A brief update

Erik Kain 8 Comments

So, I may be writing about education around these parts a good deal more in coming weeks. This is because I have decided to change my beat at Forbes to an issue that, I admit, sits nearer and dearer to my heart: the War on Drugs and the militarization of our police.

Education is something I do care about a great deal, but it’s not something I can blog about on a daily basis. No-knock raids and the policies surrounding the drug war, on the other hand, are not only extremely important but also something I can write about with more regularity, and with a clearer sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the editor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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8 Comments

    • Thanks! This beat needs more foot-soldiers for sure.

  2. Obviously you’ve got a lot to work with here, or at Forbes. But you should check this out from David Henderson.

    There’s been a couple of op-eds about corporal punishment in the last couple of days, the first one might have been in the Washington Post. In any case, even if corporal punishment can be justified as an alternative to incarceration, there’s a very important detail which makes it problematic for the moment at least.

    Incarceration costs a lot of money. Corporal punishment doesn’t. The ever expanding criminal codes have made it very difficult maintain innocence in a court of law. As a practical matter, more of us would be in jail except for the expense of the prosecutors to try us and keep us there. Therefore we should be wary of anything that makes the machinery of punishment too easy for the state.

  3. If you have the time and the inclination you might do a little research on the big banks that launder drug money.

  4. The petition, created May 11th, 2011, aided the timing of 3 new Bills introduced in the House. Continued signature activity stands to prompt the passing of the Bills H.R.1983 – States’ Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, H.R. 1984 – Small Business Banking Improvement Act of 2011 and H.R. 1985 – Small Business Tax Equity Act of 2011.

    This noteworthy petition to the House and Senate, which uses current laws passed by Congress to show why the laws need to be changed according to the laws, calls for signatures of all those wanting to see laws changed. Each signature sends an email to the Senators and House Representative of the signer. Over 750 signatures have sent nearly 3000 emails to Congress.

    The petition to “Change the Schedule of Cannabis, Cannabis Laws, and Drug Czar Laws”, was launched on Change.Org, the most effective petition site. All interested can read, sign and recruit others by email, facebook, or twitter, or grab the pop-out widget to post the petition on a website for visitors to sign without leaving the site, on the petition’s home page at

    http://www.change.org/petitions/change-the-schedule-of-cannabis-cannabis-laws-and-drug-czar-laws

    Polls show it is time to “Change the Schedule of Cannabis, Cannabis Laws, and Drug Czar Laws”.

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