Medical Marijuana Prognosis Looks Good in NH

[Update to this post found HERE

[Blogger's Note: Before my father died of esophagal cancer, he expressed to me how he thought that Marijuana ought to be legalized - a strong turn of events for a man who was otherwise viewed as a conservative Republican. In his last days, medical cannabis was not available to him, so his pain was relieved by morphine, which put him into a state of near-sleep and confusion almost 24 hours a day. It was that experience that made Medical Marijuana an important issue for me. What follows is a guest blog article written by Matt Simon, a personal acquaintance, who is a resident of Goffstown, NH and a legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project of Washington, D.C. It is reprinted here by his express permission]

Nearly three years have passed since House and Senate lawmakers first approved a medical marijuana bill to protect patients with debilitating illnesses in New Hampshire.

That bill fell just short of becoming law in 2009, when an effort to override Gov. John Lynch’s veto passed the House but failed by only two votes in the Senate.

When the 2010 election resulted in Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the General Court, many felt this issue would be placed on hold for two years. On the contrary, last year the GOP-dominated House showed it wasn’t at all afraid to pass medical marijuana, voting to approve the measure in a 221-96 landslide.

Last year’s bill reached a stalemate in the Senate, when senators voted to table the bill rather than casting an up-or-down vote, but this year patients and their advocates are feeling more optimistic than ever about their chances. Their new bill features three Republican senators as sponsors.

So what objections remain?

First, the attorney general’s office points out that marijuana remains illegal under federal law and says the program could lead to interventions in New Hampshire by federal agents. Second, it observes that, in a few states, badly implemented medical marijuana laws have led to undesirable outcomes.

When considering the merits of these objections, New Hampshire legislators should focus on two very useful counterexamples: Vermont and Maine.

Vermont and Maine have been protecting medical marijuana patients from arrest since 2004 and 1999, respectively. There have been no federal raids on patients or caregivers in either state, and the laws continue to enjoy strong public support.

After years of allowing patients and their caregivers to grow their own marijuana, both states recently approved the addition of state-regulated dispensaries to improve patients’ access.

Have these reforms led to increased rates of recreational marijuana use and teen use in Maine and Vermont? According to government surveys, they have not. In fact, the federal government’s own data shows that teens and adults use marijuana at a nearly identical rate in all three states.

Unfortunately, the U.S. attorney for New Hampshire has indicated that dispensaries here would not necessarily be safe from federal prosecution. Thus, Granite State lawmakers appear to be left with two policy options: they can continue leaving desperate patients to fend for themselves on the black market, or they can acknowledge their plight and permit them to simply take care of themselves.

SB 409 would protect patients from arrest and give them a way to access marijuana safely, legally and unobtrusively. A 2008 Mason-Dixon poll showed 71 percent of New Hampshire voters agree, with only 21 percent opposed.

Will 2012 be the year that public opinion finally translates into public policy?

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Coptic Pope Shenouda III Dies, Increasing Uncertainty Over Egypt's Future

Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria, the 117th Pope of Alexandria and the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, died today at the age of 88 from liver failure. He had served as Pope of Alexandria since November 14, 1971, presiding over a worldwide expansion of the Coptic Orthodox Church and maintaining positive relations with Muslim leaders, the Egyptian government (under both Mubarek and the current military regime), and with the wider inter-faith community. His peace-making approach protected Egypt’s Christian Copts, a minority that comprises 10% of a nation that is currently divided between modern secularist Muslims and Islamicists. Recent attacks on Copts have been met by moderate Muslims forming protective human walls around Coptic churches and neighborhoods.

Shenouda was a graduate of Cairo University and the Coptic Orthodox Seminary. Then-Pope Cyril VI summoned him to become the Dean of the Coptic Orthodox Theological University, whereupon he assumed the name Shenouda. On November 14, 1971, he was chosen as the 117th Coptic Pope.

To western Christians, the term “pope” almost exclusively brings to mind the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, who is seated in Rome. But the early Christian Church had “patriarchates” not only in Rome, but in Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople (where the current Eastern Orthodox Patriarch is seated) and Alexandria. Much of the North African Church was divided from the Western Church over theological issues following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD; Alexandria remained the ‘seat’ of leadership to the Africans, who have generally become known as “Copts” (from the word "Egypt"). Their leader, Pope Shenouda, has been instrumental in attempting to restore relations between the African Church and their Asian and European brethren; many modern scholars believe that the 1600-year-old division between the churches is based more on linguistic misunderstandings than actual theological differences.

During his papacy, Pope Shenouda III appointed the first-ever Bishops to preside over North American dioceses, as well as the first Coptic Bishops in Australia, France, England, Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and established the first Coptic Churches in South America. He is known for his commitment to Christian unity and has, since the 1970s, advocated inter-denominational Christian dialogue.

