Politics Plus

Today started on the rough side with a morning blood sugar low but the day culminated in some fun at the movies — I saw the new Star Wars movie finally.  The theatre was packed, but pleasantly, the seats were new and so very comfortable.  I haven't been to a movie in over a year.  I did manage to nap about 12:30 am as I was trying to finish this post . . . I was cold.  So now I am warm and finishing what I started.

The Guardian — Donald Trump, billionaire Republican presidential frontrunner, has changed his mind about wages: Americans aren’t earning enough. He’s also not keen on Wall Street. The shift has Trump on a collision course with Democrat Bernie Sanders – while oddly agreeing with many of his points.

“Wages in are [sic] country are too low, good jobs are too few, and people have lost faith in our leaders. We need smart and strong leadership now!” Trump tweeted on Monday.

The opinion appeared to reverse what the Republican frontrunner said in November during the fourth Republican debate. Asked if he was sympathetic to the protesters demanding a $15-an-hour minimum wage, Trump said: “I can’t be.”

Flip-flops!  No matter how Trump tries to dress them, patriotic stars and stripes, or oh the horror, a diversity of colours, flip-flops are still just flip-flops.  For someone who says he means what he says, and says what he means, Trump has a great stock of flip-flops!

Huffington Post — “Is this light ever going to turn green, or are we stuck here forever?” he says at one intersection.

While he waits, the Kmart across the street sparks a memory. Fischer used to shoot up heroin in the parking lot. “This is all my old stomping grounds,” he says half in awe, half in anger at his former self. “I used to drive up and down this road a thousand times a night.”  …

Fischer is going to an opioid addiction treatment clinic. In Fort Collins, a doctor will meet with him for a half hour and write him a prescription for a month’s supply of buprenorphine, a medication that blunts his cravings for heroin and other short-acting opioids. Fischer has spent a dozen or so years dealing with his addiction. He’d tried 12-step and abstinence-only programs three times, but each attempt at recovery had ended in relapse.

The public health establishment, including the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the World Health Organization, has said that medications like buprenorphine (and methadone), when coupled with counseling, give people with opioid addiction the best odds for recovery. Buprenorphine is also more difficult to misuse than heroin. The synthetic opioid is what’s known as a partial agonist — meaning there’s a limit to how much the medication can affect people who use it.  …

Fischer credits the trips to Colorado with saving his life. With the help of his medication, he has been in recovery for 13 months. He stopped hiding from family members and settled down with his girlfriend. The recent birth of his son, Fischer says, has given him a new sense of purpose.  …

There’s a reason why Fischer and his mother must wake up before dawn, share road space with 18-wheelers and mule deer, and waste a day off from work. Addiction medicine is still not mainstream medicine. The federal government has helped to keep it that way.

In Squatch’s Open Thread 29/12/2015, I presented an article about how Portugal had decriminalised drugs and began treating drug addiction as a healthcare issue rather than a punitive issue.  Perhaps this is a step towards seeing addiction in the US for what it is . . . a healthcare issue. But lawmakers and government administration must see addiction for what it is . . . a healthcare issue.

Foreign Policy — Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s last reformist president, and another figure close to Khomeini, is less likely to be seen in public as the elections approach. Exemplifying the tension at the top of the political system, Khatami’s image is banned by the authorities, after being cast aside and dubbed a “seditionist” by the regime ever since the pro-democracy protests of 2009. However, the former president has shown he still has political influence: It was he who urged Mohammad Reza Aref, a reformist, to withdraw in the 2013 presidential election, which allowed Rouhani to win by consolidating the support of moderate voters.

But there are other members of Iran’s political system who want Khomeini to stay out of public life. His potential adversaries know him as a moderate cleric, similar to Rouhani, but much younger and with reformist instincts. Already weakened and angry at Rouhani’s nuclear deal, Iran’s conservative political faction is anxious that the Feb. 26 elections for the Assembly of Experts and the parliament could see their influence reduced further. If things go really badly for the conservatives, they could even be reduced to third place in parliament — lagging behind moderates backed by the president and a quiet but potentially reinvigorated reformist faction.

