Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as The Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right^[6][7][8][9] organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism.^[10][11] Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been anti-communist.^[10] The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters and is classified as a hate group.^[12]

The first Klan flourished in the South in the 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. Members adopted white costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities.^[13] The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid 1920s, and adopted the same costumes and code words as the first Klan, while introducing cross burnings.^[14] The third KKK emerged after World War II and was associated with opposing the civil rights movement and progress among minorities. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent reference to America's "Anglo-Saxon" and "Celtic" blood, harking back to 19th-century nativism and claiming descent from the original 18th-century British colonial revolutionaries.^[15] All incarnations of the Klan have well-established records of engaging in terrorism, though historians debate how widely the tactic was supported by the membership of the second KKK.

The first Klan was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, as a terrorist organization^[11] by veterans of the Confederate Army.^[16] They named it after the Greek word 'kuklos", which means circle. The name means "Circle of Brothers."^[17]

Although there was no organizational structure above the local level, similar groups arose across the South, adopting the name and methods.^{[citation needed]} Klan groups spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement during the Reconstruction era in the United States. As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans. In 1870 and 1871 the federal government passed the Force Acts, which were used to prosecute Klan crimes.^[18] Prosecution of Klan crimes and enforcement of the Force Acts suppressed Klan activity. In 1874 and later, however, newly organized and openly active paramilitary organizations, such as the White League and the Red Shirts, started a fresh round of violence aimed at suppressing blacks' voting and running Republicans out of office. These contributed to segregationist white Democrats regaining political power in all the Southern states by 1877.

Second KKK

In 1915, the second Klan was founded and remained a small organization in Georgia. Starting in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of recruiting (which paid most of the initiation fee and costume charges to the organizers) and grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions of urban industrialization and vastly increased immigration, its membership grew most rapidly in cities, and spread to the Midwest and West out of the South. The second KKK preached Americanism and purification of politics, with strong racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and antisemitism. Some local groups took part in attacks on private houses, and carried out other violent activities. The violent episodes were generally in the South.^[19]

The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded away in the 1940s.^[20]

Third KKK

The "Ku Klux Klan" name was used by many independent local groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor's offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama.^[21] Several members of KKK groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers and children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Today, researchers estimate that there may be approximately 150 Klan chapters with upwards of 5,000 members nationwide.^[22]

Today, a large majority of sources consider the Klan to be a "subversive or terrorist organization".^{[22][23][24][25]} In 1999, the city council of Charleston, South Carolina passed a resolution declaring the Klan to be a terrorist organization.^[26] A similar effort was made in 2004 when a professor at the University of Louisville began a campaign to have the Klan declared a terrorist organization so it could be banned from campus.^[27] In April 1997, FBI agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and to blow up a natural gas processing plant.^[28]

 

Tags: crime, illegal aliens, kkk, terrorism, white power
Current Location: USA
Current Mood: dirty

David Curtiss "Steve" Stephenson (21 August 1891 – 28 June 1966) was an American Grand Dragon (state leader) of the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S. state of Indiana and 22 other Northern states. He is considered to have been one of the most successful Klan leaders up until his downfall after his conviction for murder. His trial and imprisonment contributed to the end of the second wave of Klan activity in the 1920s.

Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan

Stephenson was born in Houston, Texas, and moved with his family to Maysville, Oklahoma, where he worked as a printer's apprentice and was active in the Socialist Party. In 1920, he moved to Irvington, Indiana, where he became a salesman and joined the Democratic Party and the Ku Klux Klan. In that same year, he ran unsuccessfully for a Democratic Congressional nomination.^[1] In November 1922, Stephenson backed Hiram Wesley Evans in his attempt to unseat William J. Simmons as Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan; upon Evans' ascendancy, Stephenson was made Grand Dragon of Indiana and 22 other northern states.