In 1973, Pope Shenouda III became the first Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria to meet with the Pope of Rome in over 1500 years. In this visit, they signed a common declaration on the issues that had divided the churches, and agreed to further discussions on Christian unity. In an address he gave during the International Week of Prayer in 1974, he declared,

"The whole Christian world is anxious to see the church unite. Christian people, being fed up with divisions, are pushing their church leaders to do something about church unity and I am sure that the Holy Spirit is inspiring us.”

In 2000, He was awarded the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence by UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura, and in 2007 received an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the University of Lawrence in Michigan for his efforts in spreading the values of peace, human love and tolerance in the world. The University declared that Pope Shenouda was a "man of peace who works in his utmost efforts to maintain more understanding between the Middle Eastern people, regardless their religions or nationalities,” and "shows us the way of reconciliation in that region which is torn apart by wars".

At the current time, Egyptian Christians and Muslims share a sense of uncertainty over the future of Egypt, and Pope Shenouda’s death increases the weight of that uncertainty.


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10 Fun Bits of Irish Trivia for St. Patrick's Day...

1) St Patrick was born in Britain, not Ireland (But that’s not the real news…) Yes, Patrick was born about 387 AD somewhere in Britain – different scholars have suggested Wales, Cumbria, and even Scotland. But lest you jump to the conclusion that he was English, think again: The Angles would not arrive in what is now “England” for at least another 100 years; Patrick, as a native ‘Briton,’ was 100% Celtic, not ‘English.’

2) All that Red Hair you associate with the Irish? It may not be Irish at all. Red Hair is more indicative of Viking DNA, no doubt the result of several hundred years of Scandinavian pillaging and other extra-curricular activities on the Irish coast. Not unsurprisingly, Scotland – which was closer to Viking raiders than Ireland – boasts 50% more redheads than the Emerald Isle. An absolute majority of the Irish have brown - not red - hair.

3) Potatoes ain’t Irish either. They are native to the Andes Mountains of South America, and were first brought to Europe in the 16th Century by Spanish Conquistadores who obtained them from the local Incans.

4) Corned Beef and Cabbage is a distinctively….American dish. Corned Beef was considered an expensive extravagance in Ireland, especially at the time of the Famine when few Irish could afford it. It became popular in the United States in the last 1800s as an Irish-American dish, but has never been popular in Ireland itself.

5) Speaking of the Famine – “An Gorta Mor” (or “The Great Hunger”): During the worst years of the famine, 1845-1849, 25% of Ireland’s population died or were sent by ship to the US and Canada. During those same years, a record amount of calves, beef, bacon, and ham were exported from Ireland to England. Monetary aid to the Irish was sent from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the City of Calcutta, India, and the Choctaw Nation, which had barely survived the Trail of Tears 16 years earlier. Americans sent the equivalent of over $1,000,000, more than any nation,including Britain itself.

6) Even though Irish Gaelic is the National Language of Ireland, required in public school, and recognized as an official language in the European Union, no more than 85,000 Irish – only 1.3% of the population – speak it regularly and fluently.

7) While Ireland and Guinness Stout are practically synonymous in popular culture, two-thirds of the beer consumed in Eire is lager, not stout. The number one national brand is not Guinness, but Smithwicks. Of all beers, the number one beer in Ireland? Dutch-brewed Heineken. And while the Irish drink a lot of beer – 139 liters per person annually – the Czechs are the worlds beer-drinking champs at 159 liters per person.

8) If you want to be remembered after you’ve passed on, be a horse. Horseracing has long been a popular pasttime in Ireland, and in the early 1840s, many races were won by a horse named “The Pride of Ballyara.” But in the middle of the Great Famine, The Pride of Ballyara was pressed into service as a workhorse, pulling a cart laden with oats and corn 50 miles from port to the city of Sligo. When he died, grateful residents saw that he was buried in a plot in the Ballyara Graveyard in South Sligo (an otherwise “human” cemetery) where his headstone and grave remains the most prominent and well-maintained plot in the graveyard to this day.

9) In spite of often being characterized as some rude backwater by the European upper classes, Ireland provided more teaching scholars than any other nation throughout the middle ages. The monasteries located throughout Europe – which became today’s Universities – were the centers of teaching and learning in the medieval period…and every one of them was either founded by, or ‘staffed’ by, Irish scholars.

