Pivoting off Leah Allen’s post about her father’s debilitating pot habit, Kleiman declares that full commercial legalization will create more problem users:
If you support making cannabis available from profit-seeking commercial vendors, heavily marketed, and cheap – which is the path Washington and Colorado are walking down right now – then the predictable result of your preferred policy will be more people with very bad cannabis habits. And there could be fewer such people if cannabis were kept expensive, if marketing were kept to a minimum, and if users were offered modest helps to their self-command, such as user-set periodic purchase quotas, or if we keep the commercial motive out of the business altogether with state stores or by limiting vendor licenses to consumer-owned co-ops and not-for-profit businesses with boards concerned with limiting drug abuse rather than maximizing revenue.
Of course you’re free to oppose all of that. But if you do so, you ought at least to acknowledge the inevitable human cost.
But the huge benefits of ending Prohibition and the tangible personal benefits enjoyed by the vast majority who consume marijuana responsibly still make an overwhelming case, to my kind, for legalization. Kleiman puts it this way:
As I keep saying: the evils of prohibition do not disprove the evils of substance abuse. In the case of cannabis, it’s probable that we could get rid of the former without greatly increasing the latter. But it’s not automatic.
Agreed. Brian Macaulay, a self-described recovering pot addict,wonders what that would mean for those like him:
While the consensus was once that marijuana is not an addictive drug in the same way heroin or alcohol are, society has come a long way in its understanding and definition of addiction. No longer is the condition a matter of simple chemical dependency. Addictions, be they to drugs, sex, food, gambling, or anything else, are now perceived as self-destructive behaviors a person is consistently unable to refrain from engaging in, despite negative consequences. The substance or action itself may be benign to ordinary people. From this point of view, the addiction is in the user, not what is used. So, for that addict portion of the population, what does a world with legal marijuana mean? …
“I see a lot of addicts from Colorado,” says Brooke Constable, an addiction treatment clinician in Orange County, California, “There are plenty who present with marijuana as their primary addiction.” Marijuana addicts may not often have parallel life problems to the more drastic ones of those afflicted with an addiction to harder drugs like heroin, but according to Constable, the difference is irrelevant in the broader picture of an addict coming to terms with their own powerlessness over drug use: “Addicts only find a true bottom when they have internal consequences. They need to want to change. If they don’t, things like family disapproval, career trouble, or the law won’t stop them.” Nor does she see the legal status of marijuana as particularly relevant to those already sober, “If they’re really working a 12-step program, it doesn’t matter. If someone is committed to their recovery, if they believe it’s what they need to do to take care of themselves and live a quality life, the legality of the drug doesn’t make any difference.”
My rule of thumb is pretty simple: whenever you hear a quote about Obamacare, it’s more illuminating to remove the “care” part.
What I meant by that is the congressional opposition to this centrist, national version of Romneycare has little to do with the actual issues at hand. Yes, absolutely, there are legitimate arguments to be made that Obamacare is bad policy, won’t work, or has many flaws. But the political opposition to it still isn’t about that. It has become simply a proxy for feelings about the president himself. I had no way of proving that; but it seemed clear to me by listening to the arguments and passion and virulence of the opponents.
Studies of health policy often assume that politicians will enact laws based on the preferences of their constituents in order to maximize their reelection prospects. This paper analyzes the determinants of voting in the 111th Congress on the Affordable Health Care for America Act. We find that the percentage of uninsured constituents in a Congressional district has no impact on voting. This result is robust to including a host of demographic control variables. We find that President Obama’s popularity in the district is significantly correlated with support for the bill and explains approximately 50% of the variation in voting. Finally, we find little evidence that campaign contributions are correlated with voting when controlling for the other variables in the model. These findings call into question much of the conventional wisdom about how legislators vote on health policy.
We’re dealing here, in other words, not with a rational opposition to a debatable policy, not with a judgment as to whether constituents would benefit or not from the law’s provisions, not even with a case of money-influencing politics – but with an emotional, irrational reaction to the first black president himself. Many would literally rather get sick and die than support any policy he has championed.
An MSNBC interview with congresswoman Jane Harman by Andrea Mitchell on the NSA is interrupted … for “breaking news” on Justin Bieber. And the beat goes on …
Et tu with the etc, Jay? It’s et al. In response to me, Drum puts Ezra’s new enterprise in perspective:
[N]o one should feel like this is something new and unprecedented.
