Ricardo J Gonzalez for a Better America

It's Friday! Prepare yourself for small chat at cocktail parties by catching up on news you might have missed.

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The Clinton camp has some good news for those who are getting tired of the longest campaign ever. Even though Sen. Clinton loves announcing that she'll never give up, Her campaign manager, Terry McAuliffe, suggested that she'll probably give up before the convention. A shift can already be seen in the Obama campaign as they move towards a strategy that would be more useful in the general election. It seems that the only ones that don't know that the Clinton campaign is dead, is the Clintons.

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The Chief of Mexico's Federal police was shot down on thursday morning, supposedly because of his involvement in President Calderon's efforts to crack down on drug cartels. With over 200 officers dead so far, and countless other victims, I would hope this "drug war" would come to an end soon. However, it seems that the drug war begets more violence between the vendors and regulators, than from the actual drug users.

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Speaking of the drug war, Hit-and-Run, the blog from Reason Magazine, has some interesting analysis of the latest numbers in the war on drugs, mainly, on how it seems to show systemic racism. The article focuses mostly on the report from Human Rights Watch that:

a black man is 11.8 times more likely than a white man to be sent to prison on drug charges, and a black woman is 4.8 times more likely than a white woman.

If the goal of the drug war is to save lives like many claim, it seems that in some places police feel the need to protect some people from themselves, more than others.

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The disaster stricken nation of Myanmar, which was hit by a cyclone that is reported to have killed up to 100,000 people, is refusing to allow foreign aid workers to enter the country, although it will accept aid donations. I would assume that most countries would have concerns about handing large quantities of aid supplies and funds to untrained workers, and a military led government with a history of abuse and oppression.

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Today the final touches were put on this year's farm bill. The subject of farm aid comes up every few years, since the first Agriculture Adjustment act of 1933. However you would think that in a year where we can constantly hear the whispers and screams of the "Global Food Crisis", it would be a great time to reexamine the way we deal with farm subsidies.

First the good news: If you're a farmer making less than $1.5 Million a year, help is on the way (maybe)! God forbid you only get a piddly $700,000 in income or so. The bill, which comes with a $300 Billion price tag for tax-payers, would also increase food stamps and emergency food assistance, eliminates some loopholes, and has a $3.8 billion disaster fund to help farmers through extreme national disasters. These could be considered good things for some, I suppose.

Now the bad news: The bill increases subsidies for certain crops. It also continues the subsidies for ethanol, albeit reduced from $0.51 to $0.45 per gallon, our token bio-fuel program. Ethanol is where most of the blame is being placed for the food crisis, and it seems, does absolutely nothing to reduce harmful emissions.

Citizens Against Government Waste, a non-profit organization that focuses on tracking wasteful government spending, or pork-barrel spending, is urging the President to veto this "reform bill", because, well:

There is no significant reform in H.R. 2419.

There are rumors that the President just might. However, I doubt that any bill that met with the President's approval would stop the most egregious abuses of this bill, such as paying people who don't grow anything.

While the Federal Government might have some role in creating assistance programs to help with natural disasters, as are outlined in the new bill, It seems ridiculous to me that we would be spending billions of dollars a year paying anyone not to work, or paying subsidies for ethanol, whose value is still constantly debated. In a year where there have been riots over the availability and cost of food around the world, it would make sense to me to stop giving farmers tax-payer money to produce less of it.

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Today, I decided I would see what it would be like to actually go on a gas tax vacation. I crunched all the numbers, did all the equations, calculated the interest and added in the inflation, and figured out exactly how much money I would save this month, if this was implemented today. Then I went out and spent that money. While originally I thought it was a dumb idea, I now I might have to think twice.


Take a look at everything I bought (and I even had some change left over):



That's right. I would save $5.76. Enough to buy a Whopper Combo, but not King Size, and no cheese. Then again, I barely drive, and when I do, its a small, 4 cylinder, Nissan. I called my brother up, who has a 1 hour commute to work in some behemoth vehicle. He said that on average he goes through about 72 gallons of gas a week. For him the "Gas Tax Vacation" would add up to about $50 a month, assuming that the oil companies didn't increase the costs as a result. His gas tank holds 24 gallons, and the month of "savings" wouldn't even buy him an extra tank.

What would you do with your gas tax vacation?

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The Indiana primary is happening tonight. It seems to me that there is a lot of hubbub over the State, when it won't actually decide anything. Delegates are split evenly between the candidates, and neither seems likely to win by a large margin. In fact, from the numbers I have seen, it won't matter at all in terms of overall delegates.

So why is this primary important? It's all about the Superdelegates. For the most part, the primaries are relatively unimportant at this point, as even if Sen. Clinton were to win every state that's left by 10 points, she would still not even tie Sen. Obama. The result is that these Superdelegates, get to decide who runs again Sen. McCain. These party members are tasked with finding which of the two would have the biggest advantage against the Republican nominee, and that's what the Indiana primary is really all about.

