History Rhymes

In 1971, President Nixon declared the “war on drugs.”  History doesn’t repeat itself it rhymes, and forty years later another policy of prohibition has been a colossal waste of taxpayer money.  Financial waste, never-ending violence, and collateral damage are the result of this ineffective policy, and are some of the reason that most Americans and chiefs of police have declared this “war” a failure.

President Obama, in the early days of his administration, led many Americans to believe that his policies towards drugs would move towards a public health-based approach.  However, history rhymes again.

Sadly, Obama’s administration has yet to distance itself from the quixotic approach and budgets reflect punishment policies rather than treatment and prevention tactics. 

It is manifest, and even recognized by Obama, that most Americans do not support prohibition.  Yet, medical marijuana raids have increased, gang violence is widespread, and violence and mayhem have also increased in Mexico, which is all related to the failed policy of prohibition.  

Obama ran and won on “hope” and “change,” and Americans supported this seismic shift towards reform and progressivism.  For forty years, money, time and lives have been wasted on a failed policy – prohibition.  Legalization, as Obama put it, was “an entirely legitimate topic for debate,” and a “public health problem.”  Enough talk, Mr. Obama, we need action. 

Ralph Nader still kicking ass

Nader to the Times: 'There Is Too a Left!'

"There are plenty of progressive champions lobbying, rallying, exposing, suing and organizing at the national, state and local level," he says. The problem, he says, is that the mainstream media, including The New York Times, fails to cover their efforts.

Obama vs. McCain vs. the Left

The Left Has No Where to Go

“The more outrageous the Republicans become, the weaker the left becomes,” Nader said when I reached him at his home in Connecticut on Sunday. “The more outrageous they become, the more the left has to accept the slightly less outrageous corporate Democrats.”


"Obama, like Bush and McCain, funds and backs our unending and unwinnable wars. He does nothing to halt the accumulation of the largest deficits in human history. The drones murder thousands of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they did under Bush and would have done under McCain. The private military contractors, along with the predatory banks and investment houses, suck trillions out of the U.S. Treasury as efficiently under Obama. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus, have not been restored. The public option is dead. The continuation of the Bush tax cuts, adding some $900 billion to the deficit, along with the reduction of individual contributions to Social Security, furthers a debt peonage that will be the excuse to privatize Social Security, slash social services and break the back of public service unions. Obama does not intercede as tens of millions of impoverished Americans face foreclosures and bankruptcies. The Democrats provide better cover. But the corporate assault is the same."