Obama Evening News & Roundup -- Oprah and more!
As we close in on PA, what we have to do is keep making our message as relevant as possible to as many people as possible. The problem with politics at the national level is that people frequently do not see it as relevant to their daily lives. But if we can break that barrier and make it relevant, that will turn into a lot more turnout and a lot more votes.
With that in mind, I will start including commentary on Oprah in every OENR. Her endorsement of Obama gives us a unique opportunity to take our progressive political message and relate it to peoples' lives. People who might never phone bank, might never contribute to a political campaign, or who might never have an account at Daily Kos or write a blog might still watch Oprah. Her show gives us a bridge to reach out to people who might not otherwise connect with our campaign.
With that in mind, let's talk about today's show. It is the easiest thing in the world to call for tougher jail sentences for drug offenders. After all, there is an element of facelessness; when one calls for punitive sentences for such people, one does not normally put a human face on such people. The calls for three strikes laws were politically popular but did nothing to address the drug problem that is rampant in this country. Just like laws banning abortions do not stop people from having them, laws banning alcohol did not stop a massive bootlegging industry from springing up, and laws banning pot have not stopped that drug from being widely used, laws banning meth use have not stopped people from using the stuff.
Today's program shows the story of a father and a son who have dealt with addiction the hard way.
Award-winning journalist David Sheff wrote about his struggle to help his son Nic overcome a crystal meth addiction in The New York Times Magazine. After the article was published, David says he realized he was not alone. His story generated an overwhelming response from other parents of addicts.
"When this hit our family, we were like so many families in this country," David says. "I was not naive about drugs. I used drugs when I was a kid. ... But I still thought, like most of us, 'This could never happen to our family.' When it did, we were so blindsided. We were so devastated that I realized that this is something we have to talk about."
David delves deeper into Nic's drug abuse and its impact on their family in his book Beautiful Boy. "I realized the power of telling a story like this because it opens the door to other people," he says. "It gives people permission [to discuss it]."
Even normally conservative judges and prosecutors are turning away from punitive sentences to deal with people like Nic. Instead, they are setting up separate drug courts in order to help people get off of drugs and get their lives back on track. And based on this story, it seems that more openness is the key to helping people get their lives turned around and put back on track, rather than more punitive laws. That does not mean that we should legalize meth. Instead, we should follow an approach similar to that championed by Obama on immigration -- meth users should forfeit any earnings from meth sales and go into an individualized rehab problem. Family members, employers, and anyone else involved with this person's life should have input and help develop a collaborative rehab program for such individuals.
People who have these sorts of addictions have to understand that they can't just complete a 6-month program and then expect to live their lives with no problems -- what must happen is that there must be constant monitoring of that person for the rest of their lives so that they don't fall off the wagon. Punishment should be reserved for only those people who absolutely refuse to show any kind of remorse for their actions and who absolutely refuse to get any kind of help. And even jail sentences could be indeterminate; for instance, a person could be ordered to jail until they decide that they want to go through with the program, for instance.
Nic's problems started when his parents divorced. Nic was one of those people who did a very good job of convincing people that everything was fine with him when it was not. But like one judge said once at a talk that I was at, the best tool for keeping kids out of drugs is prevention. First of all, it takes a leap of faith to marry someone; we should not take that leap unless divorce with that partner is just not an option. If we're willing to live with that person's bad habits, weaknesses, and quirks, then we should take that leap. The finances and the arrangements all have to be in place.
Secondly of all, the divorce itself should be a warning sign to people. Even if they seem fine, many children of divorce are not. Therefore, children of divorce should see counseling as much as possible so that potential problems can be identified as soon as possible. Nic's life went from bad to worse when he obtained crystal meth:
Nic's euphoric feeling didn't last long. Hours after his first hit, he came crashing down from the high. "I remember lying in my bed, and I was sweating the drug out of my body, and I was shaking," he says. "It was just this intense, horrible, wrenching pain like someone had come in with a vacuum cleaner and just sucked out every good feeling that I'd ever had in my whole life."
After that day, Nic says he used crystal meth constantly because he was afraid of crashing again. His addiction began to consume his life and take a toll on every member of his family.
"Methamphetamine stole his soul," David says. "Our lives descended, Nic's life descended, into what can only be described as hell."
And compounding that problem was the father's denial. Just like the Bush administration and John McCain have been in extreme denial over Iraq, parents can be in extreme denial over warning signs that their childrens' behavior may be symptomatic of a serious problem.
There is a big debate over whether parents should or should not share their own experiences with drugs. For instance, some people argue that bringing an athlete into school who almost died from drug use could send mixed messages to children because they see this person who took huge risks and still survived. In other words, a child who likes to take risks could see that athlete's life as a pathway that they themselves want to follow, drugs and all. But on the other hand, if a parent tells a child, "Just say no," like Ronald Reagan said to, that might make the child roll their eyes like the parent does not know what they are talking about. But while I cannot speak for other communities, I can speak for our community; and around here, perceived parental disapproval is a strong factor in a teen's decision whether or not to use drugs or alcohol. In other words, it is a common perception that 13 is the most rebellious time for teens; however, that teen might very well be listening even if all they do is communicate with you in one-word phrases.