Membership in the states for which he was Grand Dragon grew dramatically. In Indiana alone membership grew to nearly 250,000 or about one third of all white males in the state. Stephenson acquired great wealth and political power. In a speech to the 1923 Fourth of July gathering of the Ku Klux Klan in Kokomo, Indiana, Stephenson began, "My worthy subjects, citizens of the Invisible Empire, Klansmen all, greetings. It grieves me to be late. The President of the United States kept me unduly long counseling on matters of state. Only my plea that this is the time and the place of my coronation obtained for me surcease from his prayers for guidance." Encouraged by his success, in September 1923, Stephenson severed his ties with the existing national organization of the Ku Klux Klan, and formed a rival Ku Klux Klan. Stephenson changed his affiliation from the Democratic to the Republican Party. He notably supported Republican Edward L. Jackson when he ran (successfully) for governor in 1924.

[edit] Convicted of murder

Publicly a Prohibitionist and a defender of "Protestant womanhood," his spectacular 1925 trial for murder led to the downfall of the "Second Wave" of Klan activity. Stephenson was responsible for the abduction, forced intoxication, and rape of Madge Oberholtzer (who ran a state program to combat illiteracy), all leading to her suicide attempt and eventual death. Among other atrocities, Stephenson had bitten her so many times that one man who saw her described her condition as having been “chewed by a cannibal.”^[2] The jury convicted Stephenson of second-degree murder on 14 November 1925, on its first ballot. Stephenson was sentenced to life in prison on 16 November 1925.^[3]

In vengeful response to his conviction and to the refusal of Governor Jackson to grant clemency or to commute his sentence, on 9 September 1927 Stephenson released lists of public officials who were or had been on the Klan payroll. This publicity and the state's crackdown on Klan activity sped up its decline by the end of the 1920s.

The aftermath was shocking, indictments were filed against Governor Ed Jackson, Marion County Republican chairman George V. "Cap" Coffin, and attorney Robert I. Marsh, charging them with conspiring to bribe former Governor Warren McCray. The mayor of Indianapolis, John Duvall, was convicted and sentenced to jail for 30 days (and barred from political service for four years). Some Republican commissioners of Marion County also resigned from their posts on charges of accepting bribes from the Klan and Stephenson [1].

On 7 January 1941, the Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger reported that Democratic Governor Townsend was considering granting an early parole application by Stephenson; if so, this application was rejected.

Stephenson was paroled on 23 March 1950, but violated parole by disappearing on or before 25 September 1950. On 15 December 1950, he was captured in Minneapolis, and directed in 1951 to serve a further 10 years in prison. In 1953, he pleaded for release from prison, denying that he had ever been a leader of the Klan. On 22 December 1956, he was paroled again, on condition that he leave Indiana and never return. In 1961, he was arrested on charges of attempting to sexually assault a sixteen-year-old girl, and released after paying a $300 fine.^[3] The charges were later dropped on grounds of insufficient evidence.

Stephenson was infamous for having claimed "I am the law in Indiana."^[3]

Stephenson died in Jonesborough, Tennessee. He is buried in Johnson City, Tennessee.

[edit] Cultural reference

The Stephenson period has been somewhat overshadowed by more recent events in the history of the Klan, but references to Stephenson can nonetheless be found in recent popular culture. John Heard portrayed Stephenson in the television miniseries Cross of Fire (1989). In the Daniel Easterman novel K is for Killing he is portrayed as the sinister power behind the throne in an alternate history in which isolationist Senator Charles Lindbergh is elected President of the United States and not Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The predatory sexual behavior of Stephenson in real life was reflected in the novel, in which he was a politically savvy ally of Hitler, yet also clearly unstable.^[4]

Tags: animals, david curtiss "steve" stephenson, kkk
Current Location: USA
Current Mood: dirty

Oberholtzer was born in Clay City, Indiana to German-American parents and grew up in Fulton County, Indiana. After college, she taught in an Indiana state program for literacy. Like many young single women, she continued to live with her parents, then in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis.

[edit] Events of the case

One evening in 1924, she attended a dinner at the Governor's mansion, where she met David Curtiss "D.C." Stephenson, who was instantly attracted to her. Madge would go on two dates with Stephenson; on the second date, he revealed he was Grand Dragon (state leader) of the Indiana Branch of the Ku Klux Klan. Incensed, she immediately broke off the relationship.

