Later On

Pretty cool, done by Becky of London. Story here.

Too bad about “baited” breath. But perhaps that’s the Navajo idea of including a flaw so you know it was done by hand. Still: made me wince.

UPDATE: Wait a minute! “Dead as a doornail”?! That’s Charles Dickens, I believe, from A Christmas Carol. I am now dubious of some of the others. — Oops. Just looked it up. Shakespeare did use it, but he wasn’t the first. See this article.

Companies like money. As the character played by Danny de Vito in Heist exclaims, “Of course you want money! Everyone wants money! That’s why they call it money!!”

I’ve always loved that explanation. And it sure seems true: companies like money so much that they’ve decided simply to take money entrusted to their care—tough noogies to those who planned to live on those pensions.

Thomas Rogers interviews Ellen Schultz about the theft in Salon:

America is in the midst of a retirement crisis. Over the last decade, we’ve witnessed the wholesale gutting of pension and retiree healthcare in this country. Hundreds of companies have slashed and burned their way through their employees’ benefits, leaving former workers either on Social Security or destitute — and taxpayers with a huge burden that, as the baby boomer generation edges towards retirement, is likely to grow. It’s a problem that is already affecting over a million people — and the most shocking part is, none of this needed to happen.

As Ellen E. Shultz, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, reveals in her new book,   it wasn’t the dire economy that led these companies to plunder their own employees’ earnings, it was greed. Over the last decade, some of the biggest companies — including Bank of America, IBM, General Motors, GE and even the NFL — found loopholes, abused ambiguous regulations and used litigation to turn their employees’ hard-earned retirement funds into profits, and in some cases, executive compensation. Schultz’s book offers a relentlessly infuriating look at the mechanisms they used to get away with it.

We spoke to Schultz over the phone about the companies’ deliberate deceptions — and what they mean for the future of the country.

How did you first discover this “retirement heist” was happening?

In the late ’90s I noticed that many companies, including a lot of the largest companies in the country, were hiring experts to change their pension plans. They all claimed they were doing it to make themselves more modern and better for the mobile workforce, but it struck me as unlikely that a lot of companies would be doing something that was apparently costing them money just to make employees happy. I ultimately figured out that they had found a way to use the accounting rules to profit from cutting benefits.

Even after reading the book, I’m  a little bit confused by how this actually worked. It was so sneaky.

It took me a long time to find an expert who could explain to me how these accounting rules worked, but when I finally pieced it together, it was enormously simple. Think of pensions as a . . .

Continue reading.

As one would expect, well-run businesses devote considerable thought and effort to creating conditions to encourage you to spend money. This article by Martin Lindstrom in Fast Company presents an interesting example:

Derren Brown, a British illusionist famous for his mind-reading act, set out to prove just how susceptible we are to the many thousands of signals we’re exposed to each day. He approached two creatives from the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi for the “test.” On their journey to his office, Brown arranged for carefully placed clues to appear surreptitiously on posters and balloons, in shop windows, and on t-shirts worn by passing pedestrians.

Upon their arrival, the two creatives were given 20 minutes to come up with a campaign for a fictional taxidermy store. Derren Brown also left them a sealed envelope that was only to be opened once they’d presented their campaign. Twenty minutes later, they presented and then opened the envelope. Lo and behold, Derren Brown’s plans for the taxidermy store were remarkably similar to the ad campaign, with an astounding 95% overlap.

An interesting experiment, you may say, but hardly a trick you’d fall for. But bear this in mind–it’s more than likely you were well primed the last time you went shopping.

Let’s take for example Whole Foods, a market chain priding itself on selling the highest quality, freshest, and most environmentally sound produce. No one could argue that their selection of organic food and take-away meals are whole, hearty, and totally delicious. But how much thought have you given to how they’re actually presenting their wares? Have you considered the carefully planning that’s goes into every detail that meets the eye?

In my new book Brandwashed, I explore the many strategies retailers use to encourage us to spend more than we need to–more than we intend to. Without a shadow of doubt, Whole Foods leads the pack in consumer priming.

Let’s pay a visit to Whole Foods’ splendid Columbus Circle store in New York City. As you descend the escalator you enter the realm of . . .

Continue reading.

