No question that here in Arizona, the vast right wing is largely racist. It's good to see push-back against that.
I'm thinking, though, that the bigger role race plays in SB-1070 and other states' similar Model Bills is that it's so convenient to have a generally less wealthy class that's a different color, so you know who can be picked up and incarcerated with relative impunity. The contracts Arizona has with CCA, that now owns a lot of the prisons, require keeping them 90% full, which was easy to do when Arizona could incarcerate people for not having I.D. or immigration papers on them. Sometimes they could be held for weeks, until it was convenient for someone at the prisons to let them contact someone who could bring their papers. [Actual illegal border crossers have always been held in AZ prisons for weeks or months after deportation hearings, until it was convenient to drive them back to the border.] The Supreme Court is not popular here at the moment!
You may have seen this. Not directly on point, but former Superior Court judge and AZ Governor Raul Castro and his assistant reported this experience on the way from his retirement home in Nogales, Sonora, to his 96th birthday party in Tucson.
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/05/not_the_1st_time_ariz_gov_stopped/
Good luck to all of us. Keep taking care of Madison, please.
A recent Reader's Digest article stated that there were 2.8 million voters registered in 2 or more states. As a FL voter I wonder how many snowbirds vote in one state and use an absentee ballot in the other. And how many are republicans? There is no national voter registration list.
I'm a life-long smoker. I've "quit" several times, only to start up again. It's awful. There is a certain segment of nicotine addicts who, for whatever reason, simply cannot quit.
There have been studies in Sweden showing that "harm reduction" programs actually do work. It's not "safe", it's not ideal and it's certainly unwise to promote "harm reduction" programs to people who aren't already hooked on the dreadful poison.
The core concept: "some people are life-long addicts and will not quit smoking, no matter how hard they try, so lets provide something less harmful" does have merits.
ALEC is NOT the way I'd like to see these ideas introduced to congress. We don't need snuff handed out in happy meals or pez dispensers to maximize profits. BUT just because ALEC corporations are in favor of it, doesn't make it the whole idea bad... I'd like to see more research done on e-cigs.
ALEC writes the laws and we pay the legislators big bucks to force their corporate agenda on America at the state and federal level. The republican party has been trying to sell America to the highest bidder, piece by piece for a long time.
ALEC along with the republican conspiracy hatched on 1/9/09 to obstruct the presidency and recovery are evidence that these traitors have a sinister anti American agenda!
Nicotine is all of the following: A NATURAL anti-depressant
A NATURAL appetite supressant
A NATURAL concentration aid
A NATURAL memory enhancer
A NATURAL stimulant (small doses)
A NATURAL sedative (larger doses)
There is no debate about this in the scientific community.
Sorry, poster #1, you're not going to get away with lying. The science backs it up.
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