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AOC supports federal cannabis legalization
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 * Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Hires Former Marijuana Lobbyist As Senior Advisor. By Kyle Jaeger. January 7, 2019. Marijuana Moment. From the article: "Both believe that marijuana should be legalized at the federal level".
 * Haters. And: Dancegate.

His 91% top marginal tax rate in the 1950s
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4 Jan 2019: . 7 Jan 2018: AOC is floating a 70 percent top tax rate — here’s the research that backs her up.

. He participated in one of the greatest eras of economic prosperity-for-all in the US in the 1950s. 

Make America Progressive and Prosperous for All Again.

 Ocasio-Cortez's "Radical" Proposal Proves Extremely Mainstream. .



Rich get richer; while middle class wages are flat (inflation-adjusted).

 11 Sep 2018.

 Bottom of chart below says: "Data for wages of production and non-supervisory employees on private non-farm payrolls."      

Prosperity for many more in the 1950s
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 * Google search: Prosperity for many more in the 1950s.



Cannabis is safer
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' And: '

 - Click state to see which anti-cannabis  Republicans  to vote out.

See: Reagan's war on cannabis. And: Holy War on Drugs, Conservative-led global incarceration.

Presidents alone can not reschedule it
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Neither the president nor the Attorney General can reschedule marijuana by themselves.. The two of them together also can not do so. See  Removal of cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. See "Process" section.

Since HHS (Health and Human Services) and the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) have again declined to reschedule or deschedule cannabis, then only Congress can do so. But Congress removed help for veterans: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/veterans-medical-marijuana_us_57ed6102e4b082aad9ba046a Republicans  in Congress Won’t Let Veterans Access Medical Marijuana After All. ]. And Congressional Republican committee leaders refuse hearings on CARERS bill to reschedule cannabis. See: Medical Marijuana Advocates Rally to Loosen Restrictions. By Alicia Ault. 23 Mar 2016. Medscape.
 * Drug Enforcement Administration. See "Criticism" section.
 * DEA Removes Marijuana Misinformation From Website After Months of Pressure. By Steve Elliott. Feb 13, 2017.
 * DEA Pulls Back From Calling Marijuana One Of The 'Most Dangerous Drugs'. By Cody Fenwick. August 16, 2016. Patch Media
 * The Science behind the DEA's Long War on Marijuana. 19 April 2016. Scientific American. Unless Congress acts, the DEA has final say on rescheduling or descheduling marijuana.''
 * Pot Matters: For Legalization, Set Your Sights on the Senate. 23 Mar 2016. By Jon Gettman. "it will be helpful, and indeed crucial, for advancing legalization for Democrats to take control of the Senate." Maybe in 2020?
 * FDA Weighs in on Rescheduling Cannabis. By Ben Adlin. 28 Dec 2015. Leafly.

USA. Republican-led war on cannabis
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 * See also: Holy War on Drugs, Conservative-led global incarceration. And: Reagan's War on Cannabis. And: Drug war causes high U.S. incarceration rate.

US Republicans block the federal rescheduling or descheduling of cannabis.



 - Click your state to see which anti-cannabis  Republicans  to vote out.

Drug war, mass incarceration, control
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Felon disenfranchisement & gerrymandering
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6 Nov 2018 election: '''[https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/6/18052374/florida-amendment-4-felon-voting-rights-results 1.5 million felons given back their voting rights. Florida voted to restore ex-felon voting rights with Amendment 4].''' Article linked below from before the election:





Republican-led big spending on drug war
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 And: Its racist application..

GOP-led spending on endless ground wars
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. Interstate Highway System cost $526 billion in 2016 dollars. And: Landing a human on the moon cost $206 billion in 2016 dollars. And: ''' [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/07/military-veterans-fight-for-medical-marijuana-to-kick-opioid-addiction.html Military veterans defy Jeff Sessions, fight for medical marijuana to kick opioid addiction. Of all the veterans returning from the Middle East, about 60 percent experience chronic pain. ] '''



 . Starting in 1900. Click to enlarge. . See  History of the United States public debt.

U.S. infrastructure badly needs this money
Return to top. See: Happy alternatives to US Republican-led poverty, mass incarceration, food insecurity, debt, ill health, intense concentration of wealth, endless wars.


 * America's infrastructure is falling apart — here's a look at how bad things have gotten By Cadie Thompson. Feb. 12, 2018. Business Insider.
 * More than 50,000 American bridges are falling apart. Jan. 29, 2018, by Conor Ferguson. NBC News.