On 27 March 1925, Stephenson called her and asked her to come to his home about a new job. When she arrived at his home, he overpowered her and forced her to drink several glasses of alcohol (she was a teetotaler), until she became sick and nearly passed out. Stephenson ordered two of his bodyguards to carry her into a car, where she finally fainted. She awoke on Stephenson's private train on its way to Chicago. There he raped her several times, also mutilating her, until she blacked out.

In Hammond, Oberholtzer convinced Stephens to let her go to a drug store to purchase feminine hygiene items. Despite the presence of Stephens's bodyguards, she purchased mercuric chloride tablets, and, when no one was watching, she swallowed six of the poison tablets. Oberholtzer threatened Stephens, saying “The law will get their hands on you!” He laughed and said, “I am the law in Indiana.” Stephenson's Klan connections gave him tremendous political power in the state when the KKK was at a height of membership and influence.

Discovered vomiting blood that night, Stephenson waited until the next afternoon (nearly 24 hours), and when she didn't recover, he had his two bodyguards rent a car and drive her back to her parents' home in Indiana, where they dropped her off late that night without an explanation. Her parents immediately called a doctor, but there was little the doctor could do. With what strength she had left, she accused Stephenson in a deathbed statement on 28 March that detailed her treatment at his hands. Oberholtzer died on 14 April 1925 from an infection and kidney failure from mercury poisoning.

[edit] Trial

Stephenson was indicted on charges of rape and second-degree murder. At his trial, the doctor who had examined her testified that the injuries she received during her rape would be sufficient alone to kill her. He described her wounds as similar to having been "chewed by a cannibal."

Stephenson's defense was that Oberholtzer had committed suicide. The prosecution demonstrated Oberholtzer vomited so violently that prompt medical attention may have saved her. During closing statements, Stephenson was decried as a “destroyer of virtue and womanhood”. The court found him guilty of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

[edit] Aftermath

Stephenson's assault of Oberholtzer so outraged many members of the Klan that entire lodges left the organization. The scandal destroyed the KKK in Indiana. Within the following two years, the Indiana KKK lost more than 178,000 members, becoming virtually non-existent. Indiana and other states stepped up efforts to publicize Klan members (who had depended on secrecy to hide their activities) and prosecute infractions. By 20 February 1928, Indiana Klan rosters had decreased dramatically from a peak of more than 250,000 members^[1] to approximately 4,000.

Stephenson was paroled on 23 March 1950, but violated parole by disappearing on or before 25 September 1950. On 15 December 1950, he was captured in Minneapolis. In 1951, he was directed to serve a further 10 years in prison. On 22 December 1956, Stephenson was paroled again on condition he leave Indiana and never return. In 1961, he was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a sixteen-year-old girl, but the charges were dropped on grounds of insufficient evidence. He died in 1966.

Madge Oberholtzer was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Indianapolis.

Tags: d.c. stephenson, kkk, ku klux klan, madge oberholtzer, race, racism
Current Location: USA
Current Mood: dirty

this all got started in world war one. The treasury wanted to sell liberty bods to fund the war. Congress being what it is ..
The treasury felt that the war would be over before congress decided unanimously to act. So , it was agreed that the treasury could go ahead and spend/raise/allocate the funds and AT THEIR LEISURE congress could debate the necessity of the expense. I doubt that anyone ever dreamed the same reasoning would be applied in peace time to highway funds, hospital construction, etc...

It was a good idea in time of war and as far as immediate and dire threats to our physical it still is. It seems to be a very poor approach to mundane expenses.

When the dust settles this will be explained until the most untutored citizen can explain this in their sleep.
you bet

A Liberty Bond was a war bond that was sold in the United States to support the allied cause in World War I. Subscribing to the bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States and introduced the idea of financial securities to many citizens for the first time. The Act of Congress which authorized the Liberty Bonds is still used today as the authority under which all U.S. Treasury bonds are issued.

The Role of Congress
Up until World War I, the U.S. government needed approval from Congress every time it wanted to borrow money from the public. Congress would determine the number of securities that could be issued, their maturity date and the interest that would be payed on these securities.

