the Shackle Report

Michael R. Bloomberg Asked during the 2001 mayoral campaign by New York magazine if he had ever used marijuana, said: ‘’You bet I did. And I enjoyed it.’’ Later said he regretted those remarks.

George W. Bush acknowledged in 1994 run for governor of Texas that he had abused alcohol and decided to quit drinking when he turned 40. As candidate for president in 2000, when asked whether he had ever used marijuana, cocaine or other illegal drugs, he refused to answer directly but said that he could have passed a 15-year F.B.I. background check when his father became president since his dad could ruin the career of any fibbie who blabbed. As president, GWB appeared to acknowledge past marijuana use in conversations with a family friend, Doug Wead. Wead later changed his name and is in a witness protection program. Aides have denied specific allegations of other drug use in a 2004 biography by Kitty Kelley.

Bill Clinton, as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in the late 1960s, tried marijuana. “I’ve never broken a state law,” he said. “But when I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale it, and never tried it again.”

Hillary Rodham Clinto, when running for Senate in 2000, said she had never used marijuana or cocaine. Listening to Hillary over the years we believe her.

Andrew M. Cuomo, seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in 2002, said, “I have tried marijuana in my youth,” but based on photographic evidence, Andrew Cuomo never had a youth to smoke pot in. Snorting coke with John Jr. on the other hand was a ‘blast.’

Rudolph W. Giuliani, when mayor of New York City, expounded from a City Hall lectern about why he had not tried marijuana or cocaine. Later said he regretted even answering reporters’ questions about personal drug use, saying, “Isths none of their businesshs.” However . . . .

George E. Pataki, the Republican governor wrote in his autobiography that he experimented with marijuana when a law school friend at Columbia University cooked it into a pot of baked beans. In fact, (ex) Governor Pataki recent loss of several feet of intestine was possibly caused by an adverse reaction to defoliant contaminating the Cannibus Indicus garnishing his favorite recipe.

This may explain why Rudy Giuliani confided to Ray Harding that he got the ‘headiest feeling’ on a number of occasions after standing in close proximity to Governor Pataki when the Gov. was audibly passing gas.

The week’s reading, straight off the razor wire:

Spitz – Her

It took me a while but I finally came up with something to say about the Spitzer whatever it is. My initial visceral reaction was; “Oh, for chissake, you fucking retard,” just like it was with Bill Clinton. Not that there’s ever a good time, but this is hardly the time for a prominent Democrat to make a scene that will be interpreted as a symbol of moral degeneracy among lefties by pious ninnies with too much influence and too big a stage.

I don’t care that he goes to prostitutes. He can even use taxpayer money to do it if he wants. His assertion in his resignation speech that much is expected of those to whom much is given is a wee bit dubious. I didn’t expect him to really change how politics is done in Albany any more than I think Obama can do that in Washington if he’s elected. I didn’t expect him to live up to some high moral standard that privileged people are supposed to. I didn’t expect any sort of transcendent figure, and I didn’t believe much of the hype surrounding his AG career to the effect that he’s some kind of crusader bringing wrong-doers to justice, any more than I believed that of Ghouliani. If either of them were crusaders they would have made some dents in the mortgage thingie before it went batshit and fucked the little people, again. (The little people who should have been smart enough to not trust government or lending institutions, and to do their own addition regarding how much money they have vs. how much they need. It’s barely even math.)
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In a recent editorial, the NY Times reported the annual rise in US incarceration and its ballooning costs:

Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987.

… Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

It went on to say that most policy makers know that there are better, cheaper, more socially productive ways to deal with lesser offenders, but that the privatization of the prison industry has created a (seemingly) unbeatable lobby for senseless cruelty and waste.

Yet the NYT’s explanation — that our lust for punishment is economically determined– undervalues the power of our confusion between law, justice and vengeance. From the “closure” victims seek in death penalty cases to Spitzer’s popularity as a wiretapping scourge, and his humiliation as a wiretapped hypocrite — we all seem hell-bent on revenge against those who make us feel violated and afraid. We aren’t looking for justice in these situations, so much as we’re looking to justify a little sadistic fun.

In old westerns the good sheriff had the guts to face down the vengeful mob, to send the pitchforks home, cool their blood lust, make them wait for a fair trial. Vengeance was the enemy in those tales, an intoxicating demon. Law was the sober contract that rescued civilization from savagery. But now we’ve gotten into the pitchfork habit We haven’t been bought out by the punishment lobby so much as turned on by it, tempted and seduced.