Part 1: Update On Our Lost War On Drugs: Innocents Die, Presidents Admit The War is A Lost Cause, Trillions Of Dollars Wasted

On a regular basis we do a summary of the latest defeats in our nation’s never-ending, never winning, always expensive war on drugs. This ill fated government approach has been going on for over four decades and has done nothing but waste taxpayer wealth, ruined citizens lives by putting them in prison for petty law breaking of petty drug laws and by not providing enough addiction remedy support, enriched Mexican drug cartels, and encroached on our liberty and privacy.

And even scarier, as you will see, this lost effort may now be turning into a major national security issue. So, what has been going on since we last checked in:

1) A December 2, 2012 NewsMax article, reporting on a U.S. News and World Report article, discussed the lost war on drugs in light of a new documentary coming out soon, “Breaking The Taboo.” The documentary tries to make the case that we have tried to make many times in that the war on drugs has been a failure. The details of the article and the film trailer for the documentary can be found at:

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/clinton-carter-war-drugs/2012/12/03/id/466311?s=al&promo_code=10F70-1

Information from the article and the trailer include the following:

• Since the U.S. government declared war on drugs during the Nixon administration, U.S. taxpayers has paid about $2.5 TRILLION of their wealth to lose this war.
• The worldwide market for illegal drugs, despite a forty year war and effort to stop illegal drug usage, is a whopping $320 billion a year.
• Over the past few years, tens of thousands of innocent Mexican citizens have been killed as a result of our war on drugs, caught in the cross fire of well armed, well financed drug cartels and Mexican anti-drug authorities.
• The trailer claims that after all of these war efforts, illegal drugs today are purer, cheaper, and more widely available than ever before.
• Even two Presidential supporters of the war on drugs, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, are quoted in the documentary that this effort is a failure.
• "If all you do is try to find a police or military solution to the problem, a lot of people die and it doesn't solve the problem, It hasn't worked," says Bill Clinton in the documentary.
• "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself," as written by Jimmy Carter on the film's website.

Is there a way out of this mess, a lost war that has continued unabated under the Obama administration? One solution might be to examine what happened in Portugal when it decriminalized drug possession. Usage went down, treatment went up, and personal freedoms and privacy no longer got abused as much. Details on how and why their more humane approach and coherent approach to drug use and addiction can be found in many sources including the following Time magazine article:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

2) You probably have never heard of Eugenio Velazquez so let me give you some background on him, as described in a December 9, 2012 Associated press news article:

• He is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico, having been born in the U.S. and raised in Mexico.
• He lives in a modest, suburban San Diego neighborhood but travels frequently to the border town of Tijuana, Mexico.
• He has had an outstanding and famous career designing some of the Mexican border city's most prominent buildings over the past ten years or so including Tijuana’s new main cathedral, an expansion of the Tijuana Cultural Center, and the town’s police headquarters.
• He is also a college professor and a devoted Catholic who has designed more than 400 residential, commercial and religious projects during a 30-year career that includes a position as president of the Tijuana Architects Association.
• His works range from plain, functional industrial parks for multinational corporations to some of the city's most recognized landmarks.
• A Tijuana newspaper named him as its Cultural Person of the Year in 2008.
• That same year, the Tijuana Cultural Center opened "El Cubo," or "The Cube," his $9-million, burnt-sienna structure that stands next to a distinctive globe-shaped building and provides enough space for large art exhibitions.

Quite a resume but now he may be more well known for his impending prison sentence then his design work. According to the article, Velazquez, was to be sentenced to prison last month in San Diego for an attempt to smuggle 12.8 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. in a special traffic lane for prescreened, trusted motorists. A drug-sniffing dog alerted inspectors to five packages hidden in the battery of his 2004 Nissan Quest at San Diego's San Ysidro port of entry.

Why would such a distinguished trusted man do such a foolish thing for such a relatively small amount of illegal drugs? According to his defense attorney, he had to do it, smuggle drugs into the U.S. like a common drug mule, at the behest of local drug cartels or the cartels would have gone after his family. In fact, within hours after he was arrested at the border, death threats were telephoned to his home and his wife who fled for their lives to a relative’s house.

Another innocent victim of our failed war on drugs, another life destroyed. Our lost war on drugs has so enriched and empowered the drug cartels that innocent, ordinary citizens are at the mercy of the cartels, do their bidding or be killed or see their family members killed. Your fame, wealth, and previous good deeds cannot protect you from the war on drugs and its fallout.