To win against McCain, either candidate will have to prove that they are able to take votes from what is usually assumed to be the Republican base. Blue collar, lower/middle class, white Americans. What is increasingly interesting to see is how the candidates perceive this voter base.

The first thing that strikes me, is that the Democratic campaigns assume that they (Blue collar white America) are racist. The Clinton campaign made sure that the controversy with Rev. Wright stayed in the news as long as possible. The most obvious benefit that I can see to what should be an unimportant issue is to make sure that everyone is constantly reminded that no matter how he acts,Obama is still a black man. As I've said before, Rev. Wright seems to epitomize many of the "angry black man" stereotypes, and the Clinton campaign wants to make sure people are reminded of that stereotype when they think of Obama. They wouldn't push the issue if they didn't think it would benefit them in the vote totals, so they must be under the assumption that Indiana voters are secretly racist. The fact that Obama was forced to break ties with the Reverend, suggests that his camp bought the idea too.

The second, is that they think Indiana voters believe that the wolf in sheep's clothing, is actually a sheep. I cant keep track of all the places Clinton has claimed to be from, but it seems that she grew up in every small town in the country. Clinton has spent the past few decades living in Governors mansions, the White House, and who knows how many homes with wings larger than my apartment, yet she seems determined to prove that she's a small town, blue collar girl. Whether it's doing shots of Crown (well, sipping them anyway), or talking about how she remembers seeing her dad at work in the factory (that he owned), Hillary wants Indiana voters to believe that beneath her silk gloves lay hardened callouses. Meanwhile, Obama is out shooting hoops, and drinking beers, right out of the can. They're trying hard to make people think that these millionaires are really just one of the guys.


The third, and the only one in which I see a big difference between the candidates, is that the Clinton campaign thinks that they can buy some votes for pretty cheap, About $0.18 on the gallon. While the Clinton campaign is trying to present it as the equivalent of a free vacation, the Obama campaign is siding with the 230 or so economists that are saying this is a pretty terrible idea:

First, research shows that waiving the gas tax would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers," they wrote. "Second, it would encourage people to keep buying costly imported oil and do nothing to encourage conservation. Third, a tax holiday would provide very little relief to families feeling squeezed.

Sen. Clinton responded that she wasn't going to go with these elitist economists. What do they know about the economy anyway!

The Democrats are trying to prove to their party that they can win over these voters, but I wonder how many people they'll actually win over by constantly insulting their intelligence. I guess we'll see tonight.

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The Chicago International Pipe and Tobacciana show, which was held in St. Charles, Illinois this past weekend, is a yearly event that has been held in the Chicagoland area for the past 12 years. Pipe and tobacco vendors from across the world come to show off their latest creations in what really is a display of artistic craftsmanship.

The show, which featured over 300 vendors from across the world, ran into a bit of a hitch this year. While the event's planners were very careful to ensure that the event would comply with all smoking rules, they were still prohibited from smoking inside the event hall where the show was taking place.

The law against smoking, whose enforcement started on January 1st of this year, was intended to make it

makes it safe for people to visit or work in restaurants and bars without putting their health at risk.

. The CPCC, which hosts the event, made sure that there was no chance that people who did not wish to be exposed to second-hand smoke, did not. They required all attendees to be members of the organization and to sign waivers that they were of legal age to smoke, and understood all of the risks associated with first, second, and third hand smoke inhalation. As a secondary precaution, they set up an outdoor tent for those who just wanted to hang out and smoke a pipe, but didn't need to be in the exhibition hall. In essence, if the intended purpose was to prevent non-smokers from being unwillingly exposed to the health risks of secondhand smoke, the CPCC went above and beyond what they should have to do, in order to ensure that this didn't happen.

Yet still, they were not allowed to smoke at their event. The Chicago Tribune reports Mike Grady of the American Cancer Association describing the efforts of the CPCC to ensure that the patrons understand what they're getting into as an attempt to "actually underminde the law through legal sophistry". I wouldn't call what the CPCC was doing an attempt to undermine the law. I would call it a strong effort to make sure that the spirit of the law was carried through. But aparently it has become acceptable in this country to take away people's freedom to associate in whichever peaceful way they see fit, as long as you're protecting them from something they don't want to be protected against.

So why smoking was still disallowed, even though they took every step imaginable to ensure that people concerned about the health risks would not enter ground zero of second-hand tobacco smoke? Again from the Tribune article:

Grady said that if smoking were allowed in the convention hall, harmful contaminants would remain in the air even after the pipe collectors' event ended and could pose a health risk to others

So aparently, tobacco smoke is the environmental equivalent of toxic waste. Any location in which it was ever present, should probably be declared a national disaster area.

Absolutely ridiculous.

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