Robert "Bobby" Charles: The Enduring Presence of the Founders

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/14/charles-the-enduring-presence-of-the-founders/?page=all

By Robert Charles, originally published on February 14, 2014 - The Washington Times

History casts important shadows that don’t fade with time.

The year was 1774. The Declaration of Independence was still two years off, and liberty for those who called themselves Americans was far from inevitable.

What all Americans recognized, however, was a simple truth.

The imperial British government was, with inordinate haste, promulgating laws intended to snuff out provincial and individual liberty, aiming to shut down opposition to its central authority.

Moreover, laws protecting individuals against that authority were suddenly going unenforced.

The toxic mix — aggressive criminalization of formerly noncriminal acts and blatant nonenforcement of liberty-assuring laws — was more than unsettling.

It created a wave of fear. It also awoke the sleepiest of early Americans, who saw it was not right.

Thomas Jefferson took up his pen.

He produced a short piece about basic rights, not the Declaration for which he would later be famous, but a little piece titled “The Rights of British America.”

He hoped to convince the overreaching British government to pull back, show restraint, slow the juggernaut of oppression, and remember that sovereignty belongs to the people, not to a government.

In his essay, Jefferson wrote that “unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations” were curbing basic liberties.

He noted that, since the beginning of time, these liberties had belonged to individuals.

He explained that “his majesty” had begun unilateral assertion of formerly legislative powers, and that the crown was undertaking imperial exercise of “wanton power,” and that “rights of human nature are deeply wounded by this infamous practice.”

Jefferson, in his inimitable way, noted that “this is so shameful an abuse of power trusted with his majesty for all purposes, as if not reformed would call for some legal restrictions.”

He closed noting that “your majesty or your governors have carried this power beyond every limit known or provided for by the laws.”

There he left it.

Meantime, Benjamin Franklin had a word to say.

He penned a piece in 1773 titled “Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One.”

Among Franklin’s “rules,” in this sardonic parody, he listed what a government should do to properly alienate the people.

He noted “a great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges.”

He suggested the king “contrive to punish” those who appeared to be “friends of liberty.”

When appointees did something “odious,” the king should “recall and reward them with pensions,” putting them to pasture with profit.

He suggests veterans be “harassed with novel taxes,” that the empire find ways to reduce “security in property,” and “remember to make your arbitrary tax more grievous for your provinces” than those at the seat of power.

That was the last humorous piece Franklin wrote about the king.

We inhabit a world that was once founded on the words of these great lovers of liberty.

In this new world, we now find novel “encroachments and usurpations,” either by regulation, executive order or one-sided, vote-then-read legislation.

We find growing confusion over the sanctity of individual liberty, with invasions of privacy, incursions into formerly sacrosanct constitutional rights in the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendments to our Constitution.

We witness the criminal investigation of seasoned reporters and celebrated moviemakers, gun banning, and selective political prosecution of future contenders to the throne.

We find that state laws no longer matter, except when they excuse nonenforcement of inconvenient federal law or parts of the Constitution that the president does not like.

We find that agents of the president, such as the Internal Revenue Service, go unpunished as former leaders are recalled, retired and rewarded with pensions.

We see veterans who defended our liberty held in minimal respect, facing enormous delays in promised medical benefits, heaped with novel taxes and kept from seeing monuments to their service.

All this is patently unsettling, even if we now live under a Constitution and electoral system that allows us to peaceably right a listing ship.

Today, we need not make recourse to the only measure Jefferson, Franklin and early America had.

The truth is that, because of their sacrifices and insights, we are today free to vote out leaders who act like kings and their legislative minions.

It does help, now and again, to see how easily power rides up on the backs of those who feel unaccountable.

If history does not exactly repeat itself, that is only because we have levers of a constitutional government to pull.

The shadows from our Founding endure, reminding us why we feel ill at ease.

That is why it is worth recalling the writings of the great men to whom we owe vigilance over our precious liberties.