With the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917, however, the U.S. Treasury was given a debt limit, or a ceiling of how much it could borrow from the public without seeking Congress' consent. The Treasury was also given the discretion to decide maturity dates, interest rate levels and the type of instruments that would be offered. The total amount of money that can be borrowed by the government without further authorization by Congress is known as the total public debt subject to limit. Any amount above this level has to receive additional approval from the legislative branch.

Tags: congress, crisis, debt, debt ceiling, obama, world war one, wwi
Current Location: library
Current Mood: busy

 July 20, 2011
Bonuses for Billionaires
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=1



The first few times I heard House Republicans talk about our budget mess, I worried that they had plunged off the deep end. But as I kept on listening, a buzzer went off in my mind, and I came to understand how much sense the Tea Party caucus makes.

Why would we impose “job-crushing taxes” on wealthy Americans just to pay for luxuries like federal prisons? Why end the “carried interest” tax loophole for financiers, just to pay for unemployment benefits — especially when those same selfless tycoons are buying yachts and thus creating jobs for all the rest of us?

Hmmm. The truth is that House Republicans don’t actually go far enough. They should follow the logic of their more visionary members with steps like these:

BONUSES FOR BILLIONAIRES Republicans won’t extend unemployment benefits, even in the worst downturn in 70 years, because that makes people lazy about finding jobs. They’re right: We should be creating incentives for Americans to rise up the food chain by sending hefty checks to every new billionaire. This could be paid for with a tax surcharge on regular working folks. It’s the least we can do.

Likewise, the government should take sterner measures against the persistent jobless. Don’t just let their unemployment benefits expire. Take their homes!

Oh, never mind! Silly me! The banks are already doing that.

LET JOBS TRICKLE DOWN Leftist pundits say that House Republicans don’t have a jobs plan. That’s unfair! Granted, the Republican-sponsored Cut, Cap and Balance Act would eliminate 700,000 jobs in just its first year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but those analysts are no doubt liberals. America’s richest 400 people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans, and the affluent would feel renewed confidence if the Republican plan passed. We’d see a hiring bonanza. Each of those wealthy people might hire an extra pool attendant. That’s 400 jobs right there!

Cut, Cap and Balance would go even further than the Ryan budget plan in starving the beast of government. Sure, that’ll mean cuts in Social Security, Medicare and other programs, but so what? Who needs food safety? How do we know we really need air traffic control unless we try a day without it?

ROOT OUT SOCIALISM Republicans have been working to end Medicare as we know it but need to examine other reckless entitlements, such as our socialized education system, in which public schools fritter resources on classes like economics and foreign languages. As a former Texas governor, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, is said to have declared when she opposed the teaching of foreign languages: “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.”

For that matter, who needs socialized police and fire services? We could slash job-crushing taxes at the local level and simply let the free market take over:

“9-1-1, may I help you?” “Yes, help! My house is burning down!” “Very good, sir. I can offer you one fire engine for $5,995, or two for just $10,000.” “Help! My family’s inside. Send three fire engines! Just hurry!” “Yes, sir. Let me just run your credit card first. And if you require the fire trucks immediately, there’s a 50 percent ‘rush’ surcharge.”

CHILL OUT ABOUT THE DEBT CEILING House Republicans like Michele Bachmann are right: If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, some solution will turn up. As Representative Austin Scott, a Republican from Georgia, observes: “In the end, the sun is going to come up tomorrow.”

We got through the Great Depression, didn’t we? It looked pretty hopeless in 1929, but in just a dozen years World War II bailed us out with an economic stimulus. Something like that’ll come along for us, too. Ya gotta have faith.

CONSIDER ASSET SALES While Democrats are harrumphing about “default,” Republicans have sagely noted that there are alternatives in front of our noses. For example, why raise taxes on hard-pressed managers of hedge funds when the government can sell assets?

Fort Knox alone has 4,600 tons of gold, which I figure is worth around $235 billion. That’s enough to pay our military budget for four months! And selling Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon would buy us time as well.

RENT OUT CONGRESS If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, we could also auction members of Congress for day jobs: Are you a financier who wants someone to flip burgers (steaks?) at your child’s birthday party? Why, here’s Eric Cantor! Many members of Congress already work on behalf of tycoons, and this way the revenue would flow to the Treasury.

