Titanic Post

The following are my notes from the Forum on Substance Abuse held by the Otero County New Mexico Chapter of PDA June 25th – Ken Nicholson

The Otero County chapter of Progressive Democrats of America hosted a panel discussion on the substance abuse situation in the county. Panel members Dr. Gil Heredia, physician and chair of the Otero Libertarian Party, Sharon Hodges of the New Mexico Department of Health, and Ken Larson, Certified Peer Specialist and Recovery Mentor presented a comprehensive survey of the drug problems we are facing in Otero County to an interested audience of local activists. Al Kissling of PDA NM was the moderator.

Dr. Heredia said that the so called “War on Drugs” was having a more devastating effect on our community than the actual use of drugs. He cited the emphasis of the drug war being on law enforcement and leading to incarceration rather than treatment and rehabilitation. When those caught in the system have finished their time, they are released back into the community, still addicted, without the root of their situation being addressed. Heredia noted the high cost of incarceration versus treatment. Also, drug crimes are crimes against oneself and not directly against the community. He said that if drugs were legal, market forces would pressure dealer profits, and the supply of drugs would dwindle. One community activist added that the prison industry has lobbied for mandatory minimum sentences to the benefit of the private prison industry while removing judges’ discretion. (more…)

Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter to the Taming the Giant Corporation conference in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2007.Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.

The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery — street crimes — costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.

The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds — Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron — swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.

Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year. (more…)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Published on Monday, February 12, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

by Holly Sklar

The minimum wage is headed for a raise — back to the 1950s. That’s right, even after rising from $5.15 now to $7.25 in 2009, the federal minimum wage will still be lower than it was in 1956, when it was $7.41 in today’s dollars.

The minimum wage was enacted in 1938 through the Fair Labor Standards Act, designed to eliminate “labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being of workers.”

The minimum wage was never meant to be the minimum the nation’s worst employers want to pay. That would be as absurd as setting environmental policies to accommodate the worst polluters.

Business lobbyists who’d abolish the minimum wage if they could have held it hostage for 10 years — the longest period ever without a raise. Now they want to collect a ransom of tax breaks to let it go. (more…)

Forgotten is the promise of a “peoples party.” In the name of bipartisanship and only twenty-three days after the election, the great sell-out begins.  Read more here.  It’s too painful for me to even think about right now.