Let me put this another way -- if you tell your kids not to use alcohol or drugs and they see you hauling six-packs into the house every night, what kind of a message will that send? Or, let's use this as an example -- let's say you don't want your kids to engage in premarital sex; what kind of a message does it send kids when you bring this grim-faced elderly lady whose sole agenda is to indoctrinate kids with abstinence-only propaganda, aka elephant dung, into Sunday school?
The problem with our current system is that people who are addicted and broke will commit other crimes in order to get the money that they need to get meth. And unlike corporate crimes, which do a lot more people out of their jobs and which do a lot more damage to our social fabric, street crimes like meth use and stealing hit close to home to the extent that peope are always clamoring a lot about the latter and not the former. In other words, people do not make the same kind of connections with corporate crimes as they do with street and drug crimes.
What we need is a fundamental reform in our drug laws -- pot is no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco and should be regulated as such. On the other hand, we should not legalize drugs such as crystal meth because of the kind of psychosis that it induces. Instead, what we must do is, rather than see kids like Nic as criminals who should be locked up for the rest of their lives, is have an active engagement in treating people like that ensuring that they stay free of crystal meth for the rest of their lives.
And relapses are part of the process. Rather than punishing people for having a relapse, what must be done is for the participants to work through it and figure out what can be done to stop another relapse. It took Nic several tries before he has become meth-free for the last two years.
While parents should actively monitor their childrens' behavior, if they fall off the wagon, they can't be so consumed that they damage their other relationships as well. One of the problems in this situation is that David, the father, became addicted to the addiction. That can trigger even more cycles of addiction, creating a spiral that only gets worse and worse.
One of the rationalizations that people like Nic make is that they are only hurting themselves. Frequently, there is an awareness that they are hurting the people around them; however, they shut it out. Again, prevention is the key, and one of the more important things that we can do to prevent drug addiction is to teach kids to think beyond themselves.
Fighting and winning this battle involves mutual responsibility. Parents are responsible for keeping their kids out of trouble in the first place. Courts are responsible for getting peoples' lives back on track. But what the government should do is drastically reform their drug laws so that people can come out of the shadows and get help. And there is another thing that an Obama administration would do -- reform No Child Left Behind. This well-intentioned law was designed to figure out what kids are supposed to know and go from there. But it has done so at the cost of kids' souls. An Obama administration would fully fund that law and reform it to where it would monitor the person rather than a bunch of abstract test scores.
IN OTHER NEWS:
In response to the Housing Crisis, local cities are declaring moratoriums on foreclosures:
Common Pleas Judge Annette Rizzo, who heads a foreclosure steering committee that includes lawyers representing lenders and homeowners as well as social service agencies, said owner-occupied residential properties will not be sold at the May sheriff's sale. But all other properties will proceed to a sale. The owner-occupied properties will be put on a special track intended to help borrowers with free legal advice and housing counseling.
Rizzo said the committee, which ironed out the framework of the plan Monday, will continue to work on specifics this week. Rizzo said the group is working on an early intervention program to help borrowers gain the assistance of a housing counselor or have their loan terms modified well before a sheriff's sale becomes a possibility.
City Council on March 27 passed a measure calling for a moratorium on home mortgage foreclosures. The city's April sheriff's sales were postponed after the nonbinding measure gained the support it needed from Sheriff John Green and Common Pleas Court President Judge C. Darnell Jones.
These are only half-measures; what is needed is long-term debt relief as well as reregulation of the lending industry. The problem is that too many people are taking out loans that they think are safe, but are really debt traps that will harm them for the rest of their lives.
Bush has long been a global warming denier. Yet his own CDC person, Howard Frumkin, says that it will be a major long-term health problem in coming years.
"To the science, there is strong evidence the carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas ... and that there is strong evidence that climate change affects public health in many ways," responded Frumkin, carefully gauging his words, when pressed by Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., on the issue.
Frumkin, director of CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, outlined the range of "major anticipated health" issues as a result of climate change.
Among them, the prospects of more heat waves that are of special danger to the elderly and the poor; more incidents of extreme weather posing a danger of drought in some areas and flooding in others; increase of food-borne and waterborne infectious diseases; more air pollution because of higher temperatures; and the migration into new areas of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases such as Lyme disease, West Nile virus, malaria or dengue fever as seasonal patterns change.
"Over the next few decades in the United States, climate change is likely to have a significant impact on health," Frumkin told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
A vote for John McCain would be a vote for a 3rd term for Bush and a government divided on whether it was even a problem. Even as his own CDC head says that global warming would be a serious health problem, Bush's own EPA head has said the exact opposite -- he has actively undermined the implementation of strong new environmental regulations by 18 different states, including California, and he thinks that it is not even a problem. So, a fair question to ask John McCain is, who is right -- John Frumkin of the CDC, or the head of the EPA?