It’s the same thing that’s been happening to popular media for over a century. When radio was invented, it attracted young entrepreneurs like William Paley (using family money) and Richard Sarnoff (working his way up the ranks at RCA). The burgeoning market for middle-class reading material attracted young entrepreneurs like Henry Luce (magazines), William Randolph Hearst (newspapers), and Simon & Schuster (books). The film industry attracted young entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Howard Hughes. Cheap four-color printing prompted Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson to start up the company that would later become DC Comics. Car culture produced car magazines. Computers produced computer magazines. Gaming produced gaming magazines. The rise of cable TV brought us CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. When politics collided with the rise of the internet, we got websites like Drudge Report, Talking Points Memo, the Huffington Post, and Politico.
Will Ezra Klein’s new venture succeed? Who knows. But I think it’s safe to say that some of these ventures will succeed, and they will indeed produce a realignment in the political media universe. They already have, after all: Fox News and Politico are probably more influential already than the entire old-guard newspaper industry combined.
But the best quote from the chatter on this comes from John Cassidy. Behold the paradox of Buzzfeed:
BuzzFeed and Upworthy aren’t really news sites: they specialize in listicles, lifestyle posts, funny GIFs, and celebrity stories. When I checked BuzzFeed’s home page on Monday afternoon, one of its featured headlines was “Ron Jeremy Does ‘Wrecking Ball.’ ” Over at Upworthy, there was this offering: “An Actor Who Got Super Famous Overnight Has Some Profound Thoughts on Celebrity Worship.” (Update: In fairness, and in response to some complaints from BuzzFeed writers, I should point out that BuzzFeed also puts out serious journalism, including political reports, dispatches from overseas, and long-form stories. Still, the lists and other lighter fare are what drive a lot of its traffic.)
How many complaints did he get, I wonder, from Buzzfeed readers?
“Give Pete Carroll about one year before he starts realizing the mistake he just made. By that time, he’ll be wondering why he resigned from USC to become head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. That fat deal he recently accepted — one reportedly worth $35 million over five years — won’t be nearly as capable of insulating his pride from all the abuse he’ll be taking publicly. The players also won’t be embracing him like they have in college. Before you know it, that constant smile that has become Carroll’s trademark will be harder and harder to find.
Regardless of how optimistic some Carroll supporters may be about this news, the man is going to fail in the NFL. He’s already been fired by the New York Jets (whom he coached in 1994) and the New England Patriots (he was there from 1997 to ’99), which is all you really need to know,” – Jeffri Chadiha, ESPN.com, January 12, 2010, on the coach of one of this year’s Superbowl teams.
Can I nominate your review of “Looking” for a Poseur Alert? That show is a serious case of the emperor’s new clothes. As a 31-year-old gay man (who has only seen the first episode), I was hoping to see a gay version of “Girls” or at least a show that had something smart/interesting/funny to say. You act as if the fact it is boring is an achievement in itself. Just because gay people are “normal” does not mean they have to be boring. Straight girls may be normal but “Girls” is still innovative.
I feel like every time a new show comes out featuring gay people, they always say, “This isn’t a show about being gay, it’s just a show about people that happen to be gay.” Puhhlease. I have never seen a show more “about being gay” than “Looking,” which would be fine if it were at least fresh. “Six Feet Under” was doing gay relationships in a way more interesting way years ago, and that was really not a show “about being gay.”
“Will and Grace” was also not really a show about being gay, it was a sitcom featuring gay characters. I think your comments about it featuring “the eunuch” and “the sassy queen” say more about your own unresolved issues that seem really antiquated to someone like myself. (And how was Will a “eunuch” when the show regularly featured his dating and sex life? For god’s sake it was a network sitcom, not a bareback porno.)
The show took a long time to deal with Will as a sexual being, and, when it did, applied different standards than it did to Grace’s romantic life. Maybe I should have explained that more fully than resorted to a quip. But it may – again – be a generational as well as a personal response. In retrospect, the early nervousness about Will as a sexual being slowly dissipated. My reader was 15 when the show began. I was 35. Another:
Oh please, Andrew. I’m betting your “confession” is not news to most of your regular readership. (I’m a proud Founding Member – at the ridiculously low $1.99/month rate. I’m retired and on a fixed income, so I’m grateful for the subsidy.) Anyway, I think you’ve made your feelings abundantly clear over the years about your aversion to gay-themed entertainment.
While you obviously have the right to your opinions – that’s why I read you! – I think you’re being not quite honest about what seems like an almost Pavlovian reaction to “Angels In America” and “Will and Grace”.
(We can agree to leave Jeffrey’s critique to folks who care.) I’m betting you’re still nursing wounds suffered during the initial AIDS epidemic. I know you were attacked – sometimes viciously – for daring to veer from ’80s/’90s gay orthodoxy, but I don’t need to remind you of how brutal those years were and how some of the gay community’s self-righteous anger actually transformed government policy. Yes, you got caught in the cross-fire, but our loved ones were dying horrible deaths and any conservative approach was just not going to cut it. I was in ACT-UP/L.A. in the ’80s, and the movers and shakers in that group were by and large leftist. (I remember being somewhat aghast during an demonstration/arrest when one of my “fellow travelers” confessed to actually being a “red.” I quickly got over my own aversion to this self-proclaimed Bolshevik. Like I said, people were dying.)
