Conniving Rats – Roger Ingalls

*WARNING: ANGRY POST*

To avoid dissension within the ranks; I rarely speak negatively about President Obama. But there comes a time when you just have to say what’s on your mind. Now, is that time.

Whenever the Obama Administration asks Americans for input on policy via social media sponsored by Facebook or through the We the People website, the number one issue proposed by citizens is the legalization of medical cannabis.

During the Facebook interviews, the President never addresses the medical issue but instead condescendingly laughs before moving on. And recently, the administration released a negative response to the peoples’ popular cannabis petition posted on the White House’s We the People site.

The response referenced the usual FDA and Institute of Health naysayers that employ ex-pharma executives and lobbyist. These organizations have more foxes in the hen house than there are hens! Instead of snickering at the peoples’ requests, the President should be laughing at these government groups because they truly are jokes – they’re big business puppets.

Beyond the lies spattered throughout the release, the most troublesome aspect was the carefully worded phase “smoked marijuana” with the word “smoke” in italic.

This cleverly worded phrase is a setup. The release is setting the stage for big pharma to step in and take an organic medicine and turn it into a processed drug that can generate large revenues while making it illegal for small existing businesses to provide a natural low cost product. It will also prevent people from growing their own organic medicine. In this release, the Obama administration is saying that organic cannabis (that is commonly smoked) is bad but marijuana processed by big business is worth investigating.

It’s no accident that the President has taken this position. Big pharma is one of the three biggest contributors to political campaigns.

Just once, I’d like a politician to stand up and speak honestly. Perhaps something like this: “My fellow Americans, I’m sorry. I cannot push for the legalization of medical cannabis. Even though this organic and safe medicine would obsolete 30 to 50% of today’s expensive and dangerous pharmaceuticals, I can not make cannabis legal. I sold my soul to the biggest bidder and you, my deceived friends, are not the highest bidder. My bed belongs to big pharma. Again, I’m sorry but you are irrelevant.”

Come November 2012 I may change my tune but today, President Obama and Big Pharma are conniving rats.

Support your local Occupy Movement; it’s a voice that politicians and big business fear.

Fear Creates Relevance.

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Roger Ingalls is well traveled and has seen the good and bad of many foreign governments. He hopes his blogging will encourage readers to think more deeply about the American political system and its impact on US citizens and the international community.

Don’t Blame The President

Personally I don’t blame the President. I know, I know, I’ve just lost half my potential audience (at least those in the US). So let me just add, I’m not sure that the once owner of the Texas Rangers is to blame either (and now I’ve lost the Texans).

I blame Aaron Sorkin. You can’t create seven seasons of brilliance, of optimism, of government making progress. It is simply not fair. It was a tease. I am, of course, referring to West Wing. It was so easy to watch while you had stodgy Republican governance. West Wing was about a visionary liberal President, whose staff was able to maneuver through the intransigence of opposition.

Fast-forward a few years and fiction has become reality…well sort of. We have a liberal and visionary President, but reality has a tougher script. Now you find that it is not so easy to negotiate ideas in to law and implementation.

West Wing generated a huge following. We recognized that some episodes were brilliant while others were merely excellent. We learned that most of the characters were far from perfect and sometimes the plot didn’t always have a happy ending. But we never stopped following season after season.

I don’t understand how someone can vote in the Obama Administration one moment, showing their disgust and discontent for a recession built upon at least two terms of fiscal mismanagement and blatant greed. Then they watch as the party who held the reins for most of the past decade, do their best to sabotage any realistic economic strategy without suggesting any constructive alternatives. Finally, a mere 20 months afterwards, these memory-challenged citizens have now created the perfect government framework to lead us nowhere but to an age of stagnation.

West Wing is no more. Seven seasons is all we have.  Now it is just a question of reruns and fond memories. Unfortunately, TiVo-ing government is not a luxury that any of us can afford.

Here’s to a year of change we all need to move forward.
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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at www.alonshalev.com

 

 

 

Millennials – Think of Rome & Go Vote!

I love the millennial generation. I work with students on the campuses of San Francisco and I revel in their confidence, their optimism, their drive for hands-on philanthropy. But if I have one complaint it is that they have become accustomed to instant gratification. They have an almost naive belief that if you play by the rules then the system will do the right thing.

Buoyed by promise of change and a sense of empowerment at having come of age to vote, these fine young people put a candidate in the White House who promoted the same values – the system can work if we believe in it.

What the candidate and his staff forgot to mention is that he was taking office after eight years of chronic mismanagement the repercussions of which had not yet finished wreaking their damage. The candidate and his party assumed that it was understood that it would take time to right the ship.

The millennials didn’t understand that. Neither did they understand how destructive an opposition can be (neither do most of us it should be noted). Remember how long it took to build Rome, and how the empire was destroyed by its own apathy.

The Obama administration can make the changes it promised, but it needs support in the House and Senate. It is ironic that he might lose this opportunity not because of those who oppose him, but because of the apathy of a generation who gave him the chance.

Rome was not rebuilt in a day and President Obama needs you to go to the polls. For the sake of the country, whatever your politics – go vote!
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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at www.alonshalev.com