Finally, if we risk default, let’s rent out the Capitol for weddings to raise money for the public good. Wouldn’t it be nice to see something positive emerge from the House?


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=1

Tags: billionaires, poor, rich, tea party

Obama's weekly address: Tax the rich as part of debt relief

President Obama isn't giving up on his effort to include some tax increases in a "balanced" deficit-reduction plan.

Obama uses his weekly address today to reiterated his pitch that along with domestic and defense spending cuts and changes to Medicare, taxes should rise for upper-income Americans and corporations that enjoy special tax loopholes.

"If we're going to ask seniors, or students, or middle-class Americans to sacrifice, then we have to ask corporations and the wealthiest Americans to share in that sacrifice," Obama said. "We have to ask everyone to play their part. Because we are all part of the same country. We are all in this together."

Obama had reduced his earlier demands that taxes be a major part of any deficit-reduction plan needed to get Congress to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit. Now he's willing to have major spending cuts with only minor tax increases -- but Republicans still aren't biting.

Senate leaders of both parties are working on a plan that would eliminate tax increases altogether and just call for spending cuts and a higher debt ceiling. Obama opposes this approach but could be forced to settle for it.

Here's the president's full address:

Today, there's a debate going on in Washington over the best way to get America's fiscal house in order and get our economy on a stronger footing going forward.

For a decade, America has been spending more money than we've taken in. For several decades, our debt has been rising. And let's be honest -- neither party in this town is blameless. Both have talked this problem to death without doing enough about it. That's what drives people nuts about Washington. Too often, it's a place more concerned with playing politics and serving special interests than resolving real problems or focusing on what you're facing in your own lives.

But right now, we have a responsibility -- and an opportunity -- to reduce our deficit as much as possible and solve this problem in a real and comprehensive way.

Simply put, it will take a balanced approach, shared sacrifice, and a willingness to make unpopular choices on all our parts. That means spending less on domestic programs. It means spending less on defense programs. It means reforming programs like Medicare to reduce costs and strengthen the program for future generations. And it means taking on the tax code, and cutting out certain tax breaks and deductions for the wealthiest Americans.

Now, some of these things don't make folks in my party too happy. And I wouldn't agree to some of these cuts if we were in a better fiscal situation, but we're not. That's why I'm willing to compromise. I'm willing to do what it takes to solve this problem, even if it's not politically popular. And I expect leaders in Congress to show that same willingness to compromise.

The truth is, you can't solve our deficit without cutting spending. But you also can't solve it without asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share -- or without taking on loopholes that give special interests and big corporations tax breaks that middle-class Americans don't get.

It's pretty simple. I don't think oil companies should keep getting special tax breaks when they're making tens of billions in profits. I don't think hedge fund managers should pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. I don't think it's fair to ask nothing of someone like me when the average family has seen their income decline over the past decade -- and when many of you are just trying to stretch every dollar as far as it'll go.

We shouldn't put the burden of deficit reduction on the backs of folks who've already borne the brunt of the recession. It's not reasonable and it's not right. If we're going to ask seniors, or students, or middle-class Americans to sacrifice, then we have to ask corporations and the wealthiest Americans to share in that sacrifice. We have to ask everyone to play their part. Because we are all part of the same country. We are all in this together.

So I've put things on the table that are important to me and to Democrats, and I expect Republican leaders to do the same. After all, we've worked together like that before. Ronald Reagan worked with Tip O'Neill and Democrats to cut spending, raise revenues, and reform Social Security. Bill Clinton worked with Newt Gingrich and Republicans to balance the budget and create surpluses. Nobody ever got everything they wanted. But they worked together. And they moved this country forward.

That kind of cooperation should be the least you expect from us -- not the most you expect from us. You work hard, you do what's right, and you expect leaders who do the same. You sent us to Washington to do the tough things. The right things. Not just for some of us, but for all of us. Not just what's enough to get through the next election -- but what's right for the next generation.

You expect us to get this right. To put America back on firm economic ground. To forge a healthy, growing economy. To create new jobs and rebuild the lives of the middle class. And that's what I'm committed to doing.