With regards to Angels, I saw the play in L.A. before its starring turn in New York. (Tony Kushner – still an unknown writer – was in the back row that night doing rewrites.) To see that play on stage – while the AIDS epidemic was still raging – was electrifying, not to mention funny and shocking and, in the end, moving. Yes, Kushner’s politics were unapologetically leftist, but what he wrote was a powerful indictment of the powers-that-be. So what if Ethel Rosenberg wasn’t portrayed as treasonous?? She was sharp – and she was hilarious. As far as “Will and Grace” goes, the case has been made many times that, by bringing gay men (whether they were kissing or not) into America’s living rooms, the highly successful sitcom did more for gay rights than anything outside a Supreme Court ruling. The fact that Will and Grace (and Jack and Karen) were part of the entertainment zeitgeist of the (gay) nineties was more kismet than you give it credit for. Let it go.
I have. The post was full of the sense that all of the emotional turmoil was completely understandable, if very painful. One more:
While I generally found your take on Looking accurate, I found myself in complete disagreement with one sentence: “this is not yet what I’d like to be able to watch: a convincing drama about gay men in, say, Houston or Atlanta.” This statement is based on the assumption that no such life exists in Houston or Atlanta, or at least not in the “just living” context that Looking seeks to illuminate about gay life in 2014. This statement assumes that if gay life exists at all in either of those places, it is still in the closet and shame driven Boys in the Band style. It also wreaks of East Coast elitism.
As a gay resident of Atlanta who has also lived in enough other places to have perspective from which to compare it, I can say your statements could not be further off base. First, I’ve lived as an out gay man in DC, Chicago, and Boston and I can say that Atlanta’s gay community is just as visible and vibrant as all three of those cities. Second, while the state’s politics are not as progressive, I can assure you that gay people in Atlanta live just as normal, baggage-free lives as the characters portrayed in Looking. The city’s and state’s politics are not all that different from the DC you lived in less than 5 years ago. Before the recent passage of same-sex marriage, was DC’s gay community cloaked in shame and secret codes? Did the gay residents of DC not live the same normal lifestyles you see on Looking today?
My reader misunderstands me. My point was precisely his. You could have portrayed this dimension of gay life without centering it in San Francisco. In some ways, I think the cutting edge is precisely in those cities, and it would have been a little fresher in perspective. But the reader response to all this reminds me again of how fraught the portrayal of minorities in the mainstream media can still be.
“Just another retaliation by this administration. And some folks think its a good idea that he gets the nuclear codes,” – Chris Bollwage, mayor of Elizabeth, New Jersey, who claims governor Chris Christie shut down his town’s DMV office in another act of political retribution.
David Kenner points out that the US knew all about Syria’s torture prisons back when we used to send people there:
The only mystery for [Maher] Arar is why Americans are shocked at reports of torture in Syrian prisons. “What surprises me is the reaction of some people in the West, as if it’s news to them,” he told Foreign Policy. “As far back as the early 1990s … the State Department reports on Syria have been very blunt — the fact is, Syria tortures people.”
It’s a history that the U.S. government knows all too well — because, at times, it has exploited the Assad regime’s brutality for its own ends. Arar was sent to Assad’s prisons by the United States: In September 2002, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) detained him during a layover at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. U.S. officials believed, partially on the basis of inaccurate information provided by Canada, that Arar was a member of al Qaeda. After his detention in New York, Arar was flown to Amman, Jordan, where he was driven across the border into Syria.
(Image from a recent report (pdf) on torture within Syria. Earlier CNN coverage of the report here.)
Kavitha A. Davidson questions whether the seats will be filled in Sochi:
Because of security concerns, Russia can’t expect a boost from foreign fans. And it will probably have a tough time selling domestic fans on the cost, despite organizing committing Chairman Dmitry Chernyshenko’s optimistic estimate that 75 percent of spectators will be Russian citizens. Putin has boasted the affordability of the tickets — the cheapest tickets cost $15 and more than half the tickets sell for less than $150 — but the problem most Russians face is accessibility. Transportation to the remote city of Sochi is largely out of reach, with flights costing more than half the average monthly salary of $860.