The words from the Catholic church—at least the public words, not the private instructions to bishops to cover up crimes committed by those pedophiles in holy orders (lay pedophiles are, I presume, fair game)—are generally quite reassuring. Their actions, however, speak even more loudly. I believe that the scales have fallen from the eyes of many in Ireland, including the prime minister. Sarah Lyall reports in the NY Times:

DUBLIN — Even as it remains preoccupied with its struggling economy, Ireland is in the midst of a profound transformation, as rapid as it is revolutionary: it is recalibrating its relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, an institution that has permeated almost every aspect of life here for generations.

This is still a country where abortion is against the law, where divorce became legal only in 1995, where the church runs more than 90 percent of the primary schools and where 87 percent of the population identifies itself as Catholic. But the awe, respect and fear the Vatican once commanded have given way to something new — rage, disgust and defiance — after a long series of horrific revelations about decades of abuse of children entrusted to the church’s care by a reverential populace.

While similar disclosures have tarnished the Vatican’s image in other countries, perhaps nowhere have they shaken a whole society so thoroughly or so intensely as in Ireland. And so when the normally mild-mannered prime minister, Enda Kenny, unexpectedly took the floor in Parliament this summer to criticize the church, he was giving voice not just to his own pent-up feelings, but to those of a nation.

His remarks were a ringing declaration of the supremacy of state over church, in words of outrage and indignation that had never before been used publicly by an Irish leader.

“For the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual abuse exposed an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry into a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago,” Mr. Kenny said, referring to the Cloyne Report, which detailed abuse and cover-ups by church officials in southern Ireland through 2009.

Reiterating the report’s claim that the church had encouraged bishops to ignore child-protection guidelines the bishops themselves had adopted, the prime minister attacked “the dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism” that he said “dominate the culture of the Vatican.”

He continued: “The rape and torture of children were downplayed, or ‘managed,’ to uphold instead the primacy of the institution — its power, its standing and its reputation.” Instead of listening with humility to the heartbreaking evidence of “humiliation and betrayal,” he said, “the Vatican’s response was to parse and analyze it with the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer.”

The effect of his speech was instant and electric. . .

Continue reading.

And made, I’m happy to report, by Michael Ham with his brother Kenny—wait, I don’t have a brother! … Whew! It’s a different Michael Ham, not me. Interesting car, though:

Chelsea’s Garden seems to be a fairly big operation for a small vendor, selling all sorts of soap-making supplies as well as soap. They also offer shaving soap. Has anyone tried any of those?

New batch of pepper sauce. I can pretty much turn out a batch without thinking about it now. Here’s what I used:

ripe orangish Serrano peppers: a whole bunch
big green jalapeños: about 8-10
dried chipotles: about 16
dried chili de árbol peppers: about 12
1/4 c sea salt
1 glug Barbados molasses
1 glug blackstrap molasses
8 large garlic cloves, peeled
1/2 c Meyers dark rum
enough white vinegar to make a quart

I blended the above (but only about 5 jalapeños) well, poured it into 2-qt saucepan, but thought it looked a little thin. So I took some of the liquid and about 5 more of the big fresh jalapeños and blended those, then stirred back into pot.

Brought to boil, simmered 25 minutes, now I’m letting it sit 30 minutes. Blend once more and bottle. I’ll let it age overnight since I won’t need it until breakfast.

Partisan punditry—in which the other party is always wrong, your own party always right—is risky business. Better to pundit from first principles, since both parties are prone to error—especially nowadays. Greenwald has a highly entertaining column of headlines that should embarrass James Carville:

Democratic strategist and CNN pundit James Carville has written an article declaring Obama’s political and policy approaches to be abject failures and advising several steps to correct course, such as: fire large numbers of his advisers, “make a case like a Democrat,” and “Panic.”  At the end of his list of serious grievances against the White House, he includes this paragraph to make clear that he’s still a Good Democrat and is offering the advice only because he wants to help the President win re-election:

As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation. I sit in front of the television and shudder at the thought of one of these creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing, Social-Security-cutting, clean-air-hating, mortality-fascinated, Wall-Street-protecting Republicans running my country.

Those first three adjectival accusations against the Republicans — “creationism-loving, global-warming-denying, immigration-bashing” – are fair enough, but let’s look at the last four: . . .