Robert B. Charles, a former counsel to then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and an assistant secretary of state, heads the Charles Group LLC.

Robert "Bobby" Charles: US Foreign Policy Retreat - Why?

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/203320-us-foreign-policy-retreat-why#ixzz2yrsyNhqi

By Robert B. Charles -  (Originally published on April 12, 2014, 09:00 am - The Hill)

 

 

 

Charles was an assistant secretary of State under Colin Powell, is author of the book Narcotics and Terrorism, and is principal of a Washington D.C. consulting group.  

Just six years ago, U.S. foreign policy remained highly respected.  We were peacemakers and defenders of liberty.  Our allies trusted us and our record was unrivaled – and undoubted.   By way of example, the Colombian ambassador to the U.S. declared that the U.S. had saved her country, helped Colombia to restore order, deterrence and democracy to Colombia.  That particular ambassador declared Plan Colombia “the greatest U.S. foreign policy victory since World War II.”  Whether it is, leadership abroad was a bipartisan affair.  Today, we are in reverse mode.  The question is “why?”

Look at Colombia, example of a larger problem.  American leadership – particularly former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-President Bill Clinton – produced a consensus around commitments to rule of law, deterrence and not negotiating with terrorists.  Their resolve to defend a U.S. ally helped turn the tide of terror and lawlessness in Colombia into security and prosperity.   Colombians – and Americans — deserve credit for leading a comprehensive, unified push toward peace – with unabashed U.S. military and civilian support.  Strength came through idealism and commitment, collegiality and resolve.

Now, wind the clock … to 2014.  Not only has America – under President Obama – lost foreign policy credibility by his failure to anticipate or adequately manage relations with Ukraine, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Venezuela and Chile, but he is now losing gains made in Colombia. 

Our closest allies doubt our word; they are openly leery of this U.S. president.  Count the growing number, to include Israel and Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, Eastern Europe and all those near Russia.  There is deep-seeded doubt about what this president will do when push-comes-to-shove, as it already has.  Are all his reactions destined to be non-reactions?  And if so, why?

Consider the record.  The Middle East Peace process is now dead under Obama.  Iran, a totalitarian theocracy and sworn enemy of our closest allies, an overt detractor of U.S. Constitutional ideals, is fawningly coddled.  Iran’s nuclear program thus gets room to bloom.  Israel is told go along, Saudi Arabia withdraws from the United Nations Security Council in protest.  As allies doubt us, others press their advantage, autocrats from Venezuela and Cuba to North Korea.  Security gains of decades are slipping away fast, as are hard-won international norms.  U.S. leadership is silent.  Why?

Bulletin:  Mr. Obama, pay attention to places like Colombia, because your foreign policy apparatus and dearth of leadership are producing major losses for U.S. credibility, reversing gains for which Americans in places from DEA and State to Defense and the heartland paid dearly.  We have no “Status of Forces” Agreements with Iraq or Afghanistan. Will you not now work to sustain American-blood-secured security.  A fictitious “line in the sand” on Syrian use of chemical weapons allowed Syria’s dictator and Russia to laugh you to red-faced silence.  Forget the dozens of smaller missteps around the globe.  Return to Colombia.

Presidential disinterest in one of America’s strongest allies in our own hemisphere is triggering a measurable slide.  In Colombia’s prime drug growing region, the Putumayo, coca cultivation fell early this decade by nearly 100 percent year over year, as alternative crops replaced drug crops.  Homicides, terrorism, kidnapping and public fear were all halved or better.   Legitimate markets opened, and all but the most depraved terrorists gave up, rejoined civil society.    With U.S. congressional support, human rights improved.   Peace returned to this democracy.  

How?  Uncompromising U.S. vision, action and support for an ally promoted respect for rule of law, deterrence, drug eradication, counter-terrorism, alternative development, legitimate markets, human rights and security, that is, peace and order, pluralism with liberty.  Colombians believed we would stand by them, and we did. America’s commitment to free society was unquestioned.  