Under an Obama administration, that would not even be a matter for debate. Therefore, we would have a government which is much more active on global warming, much more cooperative with the rest of the world, and much more responsive to problems that come up.
But while the Bush administration is under a morass of mass confusion, and a McCain administration would be as well, the people who would actually be in the front lines of this struggle are not. The American Public Health Association has unequivocally warned that global warming would be a major threat to public health.
From deadly heat waves in the Midwest and Northeast to more intense Gulf Coast hurricanes and Southwest droughts, the effects of climate change will have an unprecedented impact on the health of Americans, a report said Monday.
The connection between global warming and public health is the focus of a new campaign announced by the American Public Health Association. "There is a direct connection between climate change and the health of our nation," says the campaign's new blueprint designed to combat the health effects of climate change. "Yet few Americans are aware of the very real consequences of climate change on the health of our communities, our families and our children."
One of the main threats cited would be the flooding and overflow of sewer systems in places like Portland, already one of the rainiest places in the country. And while John McCain has nothing whatsoever on energy policy, Barack Obama is the one who actually has a highly detailed plan on how we would reduce our carbon emissions by 80% by the year 2050, the target that we must meet in order to head off even worse change. And while you're at it, please write a letter to Houghton Miffon asking them to take their right-wing propaganda out of their textbooks. This is a settled debate -- it is settled fact that we have global warming, and it is settled fact that it is man-made. And it is a settled fact that it is up to us to reverse the threat of global warming.
Jordan, often described in the mainstream press as the most moderate country in the Arab Middle East, was the first to receive prisoners "as a true proxy jailer for the CIA" and has received more victims of "extraordinary rendition" than any other country in the world, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The report charges that U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, were aware that "Jordan was already notorious for torturing security detainees" because the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "already had a history of close relations" with Jordan's General Intelligence Department (GID).
HRW charges that "Torture and cruel or inhuman treatment seems to have been systematically used" against most of the detainees rendered by the CIA to Jordan. "Detainees claim they were threatened, beaten, insulted, deprived of sleep, and subjected to falaqa -- a form of torture in which the soles of the feet are beaten with an object," HRW says.
The report claims that rendered prisoners were "hidden whenever the International Committee of the Red Cross visited".
It adds that the CIA's long-standing relationship with Jordanian security services may have given U.S. officials confidence that the Jordanians "would be particularly good at keeping the fact of the detentions secret".
Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Programme for Human Rights Watch, told IPS, "The rendition cases we've documented in Jordan show the unreality of the [George W.] Bush administration's claims that it did not hand people over to face torture."
John McCain can talk all he wants about how he is against torture. But when it actually came time to vote on it, he opposed a bill that would have created uniform interrogation standards across the board that did not include torture. Barack Obama has been a clear and consistent voice against torture. John McCain supports torture.
Ireland is leading the way on renewable energy development.
WHEN the fearsome Cuchulainn was transformed by the rage of battle into a Celtic Incredible Hulk, according to Irish mythology, the warrior’s intensity melted snow for 30 feet around him. That was an impressive generation of alternative energy from this Achilles-like hero so closely associated with Dundalk, but this town on Ireland’s east coast is turning to less ephemeral kinds of power as it tests technologies to reduce the country’s thirst for fossil fuels.
The goal is innovation on a local scale, developing clean energy sources and reducing energy demand in a 1.5-square-mile site called a Sustainable Energy Zone. The project is part of a European Union program to encourage pilot projects that can be scaled up to regional or national levels. Dundalk is working with two other towns, in Austria and Switzerland, on a total budget of about $40 million, said Aideen O’Hora, the project manager for Sustainable Energy Ireland, the government agency in charge. But the biggest changes are taking place in Dundalk.
The zone has a bit of everything — an industrial park, a college campus, a high school, a hospital, a hotel, other businesses and two housing developments — in a town of about 30,000 people. The five-year project will be a year old in June, but other initiatives got a head start, and the town of Dundalk is already seeking money for an energy-conscious expansion that could double its size.
Expect to see this sort of thing under an Obama administration. An Obama administration would harness the power of people from the ground up to create green development zones that would then get adopted at the national level. It would involve a massive infrastructure overhaul that would create millions of new jobs, end our dependence on foreign oil, and start us on our way to meeting the 80% carbon reduction target that we must meet by 2050.
Please support the work of groups like Alley Cat Allies. In many parts of the country, towns and cities have problems with feral cat colonies, or domestic cats that revert to their wild ways. Many authorities feel they have no choice but to kill them, but groups like this provide alternatives to killing these animals. Supporting groups like these are good ways to combat the cruelty of people within John McCain's campaign like Fred Malek.
Obamathon
