I Read The News Today...

Thirty years ago today we heard the terrible news that John Lennon had been murdered outside his New York City apartment building. It is also thirty years since my best friend Ray, he was known mostly as 'Wizard' around north Seattle, was killed by a drunk driver. We used to call ourselves "Twin Sons of Different Mothers" (even before the Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg record came out in '78). I still feel that loss acutely and I miss him every day. Yesterday, December 7th, a date which will live in infamy, is also the anniversary of the death of my son, Joshua, in 1996 whom I miss as dearly. The loss that I feel right now is immense and acutely painful.

While The Beatles were the big deal when I was a kid and I liked their music, it was other bands that would capture my devotion and imagination - The Yardbirds, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and on March 27, 1976 I discovered what would become, and remains to this day, my favorite band: Rush. It is important to understand that none of what would become "my music" would have happened if John Lennon and the Beatles, had not happened first, and the Beatles would not have happened unless Elvis happened first, and Elvis would not have happened unless "The Blues" had been around first.

In fact none of the music that we know today as "Rock & Roll" would exist without the influence of American Blues. "Skiffle" was the music that inspired a young John Lennon and James "Paul" McCartney to pick up guitars in the first place. "Skiffle" is generally thought to have originated out of the early New Orleans jazz scene due in part to it's similarity to traditional "Dixieland" jazz from the early 20th century. The New Orleans influence is largely thought to be overstated however. "Skiffle" is generally thought to have derived from merging Blues with influences from western European folk music, mostly Scots-Irish throughout Appalachian areas, as well as Caribbean and western African influences from the slave markets and New Orleans famous "Congo Square" where many of these disparate influences came together. There is a common ancestry and a common heritage shared across generations, cultures and geographic boundaries. This is what music does better than almost any other form of human communication and John Lennon was better than most at speaking to our collective souls about things that still matter thirty years after an assassin's bullet took him from us.

Today is a day, at least for me, to remember and be thankful for the time that I had with the people that I miss and for the legacy that remains for all of us from those greats that have passed on. As the Righteous Brothers sang: "If there's a Rock & Roll heaven, you know they've got a hell of a band" - This is an updated cover version, very well done and an excellent video tribute to some of the greats that died too soon.

A Letter to President Obama

Here is the text of a letter I sent to the White House this morning:

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Dear Mr. President,

I'm just one little voice out here & you have 537 voices, much louder & much closer to your ear, mostly saying, "Hooray for our side!"

However, I talk to people and I watch TV news and commentary regularly so I have some idea of what is happening. This is what you need to know, sir:

Sen. Mitch McConnell yesterday on "Meet the Press" said no taxes will go up, the GOP is claiming victory already!

Do not compromise any further on letting "The Bush Tax Cuts" expire. If the GOP really wants to play chicken, sir, go ahead & PLAY CHICKEN with them. Even if you lose, which you most likely wouldn't, you will have been seen by your key supporters (people like me that you will need in 2012, so will every Democrat running in 2012, BTW) as having actually fought for something. As it is, most people I have talked to say that they feel disappointed because you tend to give away important bargaining chips before the negotiations even began – the “Public Option” & “DADT” are typically mentioned.

If the Democratic Party can find a backbone somewhere I think you ought to use it to stand up to the GOP and force “The Bush Tax Cuts” (have you noticed how that's now “the current tax rates” when referred to by the GOP?) to expire. Then come back in the next session & get a better deal for the middle class and small businesses.

Make the GOP go to the American people that elected them and make their case for the richest 2% - most of whom make more in a week than many (most?) Americans do in a year. I just read that the 74 people who had the highest incomes in 2009 made more than all 19 million people that make up the lowest income levels combined. This who the GOP thinks needs a tax break? Really, sir, you can’t figure out how to stand up to this? I gotta believe that the most inspirational Politician in my lifetime, since “Bobby” in ’68, can rally public support for making millionaires pay another 4.6% - for someone making $20,000 per WEEK that ain’t much. My family and I live on far less than $46,000 per year so no millionaire can tell me that they cannot make ends meet without that extra $46K.

If you want us to believe, Mr. President, you have to give us something to believe in. This is a fight you will win, if you stand up for the middle-class we will stand with you. If the money-men win this one, they will win the country and we end up right back where the "Regan-to-Bush II Years" put us.

Never give up, never surrender! (Galaxy Quest)

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I would encourage anyone that gives a damn to do the same. I am sending copies to Sen. Murray and Cantwell as well as to the majority leadership in Congress - yes, that is still the Democratic Party until January 2011. Feel free to copy and adapt what I wrote, if you wish.