By contrast, today, terrorists are now active again, resurgent.  What we all had is drifting away. Colombia was no small victory.  Peace there translated into safer streets across South, Central and even North America.   International drug traffickers, insurgents and criminal gangs found themselves on defense, law was ascendant.  The reverse is now true.

Today, in place of American leadership and bold commitments, our leadership minces and parses words, plays fast and loose with commitments, and demonstrates an inveterate sense of practiced listlessness, that is, dodge, drift and hold a press conference, then encourage forgetting.  There is no roadmap.  Gone is fidelity to American ideals that have shined for more than two centuries.  On foreign soil, gone is the American commitment to championing free speech and religion, free markets and press, proportional use of force and non-political enforcement of laws, hallowed respect for legislative prerogatives and individual liberty. 

Why?  Could we be seeing abroad the mirror reflection of something happening at home?  Could a retreat from U.S. Constitutional ideals in our foreign policy reflect a concurrent retreat from individual liberties at home?  Look at the list of ideals abandoned abroad – for which we no longer fight – and then compare that to the gaping silences and disrespect for the U. S. Constitution at home. What you see in that mirror may be revealing, certainly unsettling.  I will say no more, but ponder the sources of America’s foreign policy drift.  The deficit and inexperience could be one, but a retrograde foreign policy – and spinning compass in places like Colombia – may reflect something bigger, and far closer to home.

Robert "Bobby" Charles: Obama and the Napoleon-Nixon Gene

 http://americanthinker.com/2014/03/obama_and_the_napoleonnixon_gene.html

By Robert B. Charles (originally posted on March 07, 2014 - American Thinker)

March 7, 2014

Robert B. Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell and former Counsel to Speaker Dennis Hastert.  He taught Government Oversight at the Harvard Extension School, and is now head of The Charles Group LLC in Washington DC.  

 

Like something from the Human Genome project, one feels like announcing discovery of the long-lost Napoleon-Nixon gene.  Obama apparently has the Napoleon-Nixon defensive, arrogant, and unaccountable gene -- albeit with none of Nixon's redeeming expertise in international power politics, and none of Napoleon's record for strategy and war. More worrisome is that Obama’s lack of stature is now paired with an embarrassing preoccupation for proving he has some.   

What other president would ramrod an incompressible de facto nationalization of America’s healthcare system (embodied in legislation he himself never read or permitted others to read) down the nation's throat, then turn around and break every single promise he offered to compel its party-line passage? 

What president would fail to admit he had boldly lied about the law's intended effects (insert cameo of Nixon: "I will never tell a lie.") even when millions of Americans were being summarily stripped of their doctors, dumped from home health care, or bounced into higher deductible, lower coverage policies, often at higher premiums?  The travesty is only compounded by the president’s audacity.   

What president in the history of this Republic would then turn on Americans as a whole, twisting down the screw by penalizing hardworking Americans who refuse to be shoehorned into a travesty, who refuse to put their families or their own healthcare in the hands of those who cannot even put up a website?  The average American -- it seems -- must ‘say uncle’ or pay a sizable annual fine.  What American president, admitting no fault and dissembling to cover up a fraud in the inducement -- let us be honest, that is what this was -- would then have the temerity to unilaterally suspend major and minor provisions of the noxious law a full 27 times (that experts have so far counted, and we are still counting)?  Recall that a president must “faithfully execute the laws” which have been passed, even on a party-line vote that barred a reading by opponents.  Or was that Oath of Office just another piecrust promise, easily made, easily broken?

What president would have the gall to suspend a law he had forced on the American people, lied about and then penalized them under, in what was a transparently political way?  What president would intentionally delay business-crushing penalties until after the 2014 congressional elections? 

