Michael Phelps, Hypocrisy, and American Drug Policy

By John V. Santore

Obama campaign organizer, frmr congressional speechwriter

Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps was recently photographed using a marijuana bong at the home of a friend. The photographic evidence made a denial impossible, which led to release of the following statement today:

"I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again."

Not too long ago, Chris Matthews reviewed transitioning public attitudes towards marijuana by reviewing the statements of past presidential candidates about their own drug use, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama:
And during the last campaign, Stephen Colbert made light of the supposed "hope bong" then-candidate Obama was making available to the public:

All of this would be little more than an interesting and amusing cultural trend were it not for realities such as this:

A study released [in April, 2008] reported that between 1998 and 2007, the police arrested 374,900 people whose most serious crime was the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana offense.
That is more than eight times the number of arrests on those same charges between 1988 and 1997, when 45,300 people were picked up for having a small amount of pot... ...Nearly everyone involved in this wave of marijuana arrests is male: 90 percent were men, although national studies show that men and women use pot in roughly equal rates. And 83 percent of those charged in these cases were black or Latino, according to the study. Blacks accounted for 52 percent of the arrests, twice their share of the city's population. Whites, who are about 35 percent of the population, were only 15 percent of those charged -- even though federal surveys show that whites are more likely than blacks or Latinos to use pot.
Among the pretty large population of white people who have used pot and not been arrested for it is Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Asked during the 2001 campaign by New York magazine if he had ever smoked it, Mr. Bloomberg replied: "You bet I did. And I enjoyed it." After he was elected and his remarks were used in advertisements by marijuana legalization advocates, Mr. Bloomberg said his administration would vigorously enforce the laws.

While marijuana laws have changed over time, and while past administrations have attempted to show that the situation isn't as dire as it appears to be, drug policy in the United States is immensely hypocritical and destructive. Today, public figures justify past drug use as "youthful indiscretions" and the matter is dropped. But huge numbers of ordinary Americans are introduced to the jail system because of minor drug offenses, and as the records show, the overwhelmingly disproportionate nature of drug arrests creates a justified perception of injustice and both economic and racial bias.
Will Michael Phelps have to go to court for his actions? No. (Nor should he have to.) Will any law enforcement jurisdiction in America conduct a systematic raid of a college dorm at a prominent university with the goal of arresting everyone in possession of marijuana? Of course not. If such an action was taken on a broad scale, the arrests would likely be in the thousands. At the same time, will poor Americans, overwhelmingly minority in ethnicity, continue to be arrested by local police for the possession of small amounts of pot? Absolutely.
Before he was president, Obama indicated that he was well aware that marijuana laws needed to be reformed and that the mythology of the "war on drugs" was nothing more than a fairy tale:

But this is only part of the problem. A 2006 ACLU report documented the difference in sentencing between the possession of crack and of cocaine:

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, passed during the media frenzy following the death of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, established mandatory minimum sentences for possession of specific amounts of cocaine. However, it also established a 100-to-1 disparity between distribution of powder and crack cocaine. For example, distributing just five grams of crack carries a minimum five-year federal prison sentence, while distributing 500 grams of powder cocaine carries the same sentence. The discrepancy remains despite repeated recommendations by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to Congress to reconsider the penalties.
Because of its relative low cost, crack cocaine is more accessible to poor people, many of whom are African Americans. Conversely, powder cocaine is much more expensive and tends to be used by more affluent white Americans.
The report includes recent data that indicates that African Americans make up 15 percent of the country's drug users, yet they make up 37 percent of those arrested for drug violations, 59 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense. More than 80 percent of the defendants sentenced for crack offenses are African American, despite the fact that more than 66 percent of crack users are white or Hispanic.

In the past, Obama has spoken out against the continuation of policies like this one. From a 2007 interview:

Asked if he would eliminate discriminatory laws that punish crack cocaine possession so heavily that it would take 100 times more in powder cocaine for the same sentence, Obama started off by saying the law was a mistake. He talked about his record in the Illinois Senate.
"I want to point out that I fought provisions like this and in many cases voted against provisions like this, knowing the way they could be exploited politically," Obama told the Trotter Group of African-American newspaper columnists last week after addressing the National Association of Black Journalists. "I thought it was the right thing to do. Even though the politics of it was tough back in the '90s, as a state legislator I took some tough votes to make sure we didn't see the perpetration of these kinds of unjust laws."...
...He said that if he were to become president, he would support a commission to issue a report "that allows me to say that based on the expert evidence, this is not working and it's unfair and unjust. Then I would move legislation forward."