10) We have all heard of Leprechauns…but apparently, they are not the only ‘wee’ things in Ireland. In 2005, Martin Casella’s play, “The Irish Curse - a new comedy about guys with one tiny problem” exploded in New York City and then Dublin. And alas, statistics bear out the myth: At 12.78 centimeters (5.03 inches), Irish men apparently have the second smallest ‘equipment’ in Europe, beating only the hose-challenged Romanians at 12.73 centimeters (Of course, that never prevented them from producing large families…) The Heaviest equipment in Europe is sported by the Hungarians, French, and Scandinavians, all averaging over 6 inches each. [Disclaimer: Your blogger boasts more Scandinavian and French DNA than Irish…]

Which sounds like a great reason to get one’s bravado up and imbibe a bit of Guinne…er, no, Smithwicks…to boost one’s confidence!

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to all my fellow Irishmen and Wannabes!

Rowan Williams to Resign as Archbishop of Canterbury; Anglican Division Imminent?

Rowan Douglas Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the worlds 80 million Anglicans, announced his resignation today effective at the end of the year. While he is resigning in order to assume a new position as Master of Magdalene College in Cambridge, England, his tenure has been marked by deep and insurmountable theological divisions within the global Anglican Communion. It is likely that his departure and the near-impossible task of choosing his successor may mark the end of what little tenuous unity remains within the church.

The church, widely acknowledged as having been founded in earnest by Elizabeth I (Queen of England and daughter of Henry VIII), was ironically rocked beginning in the 1970s over the role of women who felt called to serve as priests and bishops. Older Anglican Churches in Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the US (where the church is known as the Episcopal Church) have generally been more progressive than their younger, growing, and more Evangelically-flavored Anglican counterparts in central Africa and Latin America.

During Williams’ tenure, disagreements over homosexuality divided the church into liberal and conservative elements, and Williams was often perceived as placating conservative demands (The Archbishop of Canterbury is a spiritual leader, but lacks the ‘authority’ wielded by the Roman Catholic Pope.) Nonetheless, conservative churches remained dissatisfied, and began a process of slow withdrawal from the communion during the last decade, lead by Anglican Churches in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, and the “Southern Cone” (most of Latin America and the Caribbean) and joined by 10 conservative American dioceses.

Perhaps no greater display of the divide can be shown than by comparing the reactions of Caroline Hall, President of Integrity (an Episcopalian GLBT organization) and David Virtue, an American firebrand who has served as a self-appointed internet communication headquarters for the conservative movement:

Caroline Hall:

"This decade has arguably been the most tumultuous time for Anglicans since the end of the English Civil War. It has been an incredibly difficult time to be Archbishop of Canterbury, officially the ‘Instrument of Unity’ in an Anglican Communion struggling with disunity and at times outright hostility.

When he was elected we had high hopes that Rowan Williams would be willing to take a bold stand on LGBT inclusion. Those hopes were dashed almost immediately when he bowed to conservative pressure and forced Jeffrey John, an English gay man in a celibate relationship, to step down from his nominations as Bishop of Reading. We were also disappointed by his failure to respect Episcopal Church polity and his failure to invite and welcome the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Bishops. In his attempts to keep everyone at the table, Williams has proved more willing to listen to conservative than to liberal voices, even though his own theological position is more progressive."

"I certainly admire his ability to stay in this position for a decade. To be called to leadership in the middle of rapid and contentious change is never easy and Williams has been the target for acrimonious letters and emails since he was first elected."

"Integrity wishes him well in his new position and prays that when God calls the next Archbishop he will be a forward-looking person of great courage who understands that to be the Instrument of Unity may not mean keeping everyone together in a unholy alliance. We hope [we]…will not bow to the forces who seek to keep the Church of England, and by example, the rest of the Anglican Communion, in the dark ages where women, gays, lesbians and trans-people are not welcome in the House of Bishops and thus are not welcome at all."

David Virtue:

"From the moment he took office, Dr. Rowan Williams' tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury was marked by uncertainty, controversy and unacceptable compromises to global orthodox Anglicans…..For almost a decade it has been a rocky, quarrelsome road for Dr. Williams, culminating in one third of his archbishops and bishops failing to show up at Lambeth 2008 [Ed: a meeting of the world's Anglican Bishops]. A third of his African, Southern Cone and Asian bishops failed to show up in Dublin last year when the world's Anglican Archbishops met. It was billed as a "crisis summit". As the majority of orthodox Anglican Primates failed to show, it was not a summit and a crisis was averted.

In Dromantine in 2005, Williams faced excoriation from both sides. He was accused of being weak and ineffectual by then US Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold for not standing up to Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola over homosexuality, while the Global South Primates continued their distancing from Dr. Williams. Relationships became so estranged that the Primates would not take Eucharist together.