While both Obama and Nixon abused the power inherent in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), at least Nixon kept his ‘enemies list’ short, and prosecutors out of the mix. Obama has put the entire Nation at risk of prosecution and is swinging the sword of Justice at journalists, anti-Obama moviemakers, and two Republican governors, one for acts legal in his state and the other for staff who closed a bridge. 

Add the overreach of groundless White House directives, executive orders, and coercive guidance, including usurpation of a million acres of the state of Wyoming and repeated unilateral decisions not to enforce laws. What we have is a concept -- the executive, legislative, and judicial authority all rolled into one -- at least in Obama’s mind. 

And that is where the problem lies. When the U.S. Supreme Court, public opinion, and those in his own party complain that Obama has asserted authority to which he is not entitled, something is wrong.  From illegal recess appointments to suspensions of law, one is reminded of the headlong pitch Nixon took in the "Saturday Night Massacre."  You can only stiff-arm the American people so long.  Even calm protestations, such as "I am not a crook" and “I never promised…” go only so far. There is an eerie resemblance even in Obama’s carriage and cadence to the tone deaf nature of the Nixon White House, until it cracked up.  

Only this is worse. Articles of impeachment for abuse of power, although possible, would die in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The Independent Prosecutor Law died in 1999. The sitting attorney general, against whom contempt has twice been voted, is deaf, period. The nation seems stuck, like Paris as Napoleon marched northward and America as Nixon denied wrongdoing.  At least Obama keeps his hand out of his waistcoat and curses the "establishment" in the residence.  Has he misread Lord Acton's warning that "if power corrupts, then absolute power corrupts absolutely" as a prescription? Perhaps the civil lawsuit, now signed by more than 100 members of Congress, will moderate Obama’s Napoleonic march.  Maybe a heart-to-heart discussion by leading Senate Democrats will restore proportion and respect for law (i.e. ala Congressman Rodino’s talks with Nixon).  

We know this: defensive, arrogant, and unaccountable does not play well with Americans -- and never has. It is no way to win midterms, boost standing in polls, correct catastrophic damage to a healthcare system, or reassure Americans that you know when to stop asserting prerogatives you never had. 

To ignore the curse of this nasty gene and carry on with impunity, as if the White House needs reminding, ended poorly for both Napoleon and Nixon.  It surely would be a sad legacy, especially for someone so intent on finding one, to misread our Constitution for another three years.  Like the best laid plans of mice and men, second terms and second empires, it may be noted, often go astray. 

Robert "Bobby" Charles: Truth, Obamacare and November

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/truth_obamacare_and_november.html

 

 By Robert B. Charles - April 11, 2014

Robert B. Charles was an Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former US Court of Appeals Clerk for Judge Robert Beezer, taught at the Harvard University Extension School, and currently leads a consulting group in Washington DC.

Presidents have long been guilty of bluster and puffing. 

We, The People, learn to live with it. 

We groaningly tolerate political ignorance, ill-informed opinions and tomfoolery. 

That is how our civil society shows respect for Free Speech.  

Today, something else has gotten loose in the public square, and it is worth examining more closely.  And remembering in November. 

The Obama White House, while chilling and threatening free speech by prominent reporters, successful conservative moviemakers, governors and others who question, has now ushered in a new practice:  Unapologetic, intentional misrepresentation of facts known to be false when spoken. 

This innovation represents a step beyond. 

Its systematic deployment is both arresting and worrisome. 

Boldly misrepresenting reality on a regular basis is either a calculated deception, or a peculiar strain of self-deception.

President Obama has set a new low-water mark in the annals of American democracy, upending the notion that truth matters. 

The blitz to remake facts appears aimed at confusing, misleading and ultimately manipulating the public into a state of indifference and dependence.  

From vilifying woodstoves and backyard ponds to claims of compliance by Iran and Syria with international accords; from the evils of a fossil fuel pipeline to asserting a presidential prerogative to choose laws to enforce; from dissembling on the Benghazi attacks and gun-dumping in Mexico to misuse of the Internal Revenue Service -- truth is a casualty. 