3) But famous architects are not the only famous Mexican citizens to get caught up in the drug cartel violence. A November 27, 2012 Associated Press article reported a Mexican beauty queen was killed over the previous weekend in a shootout between suspected soldiers and drug traffickers who likely used the beauty queen as a human shield.

Maria Susana Flores Gamez was crowned 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in February. According to reports, she came out of a drug trafficker car first with a gun in her hands during the shootout, with the other gunmen hiding behind her, according to the official from the local Mexican attorney general's office. She died in a hail of bullets during the shootout. It was unknown when the article was written whether she was a member of the drug trafficker ring or a hostage taken captive by them and turned into a human shield.

Unimaginable horror and violence. A young lady, with probably a bright future ahead of her, dies at a young age, gunned down in the street, as a result of well armed drug cartels.

4) But it is not just innocent Mexican citizens and drug cartel members that get killed by our lost war on drugs. According to a December 4, 2012 Associated Press article, a U.S. Coast Guardsman was killed when a suspected drug cartel smuggling boat rammed a Coast Guard inflatable boat during an interdiction off the coast of California. The suspected cartel smuggling boat was tracked for several hours and eventually and successfully boarded, resulting in the arrest of two Mexicans after a brief struggle.

According to the reporting, the drug cartels have resorted to using smuggling boats to deliver their illegal drugs into the U.S. after it became much more difficult to do so over land at the California and Mexican border. Unfortunately, this new tactic resulted in the unnecessary death of a U.S. Coast Guard sailor, another unnecessary fatality in the war on drugs.

That’s enough for today. Innocent and unnecessary loss of life. Presidents admitting that the war on drugs, a war that they once championed, is a lost cause. Wasted lives and taxpayer wealth to no avail or advantage.

Yes, sounds like a typical Federal government operation. More on this ongoing fiasco tomorrow, with a focus on how this lost war on drugs is endangering our homeland security today in a very real way.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The David Patraeus Scandal: A Case Study In Shallow Political Class Thinking and Inane Problem Solving

Many times in this blog we have made the case that the current people of our political class are not the sharpest knives when it comes to problem definition, identifying the root causes of the identified problems, and implementing the correct solutions to eliminate those root causes. The fact that major problems such as our failing public education system, our lost war on drugs, our skyrocketing health care costs, an overwhelming national debt, etc. have been with us for what seems forever, and just keep getting worse, are just a few obvious examples of this problem solving deficiency in Washington.

More recently, the current and expected failures of Obamacare, the nonsensical economic stimulus programs such as Cash For Clunkers and Cash For Appliances, the fatal Fast and Furious drug running fiasco, and other such short term problems make one wonder how inept can Washington be, both short term and long term, to not be able to seemingly resolve any challenge. The Federal government has been around for over two hundred years, many of our current politicians have been in office for decades. You would think and hope that once in a while, given this experience, a problem, any problem would get resolved.

But then you hear a politician speak and examine their thought patterns and you realize why nothing has ever been solved. The latest example of such a case is relative to the ongoing sex scandal regarding former CIA Director David Petraeus. As you probably already know from a recent post,

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-latest-inductees-into-political.html)

and ongoing news reports and Congressional investigations and hearings, Petraeus had to resign his CIA Director post when it came to light that he had been involved in adulteress affair with his biographer for a long period of time.

This affair had the potential to put national and military security at risk since such behavior opened up Patraeus to the threat of blackmail since 1) he had been entrusted with the most top secret information and plans of our national security establishment and 2) he had been married for decades. Congressional hearings need to find out if any secrets were compromised or any intelligence or military operations (e.g. the terrorist attack at the U.S. Libyan consulate in Benghazi) were sub optimized as a result of the affair.

Before we talk about the dearth of politicians problem solving skills, let’s try to establish how much money Petraeus has made and was making as a result of his government service. Believe it or not, I could not find out online how much salary a CIA Director annually. I do not know if it is classified or just hard to find.

However, given that the President earns about $400,000 a year, members of Congress and top White House staff earn about $170,000 a year, it is probably a safe bet that the Director of the CIA is making several hundred thousand dollars a year. This would place him well within the top 3-4% of earners in the U.S. today.