Thank you.

Tags: debt relief, obama's, rich, tax, weekly address
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Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses - primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder - to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.

It is anything but a coincidence that the explosion in antipsychotic use coincides with the pharmaceutical industry's development of a new class of medications known as "atypical antipsychotics." Beginning with Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel in the 1990s, followed by Abilify in the early 2000s, these drugs were touted as being more effective than older antipsychotics like Haldol and Thorazine. More importantly, they lacked the most noxious side effects of the older drugs - in particular, the tremors and other motor control problems.

The atypical anti-psychotics were the bright new stars in the pharmaceutical industry's roster of psychotropic drugs - costly, patented medications that made people feel and behave better without any shaking or drooling. Sales grew steadily, until by 2009 Seroquel and Abilify numbered fifth and sixth in annual drug sales, and prescriptions written for the top three atypical antipsychotics totaled more than 20 million.  Suddenly, antipsychotics weren't just for psychotics any more.

Not just for psychotics anymore

By now, just about everyone knows how the drug industry works to influence the minds of American doctors, plying them with gifts, junkets, ego-tripping awards, and research funding in exchange for endorsing or prescribing the latest and most lucrative drugs. "Psychiatrists are particularly targeted by Big Pharma because psychiatric diagnoses are very subjective," says Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, whose PharmedOut project tracks the industry's influence on American medicine, and who last month hosted a conference on the subject at Georgetown. A shrink can't give you a blood test or an MRI to figure out precisely what's wrong with you. So it's often a case of diagnosis by prescription. (If you feel better after you take an anti-depressant, it's assumed that you were depressed.) As the researchers in one study of the drug industry's influence put it, "the lack of biological tests for mental disorders renders psychiatry especially vulnerable to industry influence." For this reason, they argue, it's particularly important that the guidelines for diagnosing and treating mental illness be compiled "on the basis of an objective review of the scientific evidence" - and not on whether the doctors writing them got a big grant from Merck or own stock in AstraZeneca.

Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and a leading critic of the Big Pharma, puts it more bluntly: "Psychiatrists are in the pocket of industry." Angell has pointed out that most of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the bible of mental health clinicians, have ties to the drug industry. Likewise, a 2009 study showed that 18 out of 20 of the shrinks who wrote the American Psychiatric Association's most recent clinical guidelines for treating depression, bipolar disorders, and schizophrenia had financial ties to drug companies.

"The use of psychoactive drugs - including both antidepressants and antipsychotics - has exploded...[yet] 'the tally of those who are disabled...increased nearly two and a half times." Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine

In a recent article in The New York Review of Books, Angell deconstructs what she calls an apparent "raging epidemic of mental illness" among Americans. The use of psychoactive drugs—including both antidepressants and antipsychotics—has exploded, and if the new drugs are so effective, Angell points out, we should "expect the prevalence of mental illness to be declining, not rising." Instead, "the tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007 - from one in 184 Americans to one in seventy-six. For children, the rise is even more startling - a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades. Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children." Under the tutelage of Big Pharma, we are "simply expanding the criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one." Fugh-Berman agrees: In the age of aggressive drug marketing, she says, "Psychiatric diagnoses have expanded to include many perfectly normal people."

Cost benefit analysis

What's especially troubling about the over-prescription of the new antipsychotics is its prevalence among the very young and the very old - vulnerable groups who often do not make their own choices when it comes to what medications they take. Investigations into antipsychotic use suggests that their purpose, in these cases, may be to subdue and tranquilize rather than to treat any genuine psychosis.

Carl Elliott reports in Mother Jones magazine: "Once bipolar disorder could be treated with atypicals, rates of diagnoses rose dramatically, especially in children. According to a recent Columbia University study, the number of children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder rose 40-fold between 1994 and 2003." And according to another study, "one in five children who visited a psychiatrist came away with a prescription for an antipsychotic drug."