In a headlong rush for federal control over all aspects of life, this White House spares no contortion. 

Assembled in one place, the factual misstatements of this president would produce a best-seller, or perhaps elevate a federal prosecutor to new heights.

But focus just on Obamacare, the Unaffordable Health Care Act. 

As penalties bite, recall that no one was allowed to read this law before voting, that not a single Republican voted for it, and that President Obama said it would:

(1) allow you to keep your doctor,

(2) your current insurance plan,
(3) deductible,
(4) cost levels, and
(5) benefit levels.

Those five promises -- to a one -- have all proven false. 

Insiders confide they were false when made. 

Take a deep breath.  

Does this extraordinary breach matter?   Yes. 

Because truth is the underpinning of law -- without it, our laws have no legitimacy. 

What is the seminal principle of law here? 

The law is this: “When financial information is misstated by any scheme, artifice, or device with the intent to mislead investors, this is a form of financial fraud.” 

Obamacare is a giant financial fraud. 

After all, what are we but unwilling and deceived investors -- now facing added insult in penalties if we try to escape -- in a fraudulent scheme, to which the president has generously given his name?  

Where is the legitimacy in a law procured by fraud? 

Where is accountability?

Political actors do not like to hear the word “lie,” because it smacks of intentional misrepresentation, lack of integrity, deception, even malice. 

But what should we call this preplanned, force-fed, misleading financial trap and deprivation of quality health care? 

Was it not a knowing misrepresentation of material facts, that is, a falsehood conceived and forced on the public, then blithely defended as “too big to fail?”

The size of this deception -- and it continues to grow -- is surreal. 

Honest Americans are at a loss as to how they can stop its continuing infringement; it is like a nuclear reaction gone wrong, one deprivation cascading into another, until exemptions barely catch up with the next link in the chain reaction, all exemptions temporary. 

Yet, the campaign to support this mutation continues apace -- and with your tax dollars.

The factual misrepresentations are unabated. 

In Michigan this month, the President mocked those who questioned his failing plan, belittled their intelligence, accused them of not wanting Americans to have insurance, and then lowered himself to name-calling, saying the Republican alternative was a “stinkburger.” 

Really, Mr. President? 

This is intelligent discourse, a reasoned defense of your failing plan? 

Does America not deserve better? 

If the aim is to swallow our resolve, create maximum confusion, and accelerate federal dependence -- do not count on it. 

This departure from truth -- like the others -- should stir every American. 

By reference to history, burying truth in a headlong grab for social control is dangerous, even if rooted in utopian socialism. 

That is not what any of us -- or what most of us -- are about.

Against this backdrop, an honest White House would stop talking about glitches and never-ending rollouts, and confess a policy failure.  

An honest White House would eat some humble pie -- a big piece.  

Then, it would try to begin again with some semblance of bipartisanship. 

From there, truth would include facts. 

For example, six of the seven million Americans cajoled into signing up for this ill-conceived policy were stripped of coverage by the White House; they are not newly insured. 

Few have yet paid, and fewer probably will. 

The demographics make the plan unsustainable, and only compulsory penalties will pay for what Americans do not want.  

The plan is a disaster.

But this president is tripling down -- and with your money. 

He appears to be stuck on go, mocking the truth, browbeating the nation with his exhausting machinations.  

What can we do? 

We can remember fidelity to truth, and this president’s startling departure from it. 

We can remember Winston Churchill’s famous quote:  “The truth is incontrovertible.  Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

One last thing -- we can turn those out of power in November who voted for it in Congress. 

We still have that right, the right to vote. 

We should use it.  And that’s the truth! 

 

 

 

Robert "Bobby" Charles: Presidential disconnect on pot

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/197776-presidential-disconnect-on-pot

Originally published on February 08, 2014, 09:00 am - by Robert B. Charles

Charles, former assistant secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement for Secretary of State Colin Powell, has worked for more than 20 years on drug prevention, addiction treatment and criminal justice issues.  He now heads The Charles Group LLC in Washington D.C.