Taxing "The Rich" vs "Don't Raise Taxes On Anyone"

Yesterday morning, Saturday December 4, 2010, I was up watching the television news channels - I am typically up and around by 5:00 am or so everyday - so I was able to get the "Breaking News" update live from CNN and MSNBC that the votes in the U.S. Senate which would extend the current tax rates for incomes below $250,000 ($500K for couples) or $1,000,000 in the proposal from Sen. Charles "Chuck" Schumer (D-NY) failed as was widely expected. The votes were mostly along party lines however there were also 5 Democratic members who voted with the Republicans to raise taxes on everyone if the richest 2% don't get to keep their 4.6% tax cut, too.

The arguments were pretty clear from the outset on this:

The Republicans say, "Don't raise taxes on ANYONE in a recession, period!"

The Democratic Party's argument goes something like this:

"For the last 30 years, since the beginning of "Reganomics" or the "Trickle-Down" theory*, the wealthiest Americans, the top 2% - whose adjusted gross income (AGI) is at or above $250,000 per year - have received an abundance of the benefit of economic policies which have now created a huge problem for the other 98% of Americans and, by virtue of the fact that the US dollar (USD) is the default currency of the entire planet that 'problem' extends far beyond our geographic borders.

The cost of extending "The Bush Tax Cuts" for the top 2% of wage earners is about $700 Billion over 10 years. Because we are already in debt 'up-to-our-eyeballs', and deficit spending is at record levels, we'd have to borrow that $700 Billion, probably from China, and we just cannot afford to keep up this pretense of borrowing ourselves into prosperity. The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer - the middle-class hardly kept up with inflation and stayed about the same in financial terms but the number of families within the middle-class went down, quite literally, into the poverty levels."

The Democratic Party argument goes on to explain how the deregulation of the financial and other industries, driven by "Reganomics", perpetuated by the Clinton administration and codified by the 2nd Bush administration, has moved America from the leader and envy of the world in just about every respect - education, innovation, technology, you name it and America was, or was thought to be, the best at it. America was called "The Land of Opportunity" by those, like my parents, who came to America in the 1940's & '50's.

Now America is something like 12th in college graduation and falling, 37th (according to the W.H.O.) in health care and falling, 46th in infant mortality, and these are only a few of the places where America is falling behind where we used to lead the way. The answers are not easy and they "require hard choices" and "sacrifice" if we are going to get back to the principles that got America to the top in the first place.

More tax cuts for the top 2% is just insane, on so many levels. We just cannot afford the $4 Trillion price tag of the "Bush Tax Cuts", but the "bottom 98%" could not absorb the brunt of the impact from an across the board tax increase. The overwhelming majority of whom make less than $100,000 per year (less than half of what the lowest earners in the top 2% earn annually) and have far less than $3.5 Million in net worth (the lowest level that is effected by the estate or 'death' tax).

So what is proposed is to extend the "Bush Tax Cuts" - what the Republicans are now referring to as "the current tax rates" - for the 98% of American families that earn less than $250,000 per year and let them expire for the top 2%, incomes over $250,000 would revert back to the 2000 tax rate of 39.6% from the current 35%.

In terms of dollars and cents, here is an example:

Let's say that a person makes $260,000 in 2010. That is just about the bottom of the infamous top 2% of incomes and it gives us some easy numbers to use as a practical example of what this actually means in real numbers.

If the rates go back to the 2000 rates of 39.6% on and a "taxable income" of $260,000 that would be a tax bill of $102,960 leaving an after-tax-income of $157,040. If however, the tax rate on that same $260,000 is only 35% the resulting tax bill would be reduced to $91,000 with a net after-tax-income of $169,000. That is a net difference of $11,960 or a difference of just over 2 weeks of income - $260,000 per year equals $5,000 per week! Most Americans don't get $5,000 per month let alone $5,000 per week!

As you can see by the strength of their argument that the Democratic Party has the right idea and is pretty much right on about what they are saying. Well, actually you could if you were able to accurately comprehend what they were telling you, which most Americans seem unable or unwilling to even attempt. Most Americans are sheep, to lazy and to stupid to see that they are being lead to the slaughter by the "Industrial-Corporate-Military-Congressional Complex". If the people don't get their collective heads on straight this nation is done as a world power and this is not a good thing for the prospects of liberty as a world goal.

Pres. Obama has said that he is hoping for compromise on the tax issue. This morning (Sunday 12/5/2010) Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told David Gregory on "Meet The Press" "It isn't going to happen. All the Republicans and 5 Democrats voted against raising taxes on anyone during a recession." It seems to me that Sen. McConnell and the GOP are willing to stand on their belief that the Democrats in congress will blink first and be too afraid of the tax rates going up for everyone that they'll give-in on the "tax the rich" strategy without getting anything meaningful in return from the Republicans.

If that doesn't bother you you're not paying attention. If it does bother you:

GOOD! YOU SHOULD BE BOTHERED! Now go and do something about it!

