prohibiting alcohol and other drugs. We ended up with corrupt law enforcement, rich gangsters and a laughing-stock of an international reputation.

It's only gotten worse with illicti drugs. Much worse. When an American politician gets on his soapbox, it's only the US citizen who listens, anymore; the rest of the world is laughing up it's sleeves when they aren't dodging our cruise missiles and bombs being dropped on them in an attempt to bring them 'enlightenment' and 'democracy'. 21st Century America's version of the 19th Century's "White Man's Burden" , I suppose. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man's_Burden )

Friedman knew way back when just how ruinous this would be to both our economy and to our freedoms, but amoral, cynical, power-grasping pols will be with us always, and will be happy to cheerlead the forces of ignorance into any 'children's crusade' that's handy...like illicit drugs. Voices like Friedman, Arnold Trabach, Rufus King, etc. were the prototypical 'voices crying in the wilderness', warning us of the obviously (but politically gauche to say in public) doomed-to-fail DrugWar.