In that same interview, Obama linked drug problems to larger issues of economic and opportunity disparities in America:

Obama asked if he could make a "broader" point. "Even if we fix this, if it was a 1-to-1 ratio, it's still a problem that folks are selling crack. It's still a problem that our young men are in a situation where they believe the only recourse for them is the drug trade. So there is a balancing act that has to be done in terms of, do we want to spend all our political capital on a very difficult issue that doesn't get at some of the underlying issues; whether we want to spend more of that political capital getting early childhood education in place, getting after-school programs in place, getting summer school programs in place."
Obama claimed, "I'm not suggesting it's an either/or but I'm suggesting that an even higher priority for me is getting young men and increasingly young women to stop getting involved in the drug trade in the first place. And that's going to require pretty heavy lifting. That's going to require some billions of dollars of expenditure that aren't there right now."

Addressing the economic and social situations which encourage people to use and sell drugs is critical. But it is also important to take advantage of changing public attitudes in order to do away with hypocritical drug policies that undermine public faith in an impartial justice system and disproportionately harm segments of society which are already teetering on the brink of collapse. Public apologies like those issued today by Phelps ring hollow because he will not be persecuted for his actions by either a court of law or the court of public opinion. The fact the he feels he must apologize is simply an effort to pay homage to past American mores that no longer impact private behavior. But those mores still impact drug policies, policies that continue to hurt citizens to this very day. Some steps to mitigate the worst impacts of these broken laws, like those governing sentencing for crack/cocaine offenses have been taken in recent years. Let's hope that President Obama, who saw the impact of bad drug laws first-hand in Chicago, will continue these reforms.

Constitutional Common Sense Solutions

By Betsy Ross


The American Economy: Real Change
With the economic crisis now foremost in American's minds, pushing back their concerns for the ongoing War in Iraq (a manipulated crisis at it's core, occurring just prior to the 2008 elections mind you), below are some suggestions for getting our economy back on track the "old fashioned," way - by abiding by the Constitution. I am concerned with Obama's suggestions, since as a Constitutional lawyer you would think he might consult it with respect to his policy making before making any more of his mesmerizing speeches. But it is clear this Administration is simply another promise of "change" without substance, that much has been clear since the changes in position he has made on both the war, and his economic plans.

1. Rescind the 700 Billion Dollar fraud of a bailout that was rushed through before the American people could become none the wiser, and which was covered up by the mainstream media acting in concert. This bailout was nothing more than a "payback" for those members of Congress, and the two presidential candidates, for their loans for their campaigns, billed at the American people's expense and will result in inflationary taxes that, no matter what pittance is rebated to the American people in the form of a stimulus package will only stimulate the coffers of the government once again in tax revenue. Obviously, the individual Americans had had it with the two party system that has merged essentially into one in defrauding the American people time and time again for their own agendas and purposes. It is called bi-partisanship, but is actually treason against the Constitution. A Ponzi scheme if ever there was one.


Instead:

2. Call in the loans of all countries whose balance sheets are now in the black, and whose currency is thus now also more stable, for all the foreign aid and loans we have made to them while our own economy has sunk in the process. No more foreign aid unless and until America gets some of those loans repaid, with interest.

3. Recall immediately all non-essential service personnel now serving in Iraq, leaving only the career army and diplomatic corp to oversee the arrangement of the transferring of the costs of the rebuilding efforts to their own government, since we were so very gracious in dethroning their latest dictator rather than abiding by the original Congressional Resolution calling for the capture of those strictly responsible for 9/11....Osama bin Laden and all those who directly gave him aid and comfort. The costs of this ongoing frivolous conflict are putting our children and grandchildren's welfare and continued safety at risk, and also their own economic futures. If Mr. Obama cares about his two daughters, I am sure he would see the wisdom in such a position, unless it is his own financial future which is more important, or temporary political legacy as the "winner" of a "no-win" conflict. How can you defeat any enemy whose personal beliefs hold that dying for their jihad earns them their right in heaven? The logic of this continuing war based on that simple premise continues to astound me, and a good many other Americans.

4. Pass effective legislation calling for accountability of the Federal Reserve, and no more independent actions outside the oversight of Congress, per our Constitution that gives Congress, and Congress alone, the power to print and value our currency. Since that provision was unlawfully transferred by the Wilson Administration, then at the very least also provision should have been included to provide for strict regulation and oversight, not our Congress essentially working for them and their agendas. Also, enact sufficient oversight and regulation of those private banks who are recipients also of loans from the Federal Reserve and their policies in their dealings with the public. No more freewheeling and fraudulent bailouts, especially not for global industries, such as AIG.

