Front Office Football Central - The Obama Presidency

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STIMULUS WATCH: Construction drives up new jobs - Yahoo! News

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By MATT APUZZO and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE, Associated Press Writers Matt Apuzzo And Brett J. Blackledge, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 15 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Businesses reported creating or saving more than 30,000 jobs in the first months of President Barack Obama's stimulus program, according to initial data released Thursday by a government oversight board. Military construction led the way, and states in the South and Southwest saw the biggest boost.

The new job numbers — in line with expectations for such an early accounting — offer the first hard data on effects of the $787 billion stimulus program.

The figures are based on jobs linked to less than $16 billion in federal contracts and represent just a sliver of the total stimulus package. But they also represent a milestone of sorts for an administration that promised unprecedented real-time data on whether the program was working.

Until now, the White House has relied on economic models to argue that the program created jobs and eased the recession. The numbers help shift the discussion from whether the program is creating jobs to whether it is creating enough to justify its enormous price tag.

"These are the most thankful employees you'll ever want to see," said Robert Del Riego, majority owner of Frederick, Md.-based Re-Engineered Business Solutions, who said he hired 33 new employees, mostly skilled laborers looking for work in the dismal construction market.

He expects to hire six more to help with water and sewer projects in Arkansas and North Carolina and small construction jobs at other sites. His company won $1.9 million in Army Corps of Engineers contracts.

"It's extra work and with work, hopefully you make a profit," he said. "But the main thing is, it's putting real guys back to work."

The White House said the new numbers were validation that the administration was on track to hit Obama's goal of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

"The early indications are quite positive," said White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein, who said the report "exceeds our projections."

The construction industry showed the strongest numbers in Thursday's report, accounting for about a third of the jobs thanks to contracts to repair military bases. Despite those gains, unemployment in the construction industry remains high, at 17.1 percent. That's down from its February high of 21.4 percent.

"It's kind of carrying us, allowing us to retain employees until the economy makes a rebound," said Matt Rathsack, director of operations at the Kentucky engineering firm, TetraTech, which reported saving 71 jobs thanks to an Army Corps of Engineers construction project at the Detroit Arsenal facility in Michigan. "We've already pared back and cut back. The staff is on reduced hours. The feeling is we're coming around the corner. We're optimistic."

Environmental jobs also provided a big boost. CH2M Hill, the contractor in charge of cleaning the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, said nearly 2,200 jobs, from carpenters to engineers to secretaries, had been created in southwest Washington state.

On paper, Colorado posted the largest increase of any state, more than 4,700 jobs, largely thanks to a contract to set up a call center to field questions about a change to digital cable. But the jobs were spread across multiple states, underscoring one of the many hiccups in the data. Like most contracting jobs, these were temporary, and most are already over.

California, Florida, Tennessee and Texas also showed strong gains.

New England fared poorly, with fewer than 750 jobs reported across the region. Rhode Island, which has the third-highest unemployment rate in the country, reported the weakest job numbers, both overall and per capita. Businesses there reported creating or saving about six jobs.

Broader numbers on local stimulus spending, for everything from repairing public housing and building schools to repaving highways and keeping teachers off the unemployment lines, won't be available until late this month. Those figures are expected to show early stimulus money saving thousands of teaching jobs and creating construction work for highway projects nationwide.

Thursday's numbers represent such a small snapshot, they are unlikely to significantly change the debate over whether the stimulus law was the right prescription for an ailing economy. Until more money is spent and more data come in, it is impossible to accurately calculate how much the government is spending per job.

House Republican leader John Boehner said the numbers don't change the fact that unemployment has climbed higher than the White House ever expected. Since signing the stimulus in February, Obama has watched the economy shed millions of jobs. The White House says things would have been far worse without the stimulus.

"The administration's continuing assertion that the stimulus is working flies in the face of the harsh reality being faced by Americans outside the Beltway every day," Boehner said. "While the administration spins its illusion, Americans are asking, 'Where are the jobs?'"

In the short term, the most significant thing about the job numbers may be that they exist at all. The government has never before attempted to track the effects, in real time, of such a huge government program. The data released by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board allow taxpayers to see not just where their money is going, but what the government is getting in return and how many people are on the job.

The reporting does not attempt to measure jobs created by $288 billion in tax cuts or the sizable increases in spending on Medicaid and unemployment benefits. The White House has said that, when considering those factors and estimating the ripple effect through the economy, more than 1 million jobs have been created or saved so far.