A remarkable series published in the Palm Beach Post in May true revealed that the state of  Florida's juvenile justice department has literally been pouring these drugs into juvenile facilities, "routinely" doling them out "for reasons that never were approved by federal regulators." The numbers are staggering: "In 2007, for example, the Department of Juvenile Justice bought more than twice as much Seroquel as ibuprofen. Overall, in 24 months, the department bought 326,081 tablets of Seroquel, Abilify, Risperdal and other antipsychotic drugs for use in state-operated jails and homes for children…That's enough to hand out 446 pills a day, seven days a week, for two years in a row, to kids in jails and programs that can hold no more than 2,300 boys and girls on a given day." Further, the paper discovered that "One in three of the psychiatrists who have contracted with the state Department of Juvenile Justice in the past five years has taken speaker fees or gifts from companies that make antipsychotic medications."

In addition to expanding the diagnoses of serious mental illness, drug companies have encouraged doctors to prescribe atypical anti-psychotics for a host of off-label uses. In one particularly notorious episode, the drugmaker Eli Lilly pushed Zyprexa on the caregivers of old people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, as well as agitation, anxiety, and insomnia. In selling to nursing home doctors, sales reps reportedly used the slogan "five at five"—meaning that five milligrams of Zyprexa at 5 pm would sedate their more difficult charges. The practice persisted even after FDA had warned Lilly that the drug was not approved for such uses, and that it could lead to obesity and even diabetes in elderly patients.

In a video interview conducted in 2006, Sharham Ahari, who sold Zyprexa for two years at the beginning of the decade, described to me how the sales people would wangle the doctors into prescribing it. At the time, he recalled, his doctor clients were giving him a lot of grief over patients who were "flipping out" over the weight gain associated with the drug, along with the diabetes. "We were instructed to downplay side effects and focus on the efficacy of drug…to recommend the patient drink a glass a water before taking a pill before the  meal and then after the meal in hopes the stomach would expand" and provide an easy way out of this obstacle to increased sales. When docs complained, he recalled, "I told them, ‘Our drug is state of the art. What's more important? You want them to get better or do you want them to stay the same--a thin psychotic patient or a fat stable patient.'"

For the drug companies, Shahrman says, the decision to continue pushing the drug despite side effects is matter of cost benefit analysis: Whether you will make more money by continuing to market the drug for off-label use, and perhaps defending against lawsuits, than you would otherwise. In the case of Zyprexa, in January 2009, Lilly settled a lawsuit brought by with the US Justice Department, agreeing to pay $1.4 billion, including "a criminal fine of $515 million, the largest ever in a health care case, and the largest criminal fine for an individual corporation ever imposed in a United States criminal prosecution of any kind,''the Department of Justice said in announcing the settlement." But Lilly's sale of Zyprexa in that year alone were over $1.8 billion.

Turning people into zombies

People and Power: Drug Money

As it turns out, the atypical antipsychotics may not even be the best choice for people with genuine, undisputed psychosis.

A growing number of health professionals have come to think these drugs are not really as effective as older less expensive medicines which they have replaced, that they themselves produce side effects that cause other sorts of diseases such as diabetes and plunge the patient deeper into the gloomy world of serious mental disorder. Along with stories of success comes reports of people turned into virtual zombies.

Elliott reports in Mother Jones: "After another large analysis in The Lancet found that most atypicals actually performed worse than older drugs, two senior British psychiatrists penned a damning editorial that ran in the same issue. Dr. Peter Tyrer, the editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, and Dr. Tim Kendall of the Royal College of Psychiatrists wrote: "The spurious invention of the atypicals can now be regarded as invention only, cleverly manipulated by the drug industry for marketing purposes and only now being exposed."

Bottom line:Stop Big Pharma and the parasitic shrink community from wantonly pushing these pills across the population.

Tags: turning people into zombies
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Reagan mythology is leading US off a cliff http://www.randomlengthsnews.com/

During Reagan's presidency, the US went from a creditor to debtor nation and marked a take-off for financial inequality.

