The New York State Prison Expansion.

In New York after passage of the Rockefeller drug laws 38 years ago; a large part of gubernatorial politics consisted of prison building to hold vast numbers of illegal narcotics criminals who became over night felons. Movies like "the French Connection" and other exploitation flicks helped desensitize the public to the incarnation of this new class of criminals. Prison jobs became a kind of social welfare for economically blighted upstate New York. (Although Cannabis is still classified in law as a dangerous and useless narcotic, alcohol poisoning kills people. Cannabis can not equal the toxicity of any narcotic while alcohol is classified as a beverage that kills.) Carcinogenic materials in foods are prohibited by the Delaney clause. Some foods contain natural substances which are carcinogenic, such as safrole, which occurs in sassafras and sweet basil. Such substances are covered by the Delaney clause, so that safrole may not be added to root beer in the USA. Had the Governors and legislatures in New York (and U.S.A. at large) instead reverted to one of their namesakes (Hempstead) and grown hemp, they could have ended the dearth of jobs and gained needed tax revenue without wasting all of that money on prisons for Cannabis users which they conflated with other opium based & synthetic narcotics traffickers. The point of the inner party members in the book and the movie "1984" WAS to waste money! They could then remain in control while everybody else had the boot heel of an oppressive and canniving state stepping on their faces forever. Aspartame is many ways toxic to humans. European flight crews comming to the U.S.A. are warned not to use soda fountains incase aspartame canasters get switched with the regular soft drink canisters. Among it's effects Aspartame effects fitness for piloting aircraft . Yet, it holds the coveted GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status among food additives; a blatant violation of the FDA Delaney clause. This food additive / chemical compound of 50% phenylalanine, 40% aspartic acid and 10% methyl ester is in the class known among neurologists as exciter toxins + a poisonous methyl ester. The first 2 ingredients are present in amounts well beyond that found in foods (4%). They excite and then kill neurons. The last ingredient with it's weakly bound (and absent pectin) so called methyl ester becomes wood alcohol above 86° Fahrenheit. Methanol is then made into formaldehyde (embalming fluid) when digested. See www.dorway.com for more on aspartame. Since alcohol and aspartame are each more toxic than cannabis and it's complete food the hemp seed; why don't lawyers make an equivalent legal class for the cannabis leaf equal to "alcoholic beverage" only call it a "psychoactive herb class"?? Hemp seeds themselves are not psychoactive and are legal as a complete food. Plenty of potential revenue can be had from the remaining leaves and cordage and unlike the neurotoxin alcohol, or the carcinogenic diketopiperazine- a break down product from aspartame; Cannabis kills no one. Put warnings on tins and pouches not to mix anti-nausiants with alcohol and tax the growers. Lets dispense with one law that has bred contempt for the law for about 40 years. Again, we should not allow Aspartame in food or pop as it is a blatant violation of the Delaney clause which prohibits the secretary of the FDA from allowing things in foods that cause cancer in humans or have caused cancer in animal studies. What is clearly wrong with the minds of the people who have allowed this mess to proliferate is they don't follow their own laws or rational self interest.

Who says science has nothing to say about morality?

Perhaps we should change our politics.

In his book Nemesis the late professor of Asian studies Chalmers Johnson stated the United States has over 700 military bases world wide. He further states that the military base is how our (the United States) empire is propagated. He asserts that to maintain an empire or to preserve our individual freedoms and culture without slipping into fascist dictatorship is the crossroad which all empires ultimately face. He represents in the case of England how this was accomplished successfully while in the case of Rome the divestiture of empire came in the form of collapse. Think of the power requirements of each one of those military bases. Think of the fuel costs to operate all of the vehicles in the air on land and at sea and the fuel for emergency power back up generators each base has or more regularly the monitary costs to receive that power from commercial grids in host countries. Factor in the cost of personnel and household goods in storage and the cost of accommodations for military families living over seas. Factor in the costs of readiness exercises and standard evaluation teams traveling around the globe to maintain the quality of that military presence. There are plenty of estimates how much all of this costs. It's going to cost even more now that our 10 year treasury bonds are not triple A rated. The same old politics needs more time and revenues for more military strategic planning.

Where is the road to sustainable energy?