January 19, 2014:  President Obama opines that marijuana is “not very different from cigarettes” and no more “dangerous” than alcohol, just “a waste of time” and “not very healthy.” Maybe like super-sized drinks?

January 23:  Attorney General (AG) Holder says marijuana money should have legal access to the American banking system, and that he would make way for regulations to protect what is, under federal law, illegal money laundering.  Arrival of the Mad Hatter? 

January 25:  The “Maryland Mall shooter” kills three, and police soon discover he was using marijuana and needed mental health support, by his own admission. Shadows of Columbine?

January 29:  The AG testifies before the U.S. Senate, refusing to condemn pot legalization and adding that “all drugs are dangerous,” lumping alcohol in with Schedule One narcotics. Curiouser and curiouser …

Here are the incontrovertible facts:  Marijuana is a Schedule One narcotic, meaning a drug assessed as possessing “high potential for abuse,” based on science. 

The drug has put hundreds of thousands in treatment over the past ten years, accelerated emergency room incidents according to the Centers for Disease Control, and raised levels of drugged driving, domestic abuse and marijuana-associated crime, according to State and Federal criminal justice databases.

Since the early 1980s, forward thinking policy makers, parents, teachers, doctors, nurses and caring experts have pointed out, in hundreds of studies, how devastating marijuana addiction is.

Nor have we rounded some new corner, where the danger is falling. 

According to the Columbia University Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), marijuana potency jumped 175 percent since 2006. 

The jump has accelerated both marijuana use and addiction, together with hospital Emergency Room (ER) incidents and voluntary treatment admissions. 

And CASA has long observed that the ratio of addicts to first users is roughly one in eight. 

So, a little math:  If the President’s and AG’s remarks have encouraged only eight million young Americans in our 315 million-person Nation to try pot, they have just condemned another million young Americans to addiction. 

Nor is this addiction easy to shake off. 

Those addicted are trapped, which – at best – produces a costly new stream of treatment cases, at worst a rise in overdoses and grieving parents.

The rise in marijuana addiction correlates with other trends. 

Friends of the President’s are among the wealthy promoters of this drug’s abuse. 

Billionaire financier George Soros, a friend of this White House, has contributed millions to marijuana legalization. 

Meantime, other trends demonstrate where this rabbit hole really leads. 

Over the past seven years, America has witnessed a 492 percent increase in the proportion of teen medical admissions for marijuana addiction, according to CASA. 

The President ignores these numbers, and the devastation they portend, while pouring billions into public messaging against obesity and cigarette companies.

How about a few more trends? 

The marijuana spike has led to rising medical and social costs, challenging families and professionals with disinformation as they battle associated domestic abuse, mental health issues and drug-influenced crimes.  

The Justice Department has linked poly-drug use to four in five domestic abuse cases, while the President’s own Drug Czar released a 2013 nationwide study showing that “80 percent of adult males [incarcerated for non-drug crimes] tested positive for at least one illegal drug, [and] marijuana was the most commonly detected drug.” 

It was “found in 54 percent of those arrested.”

Between 2009 and 2011, there was a shocking 19 percent rise in ER visits tied to marijuana according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), while related overall drug overdose rates – with marijuana a major accelerant – rose for the eleventh straight year to more than 38,000. 

Against this backdrop, how can anyone justify indifference? 

How can the President speak of compassion and leadership to those 72,000 heartbroken parents, many of whom lost a child that began their drug addiction with marijuana? 

Or think about it this way:  The annual numbers of children who die from drug abuse in one year is now five times the Nation’s total losses in both Afghanistan and Iraq. 

We pulled out of both those wars, but our kids still die of drug addiction in combat numbers.

Another CDC fact:  The nearly 500-percent increase in marijuana treatment cases is in stark contrast to a more than 50-percent reduction of admissions for other abused substances. 