This CIA salary is in addition to the money he made as a top general and how much money he will earn as a result of his Federal retirement benefits, as described by the Celebrity Net Worth website:

A four star Army General earns the military pay grade of “0-10″. The 0-10 base salary for someone with 38 cumulative years of service is $19,566.97 per month, or $234,803.64 annually. In 2010, at the peak of his Army career, Petraeus’s salary was $290,000 per year because he was serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Navy Operations, Commandant of the Marine Corps and Army/Air Force Chief of Staff. As a retired four star General, David Petraeus is entitled to an annual pension of $220,000 for the rest of his life. He’s also free to get a new job in retirement and therefore earn two incomes. On the other hand, if Petraeus loses his security clearance from this scandal, it may limit the types of jobs he would be able to take. Petraeus may also have cost himself the ability to join the lucrative speaking engagement circuit, which could have earned him $100,000 – $200,000 per event.

I review all of this to establish that Petraeus is probably not hurting for money, both short term and long term.

Which brings us to California Senator Diane Feinstein. The good Senator was recently questioned on the Sunday television talk show, “Meet The Press,” and was asked about the Petraeus adultery affair. Her answers make you really want to shake your head relative to her problem identification and root cause analysis abilities:

“Here’s a man, and you see Time Magazine, and you see the medals he has. You see the stars. One day, he takes all of that off. He’s in a plain blue suit like this. He looks no different from you or you or you. Having said that, there’s no entourage. There’s no driver. He gives an order at the CIA. There’s discussion. There’s flak. People don’t like this. And then he goes home to wash dishes. It is a major adjustment. I think we need to look at this transitioning of people. I think we need to look at our tours.”

Her actual video discussion can be accessed at:

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/feinstein-petraeus-cheated-because-he-had-no-entourage-no-driver-had-wash-own-dishes

So let me get this straight, as analyzed by Ms. Feinstein:

• The CIA Director gave in to his sexual urges, endangering the national and military security of the nation by opening himself up to the potential of blackmail, all because he now has to do the dishes.
• The CIA Director gave in to his sexual urges, endangering the national and military security of the nation by opening himself up to the potential of blackmail, all because he no longer had a driver to drive him around.
• Even though the CIA Director had made, was making, and will make enough money off of the American taxpayer to put himself in the top 3-4% all American wage earners, he could not afford to hire someone to do the dishes or drive himself around and thus, gave in to his sexual urges.
• Even though the CIA Director had made, was making, and will make enough money off of the American taxpayer to put himself in the top 3-4% all American wage earners, we need to spend more taxpayer money to ease his “transition” from a military life to a civilian life. This use of taxpayer wealth is apparently more important than helping the 23 million Americans who are currently unemployed or under employed, in Ms. Feinstein’s view.

Where do these political people live? The lack of a chauffeur or a dish washer is the cause for a potential national security breach? If that is the case, it is not Petraeus’ fault, it is the fault of whoever submitted him for the vital position of CIA Director and the fault of those in Congress who approved his appointment if washing dishes was enough to set the man off on the road to adultery.

Is it any wonder then that no problem facing the American public ever gets resolved? The really worrisome fact is that Senator Feinstein is the actual head of the important Senate Intelligence committee. If this is the depth of her problem solving skills, washing dishes causes adultery, then be scared, be very scared.

This is just another example of why Step 39 from “Love my Country, Loathe my Government" is so important. Step 39 would impose term limits on all Federal politicians, “one and done.” Letting current politicians stay in office for decades has not resolved any of our major issues. If we impose term limits, at least we have a chance to get some different people into Congress and the White House on a regular basis and hopefully, some of them might actually be able to resolve a problem or two.

Lord knows the current set of politicians sitting in Washington are unable to do any real problem analysis and solving, as witnessed by the latest from the head of the Senate Intelligence committee. Dish washing and chauffeurs, I am pretty that these were not the root causes of the adultery problems and resultant national security problems of David Petraeus. At least not in our world and our reality, a world and reality that I increasingly believe many of our politicians do not inhabit.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Latest Inductees Into The Political Class Hall Of Shame - A Congressman, A Senator, A General

As we get towards the end of the year I thought it the right time, especially given the latest flurry of political people acting badly, to run our first annual induction ceremony of new folks into the “Political Class Hall of Shame.” This Hall Of Shame is already chock full of politicians and other “public servants” acting badly, shamefully, and in many cases, criminally. These so-called “leaders” of our nation certainly do know how to shame themselves, their families, and their constituents.