…Williams has warned that the Anglican Communion faces a "piece-by-piece dissolution" if member churches fail to avoid actions that upset others. Many believe that his failure to act or to offer a definitive word on pressing moral issues has contributed to the dissolution.

…Dr. Williams' long struggle to prevent a schism over women and gay bishops and same-sex unions has been a high wire act that has no resolution. Orthodox Anglicans in the West and the vast majority of the Global South are deeply entrenched in Scripture's prohibition of any form of sexual expression outside of marriage between a man and a woman, while Western liberal provinces embrace pansexuality with first a homosexual and then a lesbian bishop [Mary Glasspool, consecrated in the Diocese of Los Angeles on May 15, 2010] consecrated in The Episcopal Church...

[If the new Archbishop] is a liberal, it will only ratchet up the continuing and ongoing realignment now firmly underway. If he is an evangelical, he will need a spine of steel to stand up to the Country's growing and very strident homosexual and Islamist lobby especially in the Church of England...Whichever way it goes one thing is certain, there will be no stopping the rise of the Global South with its millions of evangelical Anglicans and the slow but inevitable death of Western Anglicanism if it does not repent of its sin. And that it would seem, is not going to happen."


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Greg Smith, Executive, Resigns from "Toxic" and "Destructive" Goldman Sachs

A little more than 7 years ago I began blogging, in part due to my outrage over the tactics used by Goldman Sachs in destroying their clients. The catalyst was their treatment of Ashanti Gold, the third largest gold producer in the world at the time, and the first black African company to be listed on otherwise 'white' stock exchanges. In abbreviated form I retold the story of the manipulation and destruction of that company here in a post that was re-published by the official news agency in Ghana (where Ashanti was headquartered) and which remains one of the top 10 most-widely read posts on this blog to this day.

It has been nothing short of horrifying, then, to watch Goldman Sachs manipulate the American economy in the last few years in much the same way, as its former employees and executives have esconced themselves within the US Dept of Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank offices.

Today, Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs executive director and the head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is resigning...over the very issues we have been raising in this blog for these last several years. The full content of his resignation letter is posted below.

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.
But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.


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The Presidential Election 100 Years Ago: The Same Issues

The year is 1912, and the Presidential Election is at a fever pitch. There is a growing income disparity in the country, and wealth is becoming concentrated in the hands of a few mega-corporations and their CEOs. Politics appears to be directed by Wall Street and Corporate boardrooms, and social unrest is growing. Organized Labor is both demonized and celebrated. Debt is crushing farmers. Fear of war is in the air. Entire groups of people are disenfranchised from voting. One of the political parties has adopted the following as their official party platform for the election:

- A National Health Service to include all existing government medical agencies (YES, this was ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO!)
- Social Security to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled
- Freedom to strike against unfair labor practices.
- Minimum wage laws
- A legal eight hour workday
- Creation of a federal Securities Commission to regulate Wall Street
- Debt relief for farmers
- Workers' compensation for work-related injuries
- An inheritance tax
- A Constitutional amendment to permit a graduated federal income tax
- Universal right of Women to vote
- Direct election of Senators instead of appointment by state legislatures
- Primary elections for state and federal nominations
- Reductions in tariffs that raised cosumer prices
- Limits on the production of military armaments
- Public Works Projects to improve waterways & transportation

The central theme of the campaign was expressed in this platform clause:

“To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”

To accomplish this, the Party Platform supported:

- Strict limits and disclosure requirements on political campaign contributions (Yes, we've been debating this for 100 years...)
- Registration of lobbyists
- Recording and publication of Congressional committee proceedings
- Strong national regulation and permanent active supervision of major corporations.

The Party's candidate for President would infuriate southern racists by dining with blacks on multiple occasions, and the Party would openly admit blacks to the nominating convention. A Woman would deliver one of the nominating speeches.

Now . . . Which Party was this?

If it sounds like the Democratic Party - it wasn't.

It wasn't the Republicans, either...although it was a party formed largely of ex-Republicans.

It was a third Party, the Progressive (or “Bull Moose”) Party, who nominated Theodore Roosevelt that year.

Democrat Woodrow Wilson would go on to win the Presidency that year with a minority (41.8%) of the vote. But the Progressives, running as a “Third Party,” would take 27% of the national vote, outpolling the Republicans and winning 6 states (California, Minnesota, Michigan, Washington, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota.)

Rather than being a “wasted vote,” their ideas would impact the platforms of both major parties for generations to come.

Just some Food for Thought.

Green Party USA

Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts

American Progressive Party (not an officially established Party)

Progressive Party of Oregon

Progressive Party of Vermont

Progressive Party of Washington

Working Families Party of New York

Libertarian Party

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