Continue reading for the fun stuff. Greenwald concludes the column with this:

What Carville’s confused, contradictory screed highlights is the difficulty of trying to understand American political conflicts through an exclusively partisan prism of Democrats v. Republicans.  Some issues are properly assessed via that dichotomy, but many — a growing number — are not.  Nonetheless, confining oneself to Democrat v. Republican bickering is the admission price to establishment media access — that is the only prism they understand or permit — and most pundits thus happily cling to it; indeed, partisan pundits take the lead role in enforcing this orthodoxy and trying to marginalize anyone who deviates from it or resides outside of it.  Political issues insusceptible to this two-team mindset are deemed fringe and rendered invisible.  The result (by design) of this narrow, stultifying framework is that many — perhaps most — of the most consequential political developments are ignored.

* * * * *

Just as a few recent, illustrative examples of how the strictly partisan prism distorts rather than clarifies political realities, consider:

(1) this Washington Post Editorial lambasting the GOP presidential candidates for being insufficiently pro-war (less pro-war than the Obama administration);

(2) this New York Times article on how the bulk of Sarah Palin’s political message is hostile to GOP orthodoxy and the GOP itself, and even likely to appeal to liberals:

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private). . . .

Her second point, about money in politics, helped to explain the first. The permanent class stays in power because it positions itself between two deep troughs: the money spent by the government and the money spent by big companies to secure decisions from government that help them make more money.

Ms. Palin’s third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Are there any prominent Democrats Party officials voicing that critique?

(3) this new report on the thousands — literally — of ex-Hill staffers who now work as lobbyists, and the hundreds of lobbyists who now work as Hill staffers; the lobbying firm with the greatest number of ex-Hill staffers is the Obama-connected Podesta Group, co-founded by former Clinton White House aide and current CAP Executive Director John Podesta and run by his brother (the Podesta Group spent years lobbying for the Mubarak regime to make sure the money and weapons kept flowing); in second place behind the Podesta Group is the GOP-allied Chamber of Commerce; and congratulations are in order for Jim Manley, Harry Reid’s long-time spokesman, who yesterday annonced he was joining the bipartisan lobbying firm of Quinn Gillespie;

(4) the Obama administration ran to the Washington Post Editors yesterday to assure them that they wouldn’t be violating Obama’s oft-stated pledge to remove all troops from Iraq by the end of 2011 by leaving 3,000 troops there, but would instead . . . almost certainly leave far more in Iraq; and,

(5) this extraordinary and very insightful endorsement of Elizabeth Warren’s Senate candidacy from Rod Dreher, a long-time, hard-core conservative and former National Review writer (via Andrew Sullivan):

Unless Jeff Jacoby tells me something bad I don’t know about her — and what I don’t know about Elizabeth Warren is a lot — I’m rooting for her. I can understand her holding her fire (for now) against the Democrats, for tactical reasons, but if she wins — and I hope she does — then I hope she goes to DC with both barrels blazing, and with the understanding that the enemy of the financial interests of ordinary Americans is the capture of both parties by Wall Street and the banks. If she goes to DC and gets captured by Democratic partisans, it will be a colossal waste.

These are the vital truths that have nothing to do with — indeed, are continuously obscured by — the repetitive, shallow, cable-news-staple of R v. D punditry.  And it’s why partisans of both parties have the same interest — and work so hard together — to ensure that it is the only framework that is heard.

I came up with the above line in writing a letter to a friend as I summarized the various things that I have to do from which I have converted to sources of enjoyment: shaving, eating right, exercise (Pilates), writing letters (excellent stationery and good fountain pens and ink helps a lot—the chance to write italic is just the frosting on the cake), and so on. Once you fix up something you have to do (through finding appropriate tools, methods, skills, and the like) so that it is a source of enjoyment, you naturally are drawn to doing it. Being pulled toward a necessary task is much preferable to having to push yourself to do it.

Now how can I manage the same trick for housekeeping? Specifically, keeping things put away and organized?

Very interesting article in Salon by Michael Klare:

America and Oil. It’s like bacon and eggs, Batman and Robin. As the old song lyric went, you can’t have one without the other. Once upon a time, it was also a surefire formula for national greatness and global preeminence. Now, it’s a guarantee of a trip to hell in a hand basket. The Chinese know it. Does Washington?

America’s rise to economic and military supremacy was fueled in no small measure by its control over the world’s supply of oil. Oil powered the country’s first giant corporations, ensured success in World War II, and underlay the great economic boom of the postwar period. Even in an era of nuclear weapons, it was the global deployment of oil-powered ships, helicopters, planes, tanks, and missiles that sustained America’s superpower status during and after the Cold War. It should come as no surprise, then, that the country’s current economic and military decline coincides with the relative decline of oil as a major source of energy.

If you want proof of that economic decline, just check out the way America’s share of the world’s gross domestic product has been steadily dropping, while its once-powerhouse economy now appears incapable of generating forward momentum. In its place, robust upstarts like China and India are posting annual growth rates of 8 percent to 10 percent. When combined with the growing technological prowess of those countries, the present figures are surely just precursors to a continuing erosion of America’s global economic clout.

Militarily, the picture appears remarkably similar. Yes, a crack team of SEAL commandos did kill Osama bin Laden, but that single operation — greeted in the United States with a jubilation more appropriate to the ending of a major war — hardly made up for the military’s lackluster performance in two recent wars against ragtag insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. If anything, almost a decade after the Taliban was overthrown, it has experienced a remarkable resurgence even facing the full might of the U.S., while the assorted insurgent forces in Iraq appear to be holding their own. Meanwhile, Iran — that bête noire of American power in the Middle East — seem as powerful as ever. Al Qaeda may be on the run, but as recent developments in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and unstable Pakistan suggest, the United States wields far less clout and influence in the region now than it did before it invaded Iraq in 2003.

If American power is in decline, so is the relative status of oil in the global energy equation. In the 2000 edition of its International Energy Outlook, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy confidently foresaw ever-expanding oil production in Africa, Alaska, the Persian Gulf area, and the Gulf of Mexico, among other areas. It predicted, in fact, that world oil output would reach 97 million barrels per day in 2010 and a staggering 115 million barrels in 2020. EIA number-crunchers concluded as well that oil would long retain its position as the world’s leading source of energy. Its 38 percent share of the global energy supply, they said, would remain unchanged.

What a difference a decade makes. By 2010, a new understanding about the natural limits of oil production had sunk in at the EIA and its experts were predicting a disappointingly modest petroleum future. In that year, world oil output had reached just . . .

Continue reading. It seems obvious to me that Peak Oil, like global warming, is here to stay. In the meantime our broken political system fights ever more fiercely over ever more trivial matters.

Finishing my glycerin-soap week with a winner, I picked one of Giovanni Arbate’s Tryphon shaving soaps—and next week I’ll do a shaving-cream week and open with a Tryphon shaving cream. While I’m pleased by Giovanni’s success in his career, getting promoted put paid to Razor & Brush, his on-line shaving shop that quite successfully shook up the razor blade scene in this country (and just in the nick of time: some old standbys from those days have totally vanished).

The Omega brush is a big, soft, puffy silvertip with a wonderful feel on the face and the exact opposite of the type of brush many call a “soap brush”. In their view, this Omega brush should not do a good job at all on shaving soap. Utter balderdash, of course, as a few minutes working up a lather would show. (It seems likely that such guys are blaming the brush for a hard-water problem.) I got loads of sumptuous lather—and I was surprised to note all the marks of Creamy Lather (extremely fine-grained, wet, dense, thick lather) despite this being a soft silvertip—OTOH, I did use the Zach technique of enthusiastic loading the brush for an extended time, and that’s probably what did it.

Three fine passes using a Gillette NEW holding a Gillette 7 O’Clock SharpEdge blade. The blade was not quite optimal, but with a little polishing I got a fine shave—and removed the blade and put it in my blade safe at the end of the shave.

A splash of the Flying Bird Bay Rum—quite nice, and take a look at their other products.

My plan today is to finish reading Barry Eisler’s The Detachment, which I pre-ordered some months ago and was automatically delivered to my Kindle yesterday. The Kindle is pretty slick, especially for all-text books such as this. And Eisler is mining a very rich vein in his most recent novels: first Fault Line, then Inside Out, and now this one. These constitute a definite series, with characters continuing their lives through the sequence of novels. And a very interesting enfolding of recent US history and activities through the story lines. Well worth reading.

I ordered a couple of pucks of Benton Clay shaving soap after seeing it mentioned on Wicked_Edge. The unused puck is displayed to show the ingredients; the puck in the bowl is Vetiver Paradisi. And since we’re doing Vetiver today, I brought out the Saint Charles Shave Very V aftershave (she also has a Very V shaving soap and I have a tub of Saint Charles Shave Very V shaving cream froma  ways back). I had planned on holding that until next week—Shaving Cream Week—and use it with the redoubtable Cyril R. Salter Vetiver shaving cream: not for the meek.

I got a thick lather from the Benton Clay, thanks to the Thäter badger brush—a very nice brush. The lather, however, doesn’t persist very well: it sort of collapses and the second pass it was barely there. I ginned up fresh lather for the third pass, and did indeed get a good shaving using my Mühle R41 open comb. This is the older design; I tried the new design but it was too harsh for me.

Three passes were followed by a good splash of the Very V aftershave, which I like. The Saint Charles Shave aftershaves are definitely worth a try.

Now I’m off for my quarterly blood draw. My advice: avoid diabetes.

Best watched fullscreen:

James Fallows has been running a series of interesting responses to his original post. All of them are worth reading, including all of the most recent, from which I excerpt but a single communique from one of his readers (and you really should read the whole thing):

>>The incident involving the woman and two men says a lot about the excessiveness of our response to security concerns, but I think less has been said about what it says about the incompetence and inadequacy of that response.

Let us imagine a contrafactual hypothetical: that the woman and two men were, in fact, terrorists. What threat would they pose, since they’d all gone through intrusive searches before boarding the plane, and they were limited to a presumably safe few ounces of chemicals in their carry-ons. Are we saying that these pre-boarding searches don’t protect us from danger? And since the plane had already landed, are we to assume the plot failed? Was there any evidence of anything? Burnt shoe? Tampered panels in the bathroom? What?

And what if they weren’t the only terrorists? On 9/11 there were multiple simultaneous teams in operation. Supposing the security people in this incident had caught one – wouldn’t it be important to immediately determine if it was a false alarm, and raise a hue-and-cry if it was NOT? It would seem that, if they were actually suspected of being dangerous, that letting them cool their heels for hours was compounding the danger.

Are we to believe that, after 10 years of our security state, we still don’t have the means or procedures to assess the threat within minutes, not hours? What kind of a reaction is that? What were the people in Detroit waiting for, another plane to blow up somewhere else in the country?

What angers me about the extent of our “security theater” is just how unserious it is. This was a horrific way to treat innocent fliers. It was also a horrific way to deal with potential terrorists, because it didn’t do anything to prevent an attack.

This member of the public might be willing to talk about a trade-off between personal liberty and security, but I’m completely unwilling to accept this trade-off, where personal liberty is denied in exchange for bureaucratic convenience and an incompetent pretense of security.<<

And I ask again, “Home of the brave?” Whom are we hoping to kid? The very perception of a threat, much less the (over-)reaction to it, speaks volumes about how brave we are in practice (as opposed to in song).

This recipe looks pretty good to me. I’m sure, though, that I’ll add some glycerin.

Same URL, but a lot of revamping. Videos on miso making. Their on-line store. Lots of new stuff.

Full disclosure: I love their miso.

This is the worst summer melt ever—as bad as 2007—and this time with no unusual weather to account for it. The slowdown in global temperature increases seems to be simply because the oceans have been absorbing a lot of the heat, and that may be the effect killing off the ice now.

I wonder whether anyone who’s paying attention still holds that the Arctic ice is doing fine and global warming is not happening.

It will be difficult to restore our freedoms and liberty because so many in the US are now so frightened that they are eager to embrace any sort of heavy-handed authoritarian measures if told these may possible increase their safety. (“Home of the brave” indeed! But the US has always been inclined to ignore the meaning of words—people in Great Britain prior to the US Civil War found our constant drumbeat of praise for “freedom” and “equality” difficult to reconcile with our enthusiasm for slavery.)

But the ACLU, which has a long history of fighting for American rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (and long strongly opposed by the GOP and the Right in general, which strongly believes that these rights and liberties apply only to people just like themselves and to no others), now has a report on how we might try resuming the American experiment of human rights and the rule of law. From their site:

Download the Report »

An ACLU report release to coincide with the 10^th anniversary of 9/11 warns that a decade after the attacks, the United States is at risk of enshrining a permanent state of emergency in which core values must be subordinated to ever-expanding claims of national security. (More on Civil Liberties After 9/11 »)

The report, entitled, “A Call to Courage: Reclaiming Our Liberties Ten Years after 9/11,” explores how sacrificing America’s values – including justice, individual liberty, and the rule of law – ultimately undermines safety. (Read the full report »)

Everywhere And Forever War

The report begins with an examination of the contention that the U.S. is engaged in a “war on terror” that takes place everywhere and will last forever, and that therefore counterterrorism measures cannot be balanced against any other considerations such as maintaining civil liberties. The report states that the United States has become an international legal outlier in invoking the right to use lethal force and indefinite military detention outside battle zones, and that these policies have hampered the international fight against terrorism by straining relations with allies and handing a propaganda tool to enemies.

A Cancer On Our Legal System

Taking on the legacy of the Bush administration’s torture policy, the report warns that the lack of accountability leaves the door open to future abuses. “Our nation’s official record of this era will show numerous honors to those who authorized torture – including a Presidential Medal of Freedom – and no recognition for those, like the Abu Ghraib whistleblower, who rejected and exposed it,” it notes.

Fracturing Our “More Perfect Union”

The report details how profiling based on race and religion has become commonplace nationwide, with the results of such approaches showing just how wrong and ineffective those practices are. “Targeting the American Muslim community for counterterrorism investigation is counterproductive because it diverts attention and resources that ought to be spent on individuals and violent groups that actually pose a threat,” the report says. “By allowing – and in some cases actively encouraging – the fear of terrorism to divide Americans by religion, race, and belief, our political leaders are fracturing this nation’s greatest strength: its ability to integrate diverse strands into a unified whole on the basis of shared, pluralistic, democratic values.”

A Massive and Unchecked Surveillance Society

Concluding with the massive expansion of surveillance since 9/11, the report delves into the many ways the government now spies on Americans without any suspicion of wrongdoing, from warrantless wiretapping to cell phone location tracking – but with little to show for it. “The reality is that as governmental surveillance has become easier and less constrained, security agencies are flooded with junk data, generating thousands of false leads that distract from real threats,” the report says.

“A Call to Courage” points out that many controversial policies have been shrouded in secrecy under the rubric of national security, preventing oversight and examination by the public. “We look to our leaders and our institutions, our courts and our Congress, to guide us towards a better way, and it is now up to the American people to demand that our leaders respond to national security challenges with our values, our unity – and yes, our courage – intact.”

READ THE FULL REPORT »

MORE ON CIVIL LIBERTIES AFTER 9/11 »
Download PDF (1.69 MB)»

I’m going to make these at some point. Ingredients:

Salt
1 pound green beans
1/2 cup whole almonds
3 garlic cloves
1 or 2 dried hot red chiles, or to taste
3 tablespoons olive oil
1.3 cup chopped shallots
2 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons soy sauce
Black pepper

They suggest also trying asparagus.

The DEA has long forbidden industrial hemp to be grown in the US. It’s not a drug and lacks any intoxicating properties, so you would think that it falls outside their purview, but as the DEA sees it, they can do anything they want, and they want to do this, so go pound sand.

It’s perfectly legal to import industrial hemp and hemp by-products, but the DEA doesn’t want anyone in the US to grow it. North Dakota made a good run at it (finally taking the DEA to court to force the DEA to follow its own procedures), but failed in the end.

Now California is trying. The legislature passed a bill allowing an 8-year pilot project in four California counties. The bill specifies that the hemp must be less than 0.3% THC (no intoxication possible), but of course to the DEA it’s not about drugs per se but about power: can the DEA force its will on the country. (From their point of view: so far, so good.)

Now to see if Gov. Brown will sign the bill into law. And then, if he does, what sort of tantrum the DEA will throw.