Now, I am not one to pass moral judgment on many of these people. Not my right, not my responsibility. However, many of them acted in such a way that it resulted in wasted taxpayer wealth, endangered the lives of American citizens, called into question the integrity of our national institutions such as Congress, and in many cases, had the potential to endanger our national security by opening themselves up to potential blackmail efforts. In these cases of waste and endangerment, it is my right and the right of every American to call them out.

Before we get to this year’s new inductees, let’s take a trip down memory lane and review who is already in the Hall and what their accomplishments were that got them inducted:

• President Bill Clinton - serial adulterer and liar with a special citation for having adulteress sex right in the Oval Office.
• Senator John Edwards - serial liar and adulterer and liar with a special citation for committing adultery while his wife was fighting a fruitless battle for her life against cancer.
• New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey - adulterer and liar, with a special citation for putting his non-American citizen lover in charge of New Jersey’ homeland security government organization. This situation denied his lover and his organization access to sensitive Federal homeland security intelligence data since he was a non-citizen. This obviously put New Jersey residents more in harm’s way than other states’ citizens.
• New York Governor Eliot Spitzer - adulterer and liar, with a special citation for criminally violating the Mann Act which makes the interstate soliciting and transporting of prostitutes illegal.
• New York Congressman Anthony Weiner - adulterer and liar, with a special citation for using the latest technology (Twitter) to display body parts as part of his adultery activities.
• Nevada John Ensign - adulterer and liar with a special citation of chutzpah, actually committing adultery with his good friend’s wife who was also one of his staff’s chief advisers.
• South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford - adulterer and liar, with a special citation for originality, claiming he was out camping alone somewhere in the woods in the U.S. while he was actually down in South America with his lover.
• New York Congressman Charles Rangel whose many ethics and alleged criminal acts are too long to list here.
• Just about any former Illinois governor, many of which have spent time in prison illegal activities of on sort or another.
• In 1994, Illinois Congressman Mel Reynolds supposedly engaged in a sexual relationship with a 16 year-old. He claimed that charges were racially motivated and won the seat in re-election. The following year Reynolds resigned after being convicted of criminal sexual abuse, child pornography, and other charges.
• Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Vallaraigosa was widely seen as a “family man” until he separated from his wife due to an affair with Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas. The tryst terminated both careers, and their romance didn’t even last.
• At the start of his second presidential campaign, former U.S. Senator Gary Hart was rumored to be out womanizing and engaging in extramarital affairs. Hart dared the press to prove the rumors: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.” A few weeks later, the Miami Herald caught a young woman leaving Hart’s apartment. Hart still pleaded innocent until a photo surfaced – one in which a 29 year-old model sat on Hart’s lap aboard a yacht adequately named “Monkey Business.” Two reasons for this Senator to get into the stupidity wing of the Hall: daring the press to follow him and thinking he actually could avoid them finding out about his adultery and getting caught on a boat called “monkey Business.”
• Nevada governor Jim Gibbons filed for divorce from his wife during his first term in office. She alleged in the divorce proceedings that he was infatuated with one Reno woman and also had an affair with Playboy model Leslie Durant, who he was seen with at the Reno Rodeo. Gibbons later deposed that he hadn’t had sex in 15 years, let alone with a playmate, although he was caught sending over 800 text messages in just one month to the other Reno woman, all on a state-issued phone, getting him into the stupid wing.
• Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson - was sentenced to thirteen years in jail for accepting bribes, the longest term ever imposed on a Congressman on bribery and racketeering charges, with a special citation for hiding his bribery rewards in his freezer, lending credibility to the old saying, "cold cash." The FBI found the frozen money when they raided his home after a businesswoman felt she had been cheated by Jefferson in a business deal and turned to the FBI.
• Congressman Randy Cunningham of California received a sentence of eight years for taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors.
• Ohio Congressman Bob Ney received two and a half years in jail for taking bribes from a lobbyist.
• Congressman James Traficant of Ohio received a seven year sentence for bribery and racketeering. Mr. Traficant gets a special citation for humor. When he reputedly likened to Washinngton politicians to prostitutes, the same politicians were outraged and demanded an apology. He did apology...to all prostitutes for the comparison.
• Back in 2008, many of President Obama's nominees for high level government positions were found to have not paid their fair share of taxes including Tom Daschle, ex-long time Senator, and Tim Geithner, currently the Secretary of the Treasury. For most Americans, this type of tax evasion is at least a misdemeanor. For the political class, it sometimes feels like it is a way of life that has merited them a small place in the Hall of Shame.
• Kennedy family - definitely not enough time to explore this major wing of the Hall.