Write your Senators and Representatives in Washington, D.C. and tell them that you do not want an additional $700 Billion heaped on the backs of your kids and grandkids just so the fat-cats can keep hording larger and larger portions of the wealth in America. We do not need, want, nor could we withstand, another "Gilded Age" in America.

*More properly called "Supply-Side" economic theory, it basically states that when the wealthy gain in prosperity it will "trickle down" to the rest of society because the rich will spend their additional wealth on goods and services that are provided by the lower financial classes so that everyone will get a benefit. Add the fact that typically it is the wealthiest classes (the top 2% of incomes) that own the majority of the business interests in America, so they will reinvest some of the additional profits into their businesses and thus create more jobs and, again, everyone wins because the net effect is that a rising tide lifts all boats.

"A rising tided lifted all yachts, the rowboats got left behind" - Warren Buffet, appearing on ABC's "This Week with Christiane Amanpour" 11/28/2010

Medical Discrimination Toward MMJ Patients

I am looking for a primary care doctor and as a Washington state DSHS client there are limited options within our state's Medicaid system. I was finally able to get an appointment at Pacific Medical's (PacMed) Northgate clinic with a doctor that is accepting Medicaid patients and I was able to be seen the following afternoon, less than 24 hours hence. I was thrilled and quite frankly impressed at the excellence of the service provided the person on the phone that took my information and set the appointment.

My expectations were shattered that following afternoon. It seems that when I was referred to a PacMed specialist, by a former doctor, the fact that I am a "marijuana user' was included in the referring documentation. The doctor asked me if I still used marijuana before I brought it up, so being honest, I explained that I have had a medical recommendation for the use of marijuana for 2-3 years and that I use marijuana for the relief of nausea, and other G.I. distress, that had worsened as well as becoming chronic, after I had a Gastric-By-Pass operation. I explained that this condition is not relieved by any other method, at least not without side-effects that are at times worse than the condition itself and altogether unwanted in any case.

The doctor had been reading my chart and the notes when I started talking but as soon as it hit his brain that I was saying that I am a "medical marijuana user" he set my chart down on the desk and closed it while he politely listened as I finished my explanation.

Then he said that he had to inform me, "that the clinic has a policy" regarding "marijuana users", without respect to medical vs. recreational use, which states that they absolutely will not prescribe any medications which the clinic lists as addictive or which the clinic determines has a high potential for abuse to people who use marijuana. He would be specifically prevented from prescribing any narcotic pain medication such as Vicodin - whether he felt it appropriate or not - by corporate fiat. I think he added that last bit about the narcotic pain medications because one of my main issues - after the nausea and PTSD/Depression issues - has been severe and chronic pain. He would need to get all my medical records and a UA/Drug Screen before he would be able to prescribe ANY medications at all so I should contact my prior provider for any refills I may need until he can get all the information.

I realized that I was being told that I am a drug addict and was going to be treated like one. So, I asked the doctor this question: "Does this policy apply alcohol &/or tobacco users?" I should surprise absolutely nobody that the answer was, with a hint of humor in it, "No." So, I took it one step further, I asked: "Does this clinic or PacMed as a whole, have a similar policy regarding the treatment of a patient that a doctor knows, or reasonably suspects, is an alcoholic or addicted to nicotine?" Again the answer was, no. At least for the second question he added the qualifier that he wasn't aware of one, he'd have to check. I told him that I was 99.99999% sure that there wasn't and I still stand by that belief.

So, what this comes down to is this: If you use a legal medicine for a condition and that medicine is effective for the condition for which you use it, and they (PacMed) don't approve of that particular medicine, they will not allow their doctors to treat you as anything other than an addict until you prove you are not an addict by quitting the medicine (otherwise legal and effective) that they don't like. If I'd just quit "smoking pot" then I can get Vicodin and Oxy-whatever-I-want. This is silly on it's face as well as being discrimination against medical marijuana users.

I have contacted the Washington State office of the ACLU and they have given me a few resources to investigate and I am looking for a good lawyer to see about bringing a discrimination suit against PacMed. What I would tell every medical marijuana patient is get your complete medical records, including doctors notes and referral notes, to see what information is being shared among your medical providers. You may be branded as an addict or a drug-seeker and you don't know it. You may not be getting your doctors best medical decisions because of a policy that you don't realize is affecting your doctors ability to determine and implement a course of treatment.

I will be doing some more research on this and writing about my experiences here on my blog and I'll be sharing these with Steve over at Toke of the Town and with the good folks over at Northwest Leaf as well as anywhere else that will listen. This is discrimination, plain and simple, and it, as will all prejudice and discrimination, must not go unchallenged. We, the MMJ community, deserve to be treated as patients. We do not deserve to be treated as though every marijuana user is a drug-addict, if for no other reason than the fact that it is just not true.