U.S. household debt at all time high
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 * See: Household debt

 Chart below from page 3 of PDF.  2003 to 2017  (4th quarter).  Total Household Debt by Type: 

Black upward-pointing line is student debt. Cumulative percent increase over time:

Canadian middle class has surpassed USA
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  Median after-tax income in Canada is higher than in the USA.  The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest.'''. By David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy. April 22, 2014. New York Times.

Why? One reason is that Canadians pay so much less for far better healthcare. 

U.S. middle class wealth has collapsed
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. And: Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world. See Wealth in the United States.

When Active-Duty Service Members Struggle To Feed Their Families. April 19, 2017. NPR. And: The hidden crisis on college campuses: Many students don’t have enough to eat. April 3, 2018. Washington Post.

Many nations surpassed US middle class
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See: 

'''Note that is number 21 in the 2018 list. is number 8.'''

Median wealth is exactly in the middle. 50% of adults have more, and 50% of adults have less. Wealth is all assets (money, stocks, bonds, property, etc.) minus all debts.

USA. Richest 10% Own 84% of All Stocks
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See: Happy alternatives to Republican-led poverty, mass incarceration, food insecurity, debt, ill health, intense concentration of wealth, endless wars.''


 * The Richest 10% of Americans Now Own 84% of All Stocks. Dec. 19, 2017. Time (magazine). "The top 10% of American households, as defined by total wealth, now own 84% of all stocks in 2016, according to a recent paper by NYU economist Edward N. Wolff."
 * Oxfam: 42 Billionaires Hold As Much Wealth As World’s Poorest 3.7 Billion. By Mary Papenfuss. Jan. 22, 2108. HuffPost.

Record global debt. Who will bail out USA?
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Who will buy US government and corporate debt in the next global recession?

Global Debt Jumped to Record $237 Trillion Last Year. By Alexandre Tanzi. April 10, 2018. Bloomberg.



See Category: Charts and graphs.

US inflation-adjusted wages are flat
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 7 Aug 2018. By Drew DeSilver. Pew Research Center. Chart below is from the article. Bottom of chart says: "Data for wages of production and non-supervisory employees on private non-farm payrolls." 

 Real wages are adjusted for inflation.



Increasing US income inequality over time
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Instead of paying higher wages, and higher minimum wages. As Canada does.

Rapidly rising income inequality:  Dec. 17, 2017. New York Times.

     
 * Income Inequality Is At The Highest Level In American History. By Bryce Covert. July 1, 2016. ThinkProgress. "Incomes for the 99 percent have only recovered about 60 percent of what they lost. But the rich are doing great. ... They captured more than half of all the income growth in the country."
 * Google News search: student debt.

'''[https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders/photos/a.324119347643076.89553.124955570892789/1264983876889947 Rapidly rising income share of the top 10%. Rapidly decreasing income share of the bottom 90%:]''' And: The Richest 10% of Americans Now Own 84% of All Stocks..

Republicans refuse to raise minimum wage
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''' [https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/trump-era-democrats-now-agree-on-a-15-minimum-wage Democrats, following Bernie Sanders lead, propose bill to raise minimum wage to $15 by 2024. Republicans oppose raising federal minimum wage. ] ''' May 26, 2017. .

Republicans in several states are lowering the minimum wage — yes, you read that right. By Matthew Sheffield. July 9, 2017. Salon. And: Missouri's  Republican  governor signs state law lowering St. Louis minimum wage. . July 3, 2017. And: Iowa's  Republican  governor signs law overturning local minimum wage increases. March 30, 2017. For more recent info and charts:





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Republicans and Libertarians oppose helping workers through increases in the minimum wage. They only care about making the rich richer.

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 * See: ' And: End drug war with universal healthcare. And: 'Canadian single-payer healthcare and Portuguese drug decriminalization.

Average per capita (per person) healthcare cost in chart below includes all costs public and private. See  List of countries by total health expenditure per capita.

Canadian Single Payer: Show health card, get health care paid for by taxes. No deductibles on basic Canadian health care, and co-pays are extremely low or non-existent. And: '''[http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/rip-medical-debt-and-the-push-for-single-payer <span style="background-color:lightgreen; color:blue; border:solid 1px; padding-left:2px; padding-right:2px;">No bankruptcies and personal medical debt in single-payer countries. ]'''

Huge wasteful spending in US healthcare
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The Astonishingly High Administrative Costs of U.S. Health Care. July 16, 2018 by Austin Frakt. New York Times. And: The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest.. April 22, 2014 by David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy. New York Times. Median after-tax income in Canada is higher than in the USA. One reason why is that Canadians pay so much less per person for far better healthcare. So they have more money in their pocket after paying for healthcare taxes and premiums.