Bershidsky notes that “the security measures have been obvious and oppressive — and the athletes and guests have yet to arrive”:
Residents of Sochi have endured emergency evacuations of the new railway station in Adler. Rail commuters must get special permission to transport liquids, laser and high-frequency devices, bicycles, tools and winter sports equipment. Since Jan. 7, out-of-town cars have been banned from entering the Sochi area and required to park in special lots at least 60 miles from the city center. Nikolai Yarst, a reporter for the Ura.ru site in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, visited checkpoints at the city limits and found long lines of cars with Sochi plates awaiting a painstaking examination by police.
Jonathan Mahler claims that the threats are unprecedented:
We’ve had terrorist attacks at the Olympics before. But this is the first time we’ve heard so many credible threats before the Games. It’s also the first time the Games have been held in a region featuring two wars between the host country and native Islamic separatists.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised that Sochi won’t be another Munich, and he is turning the city into a police state to make good on that promise. But how much faith does anyone have in the integrity of the 1,500-square-mile security zone that Russia claims to have built around the Games? The U.S. will have two warships in the nearby Black Sea — a couple more high-value targets? — in case Americans need to be evacuated en masse. It has also volunteered military support to help keep the Games safe, though there seems little chance that Putin will accept the offer.
Meanwhile, Amelia Urrey shines a light on Sochi’s environmental toll:
Not only is this shaping up to be the most expensive Olympics in the history of the games, with $51 billion of new development, it is also arguably one of the most destructive. Five thousand acres of pristine forests have been felled, while wetlands that served as important stopovers for migrating birds have been filled in. Landslides and waste dumping threaten the watershed, which feeds into the Black Sea. … The construction projects have also left local Sochi-ers in the lurch, facing frequent power shortages, land subsidence, flooding, and widespread pollution. While the mayor of Sochi pointed to a new Louis Vuitton store as a symbol of progress, nearby communities are living without running water, and some have been cut off from the city by a new $635 million highway.
(Photo: Security personnel talk in the Olympic Park in the Coastal Cluster in Alder, Russia on January 9, 2014. The region will host the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, which start on February 6. By Michael Heiman/Getty Images)
Maya Rhodan runs down the advice of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, appointed last year to suggest ways to improve voting procedures:
The recommendations focus partly on the impact improved technology can have on the voting process, such as using electronic poll books, improving access to voter information on states’ websites for voters overseas and in the military, and easing the process of updating and replacing old voting equipment. One key recommendation was that schools continue to serve as polling places. Some districts have expressed security concerns about that role in the wake of high profile school shootings, but the commission said schools remain ideal places to cast a ballot because they are accessible to people with disabilities and often located near voters’ homes.
Christopher Flavelle highlights the report’s revelation that gun violence, especially after Newtown, has discouraged voting in schools. Toobin wonders whether the Republicans care about fixing such problems:
Democrats are likely to greet the recommendations with some enthusiasm, though many will regret the absence of proposals on photo identification and the Voting Rights Act. A person familiar with the commission’s deliberations noted that these topics were not within the group’s charter and, besides, may not be as important as their high profile suggests. “There is a lot of sound and fury about photo I.D., but it pales in comparison to long lines, registration systems, and absentee ballots in terms of the number of people affected,” this person said. “We are talking about tens of millions of voters affected by these issues.”
The recommendations will test Republicans.
If, as many Democrats believe, they simply want to reduce turnout because they have a tendency to win low-turnout elections and lose high-turnout contests, Republicans can ignore or nitpick the recommendations, despite Ginsberg’s impeccable partisan credentials. (I first met both Ginsberg and Bauer when they were on opposite sides of the Florida recount, in 2000.) Or the commission’s work could serve as a model of bipartisan coöperation, with the two sides putting aside their differences in the interest of setting up fairer fights in the future. That, in any event, is today’s fond hope.
Bernstein doesn’t think any of the report will be adopted:
To the extent that the problem is mainly one of information not previously available to well-intentioned, non-partisan election administrators, then Bauer-Ginsburg could certainly make a big difference. But to the extent the problem is one of partisan state governments who want to maintain high hurdles between (at least some) people and the franchise — or to the extent that money is needed to implement change and election administration remains a low priority — then change will be minimal.
Although the lead up to the 2012 election saw widespread efforts to restrict voting rights, 2013 ushered in a countertrend of improving voter access. It’s true that the movement to cut back on voting rights did not end. But many states pushed forward with positive voting reforms as well, with 10 states passing laws making it easier to vote, many along the lines recommended by the Commission. Voter-registration reform has been especially popular. Interestingly, while voting restrictions passed almost exclusively in Republican-controlled states, voting improvements passed in Republican, Democratic, and mixed-control states. The appetite to improve the voting system can transcend partisanship.
consistently unable to refrain from engaging in, despite negative consequences. The substance or action itself may be benign to ordinary people. From this point of view, the addiction is in the user, not what is used. So, for that addict portion of the population, what does a world with legal marijuana mean? …
The Dish 