Auditors, fearing businesses would use part-time jobs to inflate the numbers, required companies to convert all jobs numbers to full-time. That means a 20-hour-a-week roofing job is counted as half one job.

I cant wait to see how the different sides interpret the data and the assumptions going forward

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Originally Posted by Flasch186 (Post 2144762)

I cant wait to see how the different sides interpret the data and the assumptions going forward

So how do you interpret this data since you obviously felt it held some importance? Otherwise, you wouldn't have posted it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flasch186 (Post 2144762)

STIMULUS WATCH: Construction drives up new jobs - Yahoo! News

I cant wait to see how the different sides interpret the data and the assumptions going forward

I would say that most of the jobs appear temporary, and what they are doing has limited value and utility. It was fun being in Massachusetts 2 weeks ago and having all the new unnecessary highway signs that the stimulus bill had paid for pointed out. For example, Massachusetts' highways now have .1 mile markers strewn about, something that might have been useful back before EVERY cell phone had to have a GPS locator for 911 calls, but today, not so much.

Still not sure where money is going around here, other than some of the education dollars that went to hiring new math tutors for at-risk kids rather than saving some of the teacher positions that got cut. Do they count those as "new jobs", or since other positions had to be cut at the same time is it a net loss?

I found some of the assumptions Flasch was referring to in his post.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Let-the-Sunshine-In/

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First, if you extrapolate from this reporting to the bigger picture, this data appears to confirm that we’ve created or saved around one million jobs so far, which is just about what our own estimates and those of private sector forecasters have found using the types of methods our Council of Economic Advisors describes here.

Second, these reports cover only direct, tangible jobs created by recipients, which means there are even more jobs created when those folks go out and spend their new earnings—the so-called multiplier effect.

I think it's a fool's errand to try to tally jobs, but from what I've read there's pretty solid agreement that the stimulus added a couple points of GDP growth last quarter, not enough to see growth, but at least we weren't declining.

As for jobs being temporary, that's the goal. A well designed stimulus will create jobs temporarily to try to boost demand until the economy picks up and creates a more permanent demand. It would work even better if the group of moderates hadn't insisted it be not so big, full of non-stimulative tax cuts, and devoid of much direct aid to states, but at least they made David Broder happy.

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Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA (Post 2142376)

I'd say you don't hear the DINO phrase as often (heck, I'm honestly one of the few people I can think of that uses it really) but that just feels more like a case where the acronym just hasn't caught on as well not that the sentiment isn't felt to reasonably similar extents.

IMO, this might be because Republicans tend to be more dogmatic about their party (especially lately) whereas most Democrats have come to see their party as a "Big Tent" with both its benefits & drawbacks.

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Originally Posted by flere-imsaho (Post 2145296)

Yeah, I think that it is harder to pin down a typical Dem, so it is harder to find a DINO. You might have a lower-income, religious, homophobic black construction worker in a union in Cleveland and a rich athiest white gay environmentalist in San Francisco. Both of those people are "typical" Democrats, but they have very little to do with each other and would disagree on a lot of major policy issues and probably don't even really like each other. But you can't say who is and is not the DINO.

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Originally Posted by gstelmack (Post 2144093)

It's surprising right now as much as both parties are pandering to their extreme that a middle-of-the-road party hasn't found room to emerge.

Yeah, but look at who both parties got to run for President. Neither was a crazy extremist.

When both Baucus and Grayson can be in the same party, what would it take to be "in name only"?

Yes, and Bush was to the left of Hitler. What's the point? Isn't it obvious we're discussing this country and not parties outside? To be blunt, who gives a flying fuck about modern Europeans social democratic parties?

Yeah, and you're to the left of Jesse Ewiak. ;)

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Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2 (Post 2145428)

This.

Left and Right are relative positions which are society determined, not some objective measurements.

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Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2 (Post 2145436)

Yeah, and you're to the left of Jesse Ewiak. ;)

That's mean. You shouldn't say that about Jesse...I mean Steve.

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Originally Posted by ISiddiqui (Post 2145445)

This.

Left and Right are relative positions which are society determined, not some objective measurements.

I agree with you that Left and Right are relative measurements, but I also agree with Steve's point about how the centerline has shifted rightward over the past 30-40 years.

To me, that's where a comparison against the European left-right scale is interesting but not much more useful than that. It's my impression that their relative scale has stayed fairly static over the same timeframe (with shifts back and forth during that period of course). Politicians on the right there today would be centrist/leaning left on the American scale.

But again, it's more just an interesting observation rather than something useful for American politics today.