5. Repeal the 16th Amendment that affords the majority of legislator's time and now a year around Congress to be bribed and forsake their oaths of office to the American people in favor of corporate and global interests and using their tax dollars in order to so do. We are at this point funding the entire world's economy, and tying our economy into that of other nations is how we got to where we are today, in debt and at the mercy of those international bankers.

6. Repeal the 17th Amendment which then would again afford state legislative election of Senators, so that they again have a voice at the federal levels, and are not simply lobbyists at the federal trough for pork bills as another special interest group. No campaign election fraud with respect to the election of Senators, and Constitutional government once again. Institute the provisions that campaign contributions may only be accepted for House members from citizens, not corporate interests, that live in their districts. No outside state or federal funding. You cannot have a government of the people when the representatives serve outside interests, and not the people at all.

7. Since corporations only pay income taxes on their profits, tax them to the hilt. Then maybe those profits will trickle down to either the employees, or into research and development costs in order to protect their investment the old fashioned way - by reinvesting in it rather than the Boards of Directors and upper level management skimming the profits. Institute regulations that call for investor/stockholder approval of all severance and bonus packages to eliminate "golden parachutes." The investors own the company, so should have a say in the compensation for which these top level management employees are entitled and worth. Not them self-determining, in many instances, their own salaries and severance packages.

Those are just a few, but there are so many more Constitutional abridgements which have been enacted, that it would take days to address them all. But those "Lucky 7" would truly be the legal and Constitutional way to reverse what has brought us to this point, at least initially.

India Should Not Repeat American Mistakes

By Joseph D’Souza

Hyderabad, Dec 20 : After the Mumbai terrorist attacks, India must not commit the same mistakes as the United States in its war on terror. A pursuit of justice must treat people of all faiths with respect and, at the end of the day, encourage diversity.

India’s response to the brazen attacks on Mumbai which began on November 26, 2008, provides a great opportunity for addressing all forms of terrorism the country has experienced in the last few decades.

In the last year alone, bomb blasts were carried out by extremist Islamists, fundamentalist Hindus, and Maoist groups against the general population. In fact, over the last few years India is only second to Iraq in the death toll due to terrorist attacks as recorded by the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, D.C. This doesn’t account for premeditated mob violence which has increasingly targeted minorities as seen in the ethnic cleansing of Dalit and Tribal Christians in the Orissa state in December 2007 and August 2008.

All these extremist groups threaten what is called “the idea of India,” which refers to a united nation made up of diverse religious and ethnic groups.

Simply put, we cannot afford to let any form of terrorism go unpunished. India cannot let the extremist Hindu groups who have displaced tens of thousands of Dalit Christians in Orissa escape justice.

The public anger after the Mumbai attacks is largely against those who have not governed India well in addition to the terrorists. India clearly needs to revamp its internal security structures. Indian politicians and the Indian government are searching for appropriate ways to respond to terrorists beyond India’s borders. And India is well within its rights to go after the non-state players who carried out the Mumbai attacks. India can hope for a united response with the U.S., Britain, Israel, and others whose citizens were killed in the attacks.

But India needs to work hard to undo the marginalization of Muslims in recent years by political parties who subscribe to fundamentalist Hindu ideology. India must firmly deal with ‘Hindutva’ terrorism (see recent articles in India Today and Tehelka magazine). India must build goodwill with the 150 million strong Muslim population whose leaders have condemned the Mumbai attacks. India must not target innocent Muslims inside or outside its borders for ill-devised political ends.

America’s mistake was to launch an indiscriminate war against Muslims who were not connected to 9/11. America’s decision makers didn’t take enough time to look at the contexts in which vulnerable Muslims are recruited to become terrorists. The American war on terror resulted in human rights abuses. It became associated with racial profiling. And thus, a just cause lost the goodwill of the world given in the aftermath of 9/11.

If the Indian government and political rulers repeat American mistakes, we will end up furthering more terrorism of every kind given the great religious and ethnic diversity of India. This is the time — when Indians feel as one and are united against terrorism — for the Indian government to act fairly and not take foolish actions. We hope citizens passionate about true justice from around the globe will encourage our leaders toward these goals in the days ahead.

* Joseph D’souza is the international president of the Dalit Freedom Network. He lives in Hyderabad, India and works out of Hyderabad, London, and Denver.