by sherry mann
“This tea party movement can be a healthy thing if they are making us justify every dollar of taxes we raise and every dollar of money we’ve spent, but when you get mad, sometimes you end up producing the exact opposite result of what you say you are for.”
Bill Clinton on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Can that really be true? Let’s look at a few examples:
War on Drugs
The “War on Drugs” was a term was first used by President Richard Nixon in 1969. Since then, the initiative has had countless laws, initiatives and policies have gone into effect which were supposed to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of everything from pot to heroine. According to Wikipedia:
- In 1970, the Nixon administration implemented the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970.
- In 1973, the Drug Enforcement Agency was created to replace the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
- In 1988 Ronald Reagan created the Office of National Drug Control Policy for central coordination of drug-related legislative, security, diplomatic, research and health policy throughout the government. The director of ONDCP is commonly known as the Drug Czar. The position was raised to cabinet-level status by Bill Clinton in 1993.
Obviously, the drug war saves lives by reducing murders.
Okay, maybe that was a bad example.
April 17th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »
by David Kendall
Global Research
March 26, 2010
Malnutrition comes in a delightful assortment of colorful flavors nowadays. But poverty and obesity are a correlation that Americans find hard to swallow.
“Genetics and family history can predict whether you will become obese but then so can your ZIP code,” says Adam Drewnowski, world-renowned leader in innovative research approaches for the prevention and treatment of obesity, and Director of the Nutritional Sciences Program at the University of Washington in Seattle. In December of 2003, Drewnowski said, “If poverty and obesity are truly linked, it will be a major challenge to stay poor and thin.” [1]
In a more recent interview regarding her new “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity, First Lady Michelle Obama argues: “A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year. This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.” [2]
It seems morbid that national security is Michelle Obama’s primary concern regarding obesity in American children. After all, raising healthy American children to become dead American soldiers doesn’t seem like a viable health care objective. But aside from that, poverty is directly correlated with obesity in Americans of all ages. So isn’t American poverty an even worse security threat than American obesity?
March 28th, 2010 | Posted in Web-Only Content | Read More »