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Originally Posted by path12 (Post 2145495)

I agree with you that Left and Right are relative measurements, but I also agree with Steve's point about how the centerline has shifted rightward over the past 30-40 years.

Really? Progress on race relations, gay marriage, equal rights, environmental issues, consumer protections, reduced censorship... And we've moved RIGHT? One reason you have such a vocal right-wing right now is the movement left.

To be fair to Jesse I think he was speaking economically.

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Originally Posted by gstelmack (Post 2145500)

Really? Progress on race relations, gay marriage, equal rights, environmental issues, consumer protections, reduced censorship

Let's go with "changes in" rather than "progress". Otherwise there's a whole other argument to be had & this thread has enough subplots as it is ;)

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Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan (Post 2145094)

So how do you interpret this data since you obviously felt it held some importance? Otherwise, you wouldn't have posted it.

you know my opinion of the Stimulus Bill as I know yours...hence my statement that it'll be spun both ways. Which one is truth? Doesnt matter really.

It may be fluff compared to the other stuff talked about in this thread, but I really hope Obama pardons Jack Johnson. Long overdue.

Sen. John McCain, Rep. Peter King press President Obama to posthumously pardon Jack Johnson - ESPN

From CNN.com

Stimulus gaffe spurs jobs reality check - Oct. 16, 2009

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On stimulus jobs reporting, a big 'Oops'
Error in Recovery Act accounting raises doubts about government's ability to precisely track the flow of funds and jobs.

By David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: October 16, 2009: 4:53 PM ET

chart_stimulus_101609.03.gif

Federal guidelines don't allow UT-Battelle to report the 150 construction jobs funded by stimulus contracts.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Gaffes in federal reports this week about stimulus have called into question the government's ability to accurately track how many jobs are being created by the massive $787 billion Recovery Act.

The data in Thursday's reports were filled with mistakes, including an error that made it look like a French vaccine maker received the largest stimulus contract, $1.4 billion, when in fact it has gotten an award one-100th the size.

Government research organization OMB Watch said its assessment of the reports revealed many inconsistencies in the job data.

"The data is rife with mistakes," said Craig Jennings, senior federal fiscal policy analyst at OMB Watch. "When you put out data that hasn't yet been checked, it undermines transparency, because you are putting out wrong information."

According to the Recovery Board, a non-profit, government-funded organization that operates stimulus data tracker recovery.gov, the government expected mistakes and is reviewing reports of them.

Uncovering how many jobs stimulus created is critical to the debate about the Recovery Act's value. Critics argue that the mammoth funding simply represents more government spending and is not effectively being used to create jobs. But proponents say stimulus is a crucial shot in the arm for the economy, and that the labor market would have fallen further without it.

"Understanding how many jobs are created will answer the very fair and important question, 'What return on our investment are we getting?' " said Christopher Mihm, the Government Accountability Office's managing director of strategic issues.

But the enormity of the stimulus bill leaves some experts saying it will be impossible to accurately portray the data. The sheer size of the reporting is dumbfounding: Tens of thousands of recipients will file reports after receiving stimulus funds from one of 28 government umbrella agencies, or from one of countless agencies from the 50 states.

Making it even more difficult to discover the true jobs number is a decision to put the responsibility of correcting mistakes on the stimulus recipients' shoulders. For transparency's sake, government agencies can point out errors but are powerless to change them. All of the data are under government review, and a report on the errors the agencies find will be available at the end of the month.

"It's important that those errors get caught before they get published, and right now they're still under review," said Jennings. "It's possible that some will be caught by the review, but it will take an incredible amount of man power just to sift through the data."

Recipients of stimulus funds were required to report how many jobs they saved or created and how much money they have received from government agencies by Oct. 10. The first sliver of that information was posted on recovery.gov on Thursday, with much more data to come on Oct. 30.

The contract awards posted Thursday represented less than 7% of the total stimulus funds doled out so far. By far the largest part of stimulus is in grants to states, which account for 83% of stimulus funding. Federal agencies and recipients are spending nearly three weeks reviewing these state reports to improve their accuracy before publishing them.

Loans to recipients make up the other 10%. Both grants and loans will be posted on recovery.gov at the end of the month.

There were 5,232 federal contracts reported Thursday, but 41,944 grants and loans will be reported on Oct. 30. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California recently said that his state alone submitted 5,747 reports from agencies and others who received funds from the state.
Mistake-prone reporting

A mistake in the very first contract listed on the site prompted doubts about the reliability of the reports.

Recovery.gov erroneously reported Thursday that French vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur had received $1.4 billion in stimulus funds from the Department of Health and Human Services. The company topped the site's list titled "Largest federal contracts in U.S."

When CNNMoney.com first asked about the contract on Thursday, a spokeswoman from Sanofi Pasteur suspected the $1.4 billion figure was a mistake. HHS spokeswoman Vicki Rivas-Vazquez said the number on recovery.gov was erroneous and the actual amount was $10.4 million.

Sanofi Pasteur said Friday that $10.4 million is the correct figure.

"We anticipated errors in the reporting and so informed many reporters beforehand," said Edward Pound, spokesman for the Recovery Board. "This is the first time this kind of reporting is being done. These reports are being reviewed by federal agencies and recipients to catch any errors or problems."

The Recovery Board has the tall task of compiling all of the data, and is spending $18 million revamping its Web site to manage all of the information.

OMB Watch said its review yielded "really weird job numbers," including many discrepancies within the reports themselves. For instance, Jennings said OMB Watch found that many companies said in a narrative portion of their reports that it was able to retain several employees because of stimulus funds, but the "jobs created" column read "zero."

The Recovery Board aggregates its jobs data from the "jobs created" column to display the total number of jobs saved or created. Jennings speculated that recipients might have been confused about the scope of the term "created."

"I would not stake any sort of claims on those job numbers," said Jennings. "We don't know what's going on there."

Even the job figures that are input correctly do not always reflect the true number of positions created by stimulus funds.

For instance, UT-Battelle received a $338.7 million contract, listed as the fourth largest on the recovery.gov site. So far, the company, which manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee for the Department of Energy, has spent $13 million and created 41 jobs, mostly related to the oversight of subcontractors.

But the funding is actually creating many more jobs, said Thom Mason, UT-Battelle's CEO. Among the firm's first stimulus projects is the building of a chemistry and new materials research lab, which will employ 150 construction workers. None of these positions will appear on UT-Battelle's reports to the federal government.

"It's important that everyone reports on a consistent basis," said Mason, who expects to hire up to 4,000 subcontractors with stimulus funds. "The difficulty is that it gives you a number that's not really a realistic reflection of how many jobs are created."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flasch186 (Post 2146501)

From CNN.com

Stimulus gaffe spurs jobs reality check - Oct. 16, 2009

Aren't they talking of another one?

what do you mean?

I was just posting an applicable article to the thread. Whether its interpreted beyond that is up to ya'll for now since Im going to bed.

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Originally Posted by Flasch186 (Post 2146509)

what do you mean?

I was just posting an applicable article to the thread. Whether its interpreted beyond that is up to ya'll for now since Im going to bed.

I was asking a question. I thought I heard that they are looking at another plan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flasch186 (Post 2146501)

From CNN.com

Stimulus gaffe spurs jobs reality check - Oct. 16, 2009

Sports analogy...

Unemployment is up hundreds and hundreds of thousands but our report that said we saved 30K jobs was wrong by 5-10K...

The Cardinals trade Albert Pujols (.327, 50 HR ) for Nick Johnson (.290, 8 HR) .... You don't like that trade? But we forgot to publish we also got Geovany Soto!!! (.215 10 HR's)

Isn't unemployment all bullshit anyway? I mean they stop tracking you after a year and don't count if you're just taking a part-time job to get by. I know a lot of people who had their hours cut back a lot.

oh, well for me the unemployment # and 'real' unemployment are a gap that makes me shake my head and also causes my disbelief in the stock market's rise...

I do NOT agree that this time it is as lagging as it has been in the past (albeit still lagging). I've been wrong thus far in correlating the markets move to this philosophy but I believe that gap is much smaller this time than in the past. Top line numbers for these companies show they only created $ through cuts and rarely have beaten expectations without simply looking at cost cutting measures. And dont even get me started on the banks numbers. I dont see where the growth that the stock market IMO is predicting is going to come from. That all being said I have been wrong up until now so WTF do I know.

Certainly an interesting day on the airwaves yesterday regarding the administration attacks on Fox News that we discussed earlier in the thread. Rather than easing up, the administration officials have increased their attack on Fox on multiple networks. Here's Axelrod and Emanuel in their appearances.............

Axelrod, Emanuel Criticize Fox News: "It's Not Really News" (VIDEO)

Fox News covered it on their end...........

White House Escalates War on Fox News - Political News - FOXNews.com

And new footage where an administration official discusses their manipulation of information being given to media outlets.............

White House boasts: We 'control' news media

I'm not sure who decided this was a battle the administration wanted to wage, but it just seems like a waste of time given the more pressing matters at hand. I still can't see any positive outcome from an adminstration perspective. Passing some legislation would be far more impactful at this point.

