Saturday, September 22, 2007

Orcs ambush Tolkien heir and seize supply of Halflings' leaf Link 10:38:31 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Privatizing the Drug War It's bad enough when government agencies are all lobbying for a chunk of drug war cash. But when you get private companies into the act as well, then the entire power structure has a financial stake in continuing and escalating the destruction. Lucrative private players have been heavily in the mix for years, from drug testing companies to privately owned prisons -- all lobbying for harsher drug laws. A couple of other instances have been in the news lately. Link The Defense Department has picked five companies, four of them from the Washington area, for a contract to support the Pentagon's counter-narcoterrorism activities. The government may spend as much as $15 billion through the five-year contract. The local companies are Arinc of Annapolis, Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, Raytheon Technical Services of Reston and Northrop Grumman Information Technology of McLean. The fifth company is Blackwater USA of Moyock, N.C. Yes, we're talking about that Blackwater: Senior Iraqi officials repeatedly complained to U.S. officials about Blackwater USA's alleged involvement in the deaths of numerous Iraqis, but the Americans took little action to regulate the private security firm until 11 Iraqis were shot dead last Sunday, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. [...] In the United States, Blackwater is facing a possible federal investigation over allegations that it illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq that later might have been sold on the black market. And we're also paying them to help fight the drug war. A war that isn't really a war, but has all the casualties and corruption of war. Closer to home... Via The Agitator... A private firm (Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation), has been stopping motorists and asking them to submit to tests of their breath, blood and saliva -- assisted by sherrif's deputies. Declan McCullagh analyzes this fishy enterprise, learning that it receives over $35 million in taxpayer dollars (its only source of revenue appearing to be government grants and contracts. PIRE seems to specialize in devising new and intrusive ways of government meddling in personal lives. And apparently, this kind of work pays well. Robert Carpenter, PIRE's CEO, was paid $221,785 in 2005 Ted Langevin, a VP/CFO, was paid $200,760 Joel Grube, a PIRE research director, was paid $237,075 Ted Miller, a PIRE research director, was paid $192,444 Jan van der Eijk, IS director, was paid $194,532 Paul Gruenwald, a science director, was paid $212,437 Robert Saltz, an associate director, was paid $191,527 Genevive Ames, a staff director, was paid $183,770 Isn't it nice to know that you're paying for all this? 9:57:29 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Where are the African-American leaders when it comes to the War on Drugs? I bring this up from time to time... partly in the hopes of provoking a response. No particular bit of news that set this one off -- I just happened to be looking up something at the Black Congressional Caucus website. Given that blacks are disproportionately impacted by the drug war and that the drug war is the largest factor in the massive disenfranchisement of black voters, I was once again completely dumbfounded that I could find almost nothing at all about the war on drugs anywhere on that site. The closest I found was a mention in a past newsletter that one of its members had sponsored a bill making it harder to buy cold medicines since they can be precursors for methamphetamine! The drug war is not anywhere on their agenda (pdf) or even their blog. No calls for crack/powder disparity sentencing reform. No calls for legislation preventing the next Tulia. They do, however, have a riveting report on America's Switch to Digital Television (pdf). I had hopes for another group -- National African American Drug Policy Coalition, but as far as I can tell from their website and Google/News searches, they don't appear to actually be doing anything. So where is the African-American leadership? Do they secretly believe that blacks are genetically predisposed to commit crime and that the drug war is necessary to "prune" the race? Do they simply believe, by massive coincidence, that a larger percentage of blacks "had it coming"? Are they so afraid of losing political power that they'd rather see huge numbers of blacks ripped from their families and incarcerated, rather than publicly touch the "drug war issue"? (And yes, I am purposely asking offensive questions, and I'll keep doing it until I hear the leadership speak.) Sometimes when I see the African-American "leadership", I feel like I've stumbled into some kind of twilight zone episode -- a town whose children are regularly sacrificed to an unseen monster, and everyone keeps quiet about it for fear of something bad happening to the town -- or, perhaps, The Lottery. I miss Martin Luther King, Jr. 8:43:46 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []