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marijuana tax for

homeless services?
Los Angeles County voters will decide this fall
whether to tax marijuana businesses to help pay
forhousing and health services for the homeless.
The ballot measure, approved 7/12/16 by the Board
of Supervisors, seeks to take a potentially
significantnew source of government revenues, from
marijuana sales,and use itto address one of the
regions oldest and most intractable problems.
L.A.s homeless population has been rising in recent
years, and the proposed pot tax is part of a larger
effort by city and county officials to finally put
significantly more money behind easing the
problems.
County analysts estimated that the measure, which
would require a two-thirds majority vote to pass,
would raise as much as $130 million a year to pay
for mental health and substance abuse treatment,
rental subsidies, emergency housing and other
services intended to get and keep people off the
streets.
Spurred by the growing visibility of homeless
encampments throughout the county,there has been
much talk in local government about a unified
approach to addressing the problem. The most recent
count by the Los Angeles Housing Services
Authorityfound about47,000 people were homeless
throughout the county.
Tuesdays vote comes after months of debate about
the best way for L.A. County to raise more money
for the homeless. Initially, the board had hoped to
pursue a millionaires tax on high-income earners.
But the county does not have the legal authority to
raise income taxes, so officials pushed for a change
in state law that would have allowed them to go
forward.
-LA Times.

War Ethos
War on drugs. War on poverty. War in Afghanistan. War
in Iraq. War on terror. The biggest mistake in American
policy, foreign and domestic, is looking at everything as
war. When a war mentality takes over, it chooses the
weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms of debate
before you even begin. It answers questions before
theyre even asked.

When you define something as war, it dictates the use

of the military (or militarized police forces, prisons,
and other forms of coercion) as the primary
instruments of policy. Violence becomes the means of
decision, total victory the goal. Anyone who suggests
otherwise is labeled a dreamer, an appeaser, or even
a traitor.
War, in short, is the great simplifierand it may
even work when youre fighting existential military
threats (as in World War II). But it doesnt work
when you define every problem as an existential one
and then make war on complex societal problems
(crime, poverty, drugs) or ideas and religious beliefs
(radical Islam).
-TomDispatch.com.