And we thought American politics were filled with twists and turns.  If the US, including its citizenry, is going to call Iran an enemy, then it pays to know what or who it is standing against.  Interesting too, Iran has a conservative faction, "Republicans" if you like, that want to stand in the way of progress and peace.  Click through for the rest of the article.

My Universe — 

And all he wants to do is order some take-out kibble!

I was sitting here at my desk when my desk began to shake very noticeably.  Thank goodness for the internet as I googled 'seismic activity bc' and learned that there was a 4.8 earthquake just north of Victoria at about 23:40, the time my desk began shaking.  My little girl was asleep under my desk and momentarily opened her eyes.  She is asleep again, but I can still feel my heart going thumpty-thumpt!  OK, I'll be awake for yet a while tonight.

Mother Jones — "Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is so far outside the historic American model of constitutionally limited government and the rule of law that it is the perfect case study of the pathologies that infect our bureaucracies at the federal level," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich solemnly intoned in his opening statement as an expert witness at a congressional hearing on December 16. "It is dictatorial. It is unaccountable. It is practically unrestrained in expanding on its already expansive mandate from Congress. And it is contemptuous of the rights, values, and preferences of ordinary Americans."

Newty is at it again . . . lie after lie!  I am not saying the CFPB is perfect, but it is needed to keep the financial vultures off the backs of ordinary people.  Having been in the financial services industry for over 40 years, and being one that supports the rights of consumers, Newty is all wet! What is truly disturbing is the apparent lack of awareness of this agency and its role by the public.

Truthdig — 

The difference with the “bail-in” is that the order of creditor seniority is changed. In the end, it amounts to the cronies (other banks and government) and non-cronies. The cronies get 100% or more; the non-cronies, including non-interest-bearing depositors who should be super-senior, get a kick in the guts instead. . . .

In principle, depositors are the most senior creditors in a bank. However, that was changed in the 2005 bankruptcy law, which made derivatives liabilities most senior. Considering the extreme levels of derivatives liabilities that many large banks have, and the opportunity to stuff any bank with derivatives liabilities in the last moment, other creditors could easily find there is nothing left for them at all.

Credit to Politics Plus Were They Really TBTF?

As of September 2014, US derivatives had a notional value of nearly $280 trillion. A study involving the cost to taxpayers of the Dodd-Frank rollback slipped by Citibank into the “cromnibus” spending bill last December found that the rule reversal allowed banks to keep $10 trillion in swaps trades on their books. This is money that taxpayers could be on the hook for in another bailout; and since Dodd-Frank replaces bailouts with bail-ins, it is money that creditors and depositors could now be on the hook for.

There is a great need for the return of Glass-Steagall to separate the risky investment business, currently pegged at some $280 trillion in 2014, from daily deposit banking.  Without it, everyday depoitors like you and I could lose all our savings.  To effect that change will require an absence of Republicans in Congress, but also an absence of banksters writing the rules, no matter what party governs.

Policy.mic — In 2001, the Portuguese government did something that the United States would find entirely alien. After many years of waging a fierce war on drugs, it decided to flip its strategy entirely: It decriminalized them all.

If someone is found in the possession of less than a 10-day supply of anything from marijuana to heroin, he or she is sent to a three-person Commission for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction, typically made up of a lawyer, a doctor and a social worker. The commission recommends treatment or a minor fine; otherwise, the person is sent off without any penalty. A vast majority of the time, there is no penalty.

Fourteen years after decriminalization, Portugal has not been run into the ground by a nation of drug addicts. In fact, by many measures, it's doing far better than it was before.

What Portugal has done is change its paradigms around addiction from a punative to a health care focus.  We treat smoking and drinking, both addictions for some people, as health care issues.  Why would we not treat drug addiction in a similar way?

My Universe — I could not decide which to use so you get all three!