I think we need to ask if innovation is only possible during a political crisis. Politics effects outcomes in technology all the time. Take the power grid for instance. When we had a coherent immigration policy, (substitute "more racist" here if you wish) it was thought that given time we'd need fewer power generation stations. Not only was there the foreseeable realization of zero population growth to limit power consumption; improvements in insulation and solid state transisters replaced older tube technology as control elements for relays, motor control and switchgear. Computers made further automation possible using less and less power until the winds in politics allowed more open (less discrimination at the ) borders. With population growth, (pent up demand for housing, education, healthcare, employment oh yeah- a spike in power consumption by the ever growing number of house holds and population) should have been challenge sufficient for innovation if the money was less debt loaded by war borrowing. However, the boom and bust cycles of economic tides always wash away large amounts of savings in debt service thanks to the innovation of war for profit by Neo-cons as well as financial malfeasance in finantial and public office. Constant wars edify politicians who want the larger budgets war always affords and also the financial sectors loaning monies for that economic process so as to extract the interest on those treasury bonds held as collateral. It now seems the resultant weak dollar policy has backfired, leading to a drop in manufacturing and the standard of living, an unaffordable infrastructure in our cities and on our roads, bridges and tunnels. This breakdown has been joined by rising unemployment and youth gang violence. Drug addicted criminals whose hard working parents (spending longer hours at work to store up money which buys less and less) failed to make time for imparting more recognized and legal work ethics in their offspring. While our racist preconceptions also got us into war after war, politicians enlisted corporate media in actually changing the grammatical useage & meaning of the word war so that it could be waged against conditions instead of armies. War on fear, poverty, drugs, prejudice and now terrorism,... perpetually! Technological advances in energy production have therefore been channeled into ever more efficient means of prosecuting these wars as our main export. I have no doubt that ending war & living within some multiple of accounts receivable will restore purchasing power to the dollar, allowing r&d money to go further. Such behavior can foster the development of sustainable energy production and greater self determined outcomes merely due to social rather than antisocial imperatives. Once our money gives each working citizen deserved breathing room as an entitlement, think of it -the actual prospect of social harmony! But, to get there we have to want this alternative to incessant wars and the profits we extract from the development, sales and deployment of killing machines. We have to want freedom enough to change our politics.

Religion and politics mixed with policy in government

An outstanding example of religion and politics mixing with policy was when the religion of Lord John Maynard Keynes ( expand markets without controls on debt ) evolved into the weak dollar policy we have today. Dr Alan Greenspan embellished this religion with an additional item of faith (removal of the Glass Steagal act of 1933) which then allowed banks brokerages and insurance entities (corporations being persons legally ) to: 1). relax criterion on real estate loans for greater sales. 2). bundle bad mortgages into adjustable rate mortgage backed securities. 3). insure these cash pipes as though they were low risk derivatives and sell them to clients with an appetite for unknown risk. Without even mentioning the word war one need not look hard to find instance after instance where policy is run off of faith based beliefs. The road to fascist dictatorship is riddled with such belief driven policy orchestrated by a true believers trade off of the rights of individuals for religious or nonreligious collectivism.

My letter to N.Y. Senator Owen Johnson

Hi your honor. Congratulations on yours and your colleagues success at grappling with some of the most thorny issues on the contemporary horizon. I have always maintained that human behaviors found to exist before and during all recorded history must be faced up to cogently and responsibly, as they are part and parcel of our lot here in this life as people. Also it is known far and wide that to successfully tax a population requires both contract and jurisdiction which are at once agreeable to each of the parties as well as enforceable from an authoritarian perspective. When ever laws don't stand the test of time, it is these premises that have been given short shrift. Onward and upward then! Clarence Dember jr

Do we need better drug store security?

The recent tragedy of the brutal and mindless Medford Drug store shooting on Long Island calls into question whether any security measures can stem the flow of this kind of violence involving murder by gun, addiction and theft of merchandise (in particular pain killing narcotic medication.) It has been said in the media that the victims: pharmacist Raymond Ferguson- Family and friends (f&f), mother of two Jaime Taccetta. (f&f), Student Jennifer Mejia (f&f) and loving husband Byron Sheffield (f&f) all died at the hands of a pain killer prescription addict and his get away car driver wife. The medicine they were after-a form of synthetic opiate. The one question in my mind is could these senseless killings have been avoided if counseling and treatment had been available to the alledged killers who clearly had run out alternatives visible to drug addicted chemically addled criminal mentalities. If the answer is no; I'll ask what about if medical marijuana were available? If the answer is still no, then maybe we should pass laws requiring armed guards at all such drug markets. Drug companies whose drugs are marketed under these tightly controlled conditions may pool resources and purchase contracts with any number of armed security firms so as to improve the safe and regular dispense of these trademarked and patented as well as generic compounds. This slaughter must not be repeated!