Ken Burns on Prohibition

Tonight I watched Part II of Ken Burns' excellent new documentary, "Prohibition." I highly recommend it (and you can watch Part I, "A Nation of Drunkards," here). Here's the bottom line of Prohibition:

Prohibition turned law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice system, caused illicit drinking to seem glamorous and fun, encouraged neighborhood gangs to become national crime syndicates, permitted government officials to bend and sometimes even break the law, and fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded the social contract all across the country.

If only Americans would open their eyes and acknowledge that our raging drug war is Prohibition redux, and that it is causing the same kinds of destructive problems as Prohibition.

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Citizens United revisited

At In These Times, Joel Bleifuss sums up the damage caused by The United States Supreme Court decision of Citizen's United:

In a political system where profit-driven corporations control both the nation’s dominant political parties and the legislative agenda, it is unlikely that any policy initiatives that disadvantage corporate interests will thrive. Citizens United creates a rocky road indeed for universal healthcare, legislation to combat climate change, a clean energy policy, an economy geared toward butter rather than guns, a tax structure that provides funding for human needs, an agricultural policy that serves family farmers, ethics legislation to regulate lobbyists, prohibitions against environmental toxins and an economy that provides a living wage to all willing workers.

. . .

And by curtailing transparency, the decision “profoundly affected the nation’s political landscape,” the Center for Responsive Politics wrote in its analysis of the November 2010 general election. Citizens United allowed nonprofit 501(c)4 and 501(c)5 organizations “to spend unlimited amounts of money running … political advertisements while not revealing their donors.” Among the center’s other findings:

• “Corporate donations are likely higher than reported, as conservative nonprofit groups spent $121 million [in the 2010 general election] without disclosing where the money came from.”

• Since the 2006 midterm elections, the percentage of spending from undisclosed donors has risen from 1 to 47 percent.

• In 2010, 72 percent of political ad dollars from outside groups would have been prohibited in 2006.

This article examines several approaches being floated for combatting the destructive effects of Citizens United, including ways of amending the United States Constitution.

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Girl Scouts hammer cookie customers who give them bad checks

A few years ago, I dared to touch the third rail of alleged child entrepreneurialship when I suggested that instead of buying Girl Scout cookies, people give the Girl Scouts a direct cash donation. By offering to give the little girl at the door $5 cash (while her mother dutifully stands next to her prodding her to utter the sales pitch), it would be the equivalent of buying 10 boxes of sugary cookies (I had been told that the local troop only gets 50 cents for each $4 box of cookies sold). I stirred up quite a hornet’s nest by writing that article, despite the fact that I wrote it with good intentions (I was concerned about the top-heavy high paid administration of the national Girl Scouts organization and I was cognizant that almost 100 million Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes). Take a look at the 128 comments to that post and see the commotion yourself. Now for another observation about the Girl Scouts. Yesterday I learned that the Girl Scouts have sued hundreds of people in Missouri courts (and presumably tens of thousands of people nationwide). The problem is that many people are handing the Girl Scouts bad checks when it comes time to pay for the cookies. Enter “Girl Scouts” in the “Litigant Name Search” at the Missouri Case Net website. You’ll find 80 pages of law suits brought in Missouri, most of them where the Girl Scouts have sued customers who allegedly gave the Girl Scouts bad checks as payment for cookies. In the City of St. Louis City alone, you’ll see ten pages of these suits on Case Net each of those pages listing eight suits.

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