The radio said 13 degrees. It's cold enough that the cats have left taking turns curling up on my lap, and have parked themselves on radiators. We're fortunate that we can afford to heat this 125 year old house, at least enough to keep us warm if we wear layers.
And the news is as cold as the weather: 533,000 jobs cut last month, over one and a quarter million in just the last three months. Take a look on how Yahoo! news titled that link - it's very telling. As I have written previously, I think we're in for a long haul, something akin to a true depression rather than just a bad recession. All the elements are in place, many are already playing out just as they did during the Great Depression. And, as bad as it is, I think this is also a time of potential - potential to make some changes which would normally be resisted by entrenched interests: reregulation (intelligent reregulation) of the financial sector; revamping transportation to create an infrastructure supporting mass transit; introduction of single-payer health insurance; elimination of our insane War on (Some) Drugs.
75 years ago today, during the great Depression, Prohibition ended. It is time to do the same thing again, but with marijuana. Legalize it. Regulate it. Tax it. Treat it like alcohol. Pardon or commute the sentences of everyone in prison for using it or selling small amounts. Quit funding para-military squads in local police departments in the name of "stopping drugs". It's a waste of people and resources to fight this pointless war.
It's been well over 20 years since I last used pot. If it was legalized tomorrow, I'm not sure I'd ever use it again. I don't have a dog in this fight, from that perspective. But as someone who loves liberty, who hates to see government empowered through fear-mongering, who thinks that we will need all of our resources to deal with real problems rather than artificial ones, the time has come to end Prohibition again. And I hope that the new president will have the balls to do so.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and my blog.)