In other words, pot is now outpacing all other addictions.

Finally, peripheral impacts from increased social passivity include reduced test scores and graduation rates for marijuana users, increased family dissolution for adult users, increases non-overdose medical incidents  (e.g. lung, heart and brain issues), and birth defects associated with  pot addiction. 

Are these not reason enough to throw the brakes on, Mr. President? 

The addiction curve for marijuana is already steep and dangerous. 

How about a public correction of the record? 

How about siding with us – just everyday Americans who think addiction, overdoses, drugged driving and drug-related crime are bad things? 

How about siding with the country’s parents, kids, doctors, nurses, social workers, law enforcement officers and “the average folks” you so often talk about? 

How about public opposition to pot, instead of validating illegal narcotics abuse? 

In short:  Why don’t you help us, Mr. President, instead of working against us?

Robert "Bobby" Charles: The Politics of Obama's pot Promo

Could drugs play a role in ‘fundamentally transforming’ the nation?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/31/charles-politics-of-obamas-pot-promo/#ixzz2xlR7Z4K2

 

By Robert B. Charles (originally posted on January 31, 2014)

Robert B. Charles is former assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement in the George W. Bush administration

 

First, President Obama says marijuana is “not very different from cigarettes” and no more “dangerous” than alcohol, just “a waste of time” and “not very healthy.”

One imagines that he thinks of pot as somewhere between too many potato chips and fast driving.

The president’s not-so-subtle message is “go ahead, just use it.”

Never mind that pot is a Schedule One narcotic, meaning a drug assessed as possessing “high potential for abuse,” based on science.

Never mind that this narcotic has landed hundreds of thousands in treatment during the past 10 years, accelerated emergency-room incidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and raised levels of drugged driving, domestic abuse and marijuana-associated crime, according to state and federal sources.

Days later, the Maryland mall shooter, who killed three, including himself, turns out to have been a marijuana user, according to police.

Do you recall the deadly Columbine shooting and marijuana link?

Or perhaps The New York Times article “Violent Crimes Undercut Marijuana’s Mellow Image” in 2001?

Or studies that have linked pot use to violence? Never mind.

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. indicated he may waive money-laundering penalties for banks processing “marijuana money,” and testified that while “all drugs are dangerous,” he places alcohol with the Schedule One narcotics.

I usually am not cynical, but let’s just be for a moment.

Let’s imagine the impossible.

Suppose you wanted to increase national employment numbers by increasing legitimate business for emergency-room doctors and nurses, ambulance and tow companies, addiction-treatment centers and funeral homes, psychiatrists and behavioral psychologists, school counselors, law enforcement officers and social workers.

Suppose that you could do this while gaining political favor with millions of Americans either addicted to or abusing illegal drugs, in the process setting up a sequence of events that naturally produced several million new drug abusers and addicts (and voters) every year for the indefinite future, from whom you could regularly seek added political support.

Suppose, in addition, that you could satisfy a long-standing demand from several billionaires who have contributed handsomely to your political fortunes and to your party’s races nationwide in recent years, and who are poised to do so again in future campaigns.

Now suppose that you could do all this and satisfy a major foreign country’s long-standing appeal for change of U.S. policy, thus allowing America’s third-largest trading partner to celebrate America’s open-mindedness — and begin legally transshipping substantial quantities of addictive drugs into America’s communities, schools, homes and workplaces.

By encouraging straight Americans to begin using the drugs, the new industry would grow.

The drug would increasingly show up on U.S. highways, boosting business for hospitals, addiction centers and funeral homes.

Suppose all this could be done in the name of stimulating a new, homegrown business, a business that might permit former criminals to come out of hiding, allowing them to commit predatory crimes in the open, cheerfully targeting guileless children, teenagers and unsuspecting parents, as they raised the burden on health care and law enforcement personnel, and on local education and civic leaders.