 All costs, public and private.

. For more recent data see:  List of countries by total health expenditure per capita.



This massive wasteful healthcare spending in the USA (compared to other rich nations) accelerated in 1980 (see chart below). How? '''It happened because non-profit health insurance was taken over by for-profit health insurance companies. They get a cut of all wasteful healthcare spending. The more wasteful, the more profits.''' Such as exorbitant drug pricing, expensive medical devices, overuse of emergency rooms. It is similar to how for-profit prison companies have an incentive to fill more beds, rather than rehabilitate prisoners.

Non-profit health insurance, and single payer healthcare, do not have these perverse incentives. So they tend to use more early preventive care that requires far fewer expensive drugs, devices, and visits to the emergency room and urgent care. Healthcare, like roads, should be publicly financed, and privately built. Private health insurance, like private toll road companies, are a kind of middleman mafia that skims profits, and shuffles papers, but don't actually do any real work.

 We need Medicare for All. Nearly a third of our health care dollars go to something other than health care.



Chart below shows the percentage of the GDP (national economy) spent on all healthcare costs (public and private) by year for some countries. Note that around 1980 US healthcare costs skyrocketed compared to other rich countries (all of which have universal healthcare, unlike the USA).

Source for above chart: Are any conservatives in the US for a single payer and a universal health care system, or can they not coexist? Chart is from comment around March 11, 2017 by Dan Munro, "author of Casino Healthcare, and Forbes contributor".

10,000 more US deaths yearly. Also:
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 By Louis Jacobson. June 27, 2017. Politifact. See article sidebar for many sources. .''

10,000 die waiting for US disability yearly
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 By Terrence McCoy. Nov. 20, 2017. Washington Post. "10,000 people died in the past year while stuck in a backlog of judges’ disability cases. ... they can’t work while they wait if they want to be approved."

With Single-Payer Universal Healthcare people get healthcare no matter how much they work or not. And it doesn't matter if they lose their job, or change employers. People don't have to show they are totally disabled to get adequate healthcare. People can try to work now and then as much as their disability allows them, and not lose their healthcare. And they get drug treatment on demand.

Republicans block pre-existing conditions
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 11 Oct 2018. Mother Jones.

16 Oct 2018: '''[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/upshot/republicans-health-care-ads-midterms.html Republicans Are Suddenly Running Ads on Pre-existing Conditions. But How Accurate Are They?]''' The Republican Party has worked unceasingly to repeal coverage of pre-existing conditions. New York Times.

Return to top. See: Canadian single-payer healthcare and Portuguese drug decriminalization.

 From 2016 chart in article. Also, see chart below.  [https://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-5 Chart of the day: Drug overdose deaths per million persons. Can the US learn something from Portugal? • AEI | Carpe Diem Blog » AEIdeas]. By Mark J. Perry @Mark_J_Perry - July 9, 2017. See chart:   </li>  </li> </ul>

How Europe's heroin capital solved its overdose crisis. By Chris Brown. Apr 25, 2017. CBC.ca. "Goulao says 90 per cent of public money spent fighting drugs in Portugal is channeled toward those health-care goals — just 10 per cent is spent on police enforcement."
 * Portugal. Cannabis-related links. Also has links about Portugal's drug decriminalization.

Green love
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Hug a friend, hug a tree, smoke a tree! 5 Benefits Of Forest Bathing. And: Replacing Vacant Lots With Green Spaces Can Ease Depression In Urban Communities.



The Global Marijuana March is the first Saturday in May. The first Saturday in May is also World Naked Gardening Day. Your marijuana garden needs love too. (see Google search for it). But, be safe!



. Free birth control.
 * Abortion Rates Dropped Sharply. What Caused It?
 * Free birth control under ObamaCare.

Hemp for all
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 * Google search: The Emperor Wears No Clothes. Jack Herer. Chris Conrad.


 * Video. This 15-year-old climate activist called out world leaders. 17 Dec 2018.

Global Marijuana March and 420 photos
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 Marches, rallies, and medical cannabis made cannabis popular.