I think it is a sign that the administration is under some intense pressure. Why in the world would they take on any news outlet? All it does is give greater credibility to that outfit and their message.

Youre right the only positive thing was the Fox News Editor admitting what he admitted (which is probably true of most of the crappy news organizations out there)...at least Fox admitted it.

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Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan (Post 2147376)

And new footage where an administration official discusses their manipulation of information being given to media outlets.............

White House boasts: We 'control' news media

Again, do you even read the WorldNetDaily crap you post on here? This is from a conference IN JANUARY talking about "President Obama's presidential campaign."

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Originally Posted by Warhammer (Post 2147378)

I'm not sure that it gives them greater credibility per se, but it definitely gives them a larger audience and only further inflames the situation. Fox News has got to be loving the fact that they were the focus of attention on every Sunday morning news program and even some of the 24/7 news outlets. It's just a badly misjudged move by the Obama administration to think that this hurts Fox News in any way.

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Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2 (Post 2147382)

Again, do you even read the WorldNetDaily crap you post on here? This is from a conference IN JANUARY talking about "President Obama's presidential campaign."

I read and listened to it. Your a very naive individual if you think that this tactic suddenly ceased upon inaguration.

Every administration tries to control their message. Why do you think Bush refused every interview request from the NYT for eight years? There's not much news in "White House press shop tries to control message".

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Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan (Post 2147389)

I read and listened to it. Your a very naive individual if you think that this tactic suddenly ceased upon inaguration.

Well, la de fucking da, that's certainly not the disingenuous way you presented it.

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Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2 (Post 2147397)

Well, la de (foul mouthed sailor) da, that's certainly not the disingenuous way you presented it.

I would think that the obvious indications that it has continued would be pretty obvious, whether you agree or disagree with the methods.

LOL - I gotta agree with Ronnie here (and keep in mind he's nominally on your side). You can't post an article from January discussing the presidential campaign and claim it's "new footage" and defend it by saying "well obviously it's continued."

that's pretty...weak

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Originally Posted by JPhillips (Post 2147391)

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Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo (Post 2147412)

The article was posted yesterday (not January) with the footage. I'll be happy to agree with you if you've seen that footage posted previously. I personally have not.

I'd also note that Ronnie and I generally aren't on the same side. We disagree more often than we agree (not that there's anything wrong with that).

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Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan (Post 2147419)

I'd also note that Ronnie and I generally aren't on the same side. We disagree more often than we agree (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Best news I've heard all day.

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Originally Posted by Ronnie Dobbs2 (Post 2147423)

Best news I've heard all day.

I knew you'd agree. :D

Feds to issue new medical marijuana policy

Here is a move by the administration that even MBBF could get behind. Essentially, it's telling prosecutors to stop wasting time on medical marijuana in states where it is legal because there are much better ways to be using their resources.

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Originally Posted by lungs (Post 2147513)

I do like that. I'm a firm believer in not wasting our time on marijuana anymore. Sure, we should enforce any driving under the influence laws, but let people use it. Would save a ton of money on enforcement and wasted jail cells. I do think a certain percentage of users would move on to other drugs that should remain illegal, but marijuana in my eyes is no different than alcohol.

I should note that I've never even tried the stuff. Never appealed to me personally.

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Originally Posted by lungs (Post 2147513)

Essentialy they want all 50 states to have their own medical marijuana law. Then like in California people can just go buy weed. Then they have legalized it without actually legalizing it. Don't get me wrong it is a move that I completely support but why can't Obama (or Bush or Clinton or Bush I, etc...) just come out and say what MBBF said in his previous post?

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Originally Posted by panerd (Post 2147607)

"Soft on drugs," "ruining the nation's youth," etc. Political implications take precedence over doing what is sensible.

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Originally Posted by panerd (Post 2147607)

Online poker is a similar situation. The U.S. is losing a ton of money in tax revenue to other countries based on the UIGEA. It's ridiculous.

MJ was recently decriminalized in MA despite nearly *ALL* the establishment (police, DA, mayors, state legislators) urging the voters to vote no. We're about a year into it and it doesn't seem to have changed anything for the worse. Right after it took effect there were a few articles in the conservative Herald with police chiefs talking about how hard its made their lives, but it quieted down quickly.

In my mind, the only legitimate argument against it is that getting a true criminal for possession can make it easier (through PC) to get that guy for the really bad stuff, but I'm not sure that alone is worth the fight.