Further imagine that you could push this new criminal legalization by fiat, encouraging your political allies to create a few state laws that upended federal law, and then waiving federal law in favor of these state laws — in effect subverting the Constitution’s federal pre-emption clause by inverting it in favor of state pre-emption.

When challenged, you could minimize the public danger in a casual interview.

You could then speak passionately of state sovereignty, and have your attorney general waive banking regulations to allow legalized money laundering for the first time.

You could suspend prosecution of banks that processed illegal drug money.

You could then assert that nothing was changing, that you were ensuring the public was safer, that polls opposing you were inaccurate, and that prevention, treatment, law enforcement and educational experts were overreacting.

To chill further discussion, you could open some criminal-leaks investigations into press coverage that challenged you, and subtly threaten the public with added surveillance in the name of public safety.

You could cow Congress by noting that enforcing criminal laws is very costly, and besides, you “have a pen” for executive orders.

As the legalization of crime accelerated, accelerating drug use and addiction, betraying tens of millions of heartbroken parents, teachers, emergency-room workers, insurers and health care professionals, you could take refuge behind the difficulty in measuring drugged driving (accidents and fatalities), commiserate with bereft and inconsolable parents, press Congress for more money and a single-payer federal health care system.

You could highlight international praise for your permissive foreign policy, and downplay the enormous public safety, health care and national security risks engendered in your approach.

 

 

Then, having sowed the seeds of a crisis, you could explore the value of removing the two-term limit.

All this is far too cynical, though. No president would ever start America down such a destructive path, even for political, personal or transformational reasons.

 

No president would ever put innocent American families through such an act of collective tragedy, public deception, political indifference or autocratic assertion (and concession) of federal powers.

 

This is just an imaginary sequence — impossible from start to finish. Right?

Open Letter to President Barack Obama from George Ochieng Odalo of Kenya - Executive Director for Slum Child Foundation

SLUM CHILD FOUNDATION

P.O. BOX 4771400100

TEL: +254 725 794 820

E-MAIL: slumchildfoundation@gmail.com

WEBSITE: www.slumchildfoundation.blospot.com

 

Date: 11, February 2014

 

The Hon. Barrack Hussein Obama

President, United States of America

 

Dear President Obama,

My name is George Ochieng Odalo, and I write you as a representative of Slum Child Foundation (SCF), a Kenyan nonprofit organization working with children and youth in the slums and streets of Nairobi.

The children I work with are among your greatest admirers – which is why your recent remarks about marijuana and your relative silence about the drug’s growing legalization in the United States are deeply troubling.

 I realize you face many political dynamics I do not understand.

 However, I do know this serious issue should not be a political one.

 It should be about health first.

 This is also not an issue for one or two of your states to decide.

 Marijuana legalization in just a portion of your country has a negative impact on my country, too.

I already see how the talk about marijuana in the U.S. has hurt my work in the slums, where illicit drug use – including marijuana use – is the one of the biggest problems affecting the children I try to steer away from high school dropout, teenage pregnancy, criminality and risky behaviors that often result in HIV/AIDS.

These children do not have strong parental supervision.

They do not have fathers like you, who insisted to The New Yorker you would tell your own daughters not to use marijuana.

Mr. President, I urge you to reconsider your words and lack of action and clarity.

Marijuana legalization is not necessary to reform problematic laws in your country or around the world.

Legalization is not necessary to give people better addiction treatment.

It is greedy, not innovative or admirable, for industry to sell this addictive drug – which is many times more potent than the marijuana you admit using during your youth -- with untruthful ads, false claims, colorful packaging and foods that are popular with children.

Please consider the poor and vulnerable children in your country and mine – the land of your father -- and around the world.

They cannot afford access to treatment, and they already have so many things going against them in life.

We should stand up to adults who fail to consider the needs of children, especially poor children, in their own selfish pursuits of intoxication.

Sincerely,

George Ochieng Odalo

Executive Director
Slum Child Foundation