That’s just a highlight of what is in the Hall Of Shame. It does not include many other smaller acts of shame, how Congressional members use their insider information to trade stocks to their own personal financial advantage, how Congressional members postpone or terminate legislation that would be detrimental to companies’ IPOs, including Nancy Pelosi who has participated in ten or so IPOs in the past few years, reaping much financial reward in the process, how Congressional members use taxpayer money, via earmarks, to fortify their reelection campaign funds, etc.

But let’s talk about the latest entrants to the Political Class Hall Of Shame:

1) According to a recent CBS Chicago report, Illinois Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who is currently being treated for bipolar and other health issues, is working on a criminal plea deal on charges he misused campaign funds. Such a plea deal for misuse of campaign funds would include resigning his seat in Congress, pleading guilty to the misuse of campaign funds, repaying the money that he allegedly used for personal items, and spending time in jail. Based on similar cases in the past, he likely will serve some jail time, according to the CBS report.

While I feel sorry for the Congressman’s physical and health issues, they are not excuses for breaking the law. But given his Illinois background, really no surprise here. I will likely go into the Hall wing that already houses the criminal escapades of former Congressional members Ney, Cunningham, Traficant and Jefferson.

2) Two women from the Dominican Republic have publicly accused New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez of having paid them for sex earlier this year. Two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.

It appears, based on numerous news reports, that Menendez has been to the Dominican Republic a number of times over the years, often using the home and plane of campaign donor Salomon Melgen. Melgen is an ophthalmologist and owner of an eye clinic in Florida who has donated $14,700 to Menendez’s campaigns since 1993, with the bulk of it coming since he became a U.S. Senator, according to Federal Election Commission.

Three problems here, two of which include the integrity and potential risk of blackmail. Who is to say these prostitutes could have been working with non-friendly parties who could have used the trysts as blackmail material against the Senator. Who is to say that Melgen could not have used the prostitute instances of leverage for his own personal gain or the gain of people he was in partnership with? Blackmail is not a pretty affair and this U.S. Senator left him and the country open to the financial, integrity, and security components of potential blackmail.

The third problem gets the Senator into the stupid wing of the Hall Of Shame. If he had just paid the prostitutes the fees that he had agreed to, this story is likely to have not come to the forefront. Unfortunately, this wing is very crowded with past acts of stupidity of many, many other politicians.

3) The final entrant into the Hall Of Shame this year is a whopper. The Director of the CIA, the head of our nation’s largest spy organizations, David Patreaus, was forced to resign this week after a months long investigation by the FBI proved that he had been having a long term adulterous love affair with a woman who helped write his autobiography.

Two problems here, one very obvious. As Director of The CIA, Patreaus probably had access and in-depth knowledge of most, if not all, major CIA activities around the world. The potential for national security blackmail is off the charts. The Director has been married for 38 years, he had a long distinguished military career, and had a most critical job, who knows what he would have divulged under a blackmail situation. He had a lot to lose but still allowed the affair to go on for a long time, making him very susceptible to pressures and blackmail opportunities to protect all he stood for.

The second problem is that as the top spy in the country, leaving an electronic paper trail of provocative emails that detailed out the entire adultery escapade. How stupid, I would hope that we would have placed a smarter person as head of our top spy agency.

This is not the end of our discussion about the Director’s love affair. Congressional hearings about the affair and the Benghazi terrorist incident, of which the Director must have had an inmate awareness of the details, will be held this week. The potential for scandal, deceit, and cover ups is high. But today, we will settle for inducting the Director into the Hall Of Shame and putting him next to Menendez in the stupid wing for his use of emails to chat with his adultery partner.

Pretty disgraceful place this Hall Of Shame, for both the latest inductees and the current members. We will discuss the need to clean up our political processes in the next week or so in an effort to ensure the Hall Of Shame never gets any larger.

Our taxpayer wealth, Congressional integrity, and national security depend on us eventually shutting down this Hall so that adulterers, prostitutes, and Congressional criminals become a relic of our past, replaced with new politicians that actually care about America more than their financial and bodily needs.