President Obama may choose between giving in to Republican budget-slashing demands or defaulting on US debt for the first time [GALLO/GETTY]  As things stand today, the US is hurtling toward a budget showdown in less than a month. Either President Obama will once again capitulate to extreme Republican budget-slashing demands, making Democrats seem as much of a threat to Medicare as Republicans, and virtually ensuring a GOP electoral sweep in 2012, or the US will default on its debt for the first time in its history, most likely plunging the world economy back into another five-continent recession, also costing Democrats the 2012 elections. These are the options left for a president and a political class completely divorced both from reality, and its own history of how one of the three greatest US presidents of all time steered the country from the brink of collapse eight decades ago Entirely forgetting the real history of how Franklin D Roosevelt used activist government to save American capitalism from itself, the entire US political establishment is instead hypnotised by the false history woven around its most over-hyped president of all time: Ronald Reagan. Idolatry of Reagan's supposed tax-cutting wonders propels the now widespread economic belief that up is down, that cutting government spending is the way out of - rather than into - a severe recession. At the same time, idolatry of Reagan's supposed political wonders propels GOP extremists to ignore all other considerations.   Because of this hypnotism, America's political establishment has barely even begun to notice two unconventional possible ways out that remain, neither of which require anything from Congress, but both of which need bold presidential leadership ala FDR.  The first is to ignore the debt ceiling, relying directly on the 14th Amendment's statement that: "the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned". The second is a proposal from maverick Republican Ron Paul to have the Federal Reserve Board destroy the $1.6 trillion in government bonds that it currently holds, which progressive economist Dean Baker recently wrote, "actually makes a great deal of sense". It might take some arm-twisting on Obama's part, but Congress has no say over the Fed, and central bankers have no great love of spreading financial panic. In anything close to a sane world, either one of these two bold strokes would be widely hailed for avoiding a reckless threat to the still-fragile world economy. But we do not live in a sane world, and the idolatry of Ronald Reagan is one of the principal reasons why. This is why it behoves us to review some of the biggest lies involved with Ronald Reagan's record, focusing specifically on the economy. What follows is but a brief rundown. The idea that Reagan produced a uniquely booming economy is false First, Reagan's record on the economy was not just exaggerated by his boosters, it's almost exactly the opposite of what they claim. It was a fairly ordinary time by the most common measurements of economic growth, looking good only in comparison with a selective time-slice of the 1970s. But once you start looking beneath the surface even the tiniest bit, the picture turns very dark indeed. In terms of the most basic measure of economic growth - increase in gross domestic product (GDP) - the vaunted "Reagan boom" was an unremarkable period of time. If we look at Reagan's eight years, and compare them with Clinton's and JFK/LBJ's, Reagan comes in dead last, with 31.7 per cent compared with Clinton's 33.1 per cent and JFK/LBJ's 47.1 per cent. Only Nixon/Ford's eight years make Reagan look good, with a mere 26.2 per cent growth. The idea that Reagan brought prosperity is true only for those at the top, not for average American workers If we examine incomes, we discover that Reagan's eight years marked a real take-off for inequality, while average incomes stagnated. The income growth of the top once per cent was ten times that of everyone else during his term: 61.5 per cent versus 6.15 per cent. Under JFK/LBJ, the bottom 99 per cent actually did better: gaining 30.9 per cent compared with 26.9 per cent for the top once per cent. And while inequality continued to rise under Clinton, the bottom 99 per cent did more than twice as well as they did under Reagan, gaining 16.7 per cent compared with 56.6 per cent for the wealthiest one per cent. The idea that Reagan was good for the American economy in general is false  Reagan was a disaster for the American economy in at least four fundamental ways:     Debtor Nation Status: Under Ronald Reagan, the US went from being the world's largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years - and we have remained the largest debtor nation ever since. In 1981, Reagan's first year in office, the US was a net creditor to the tune of $140.9bn. By 1984, that had shrunk to just $3.3bn - and the next year, the US shifted from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation for the first time in almost 70 years. By 1987, the US was a net debtor by $378.3bn - the largest debtor nation in the world. The figure rose to $532.5bn by the end of 1988, when Reagan left office.    De-Industrialisation: While the percentage of industrial jobs in the economy had been declining since the 1950s, with the growth of the service sector, the raw number of industrial jobs continued to increase right up through 1979, just before the 1980/1982 double-dip recession. From that year onward, the number of industrial jobs began declining, with a smattering of years when the number would increase. In addition to the raw number of jobs declining, the number of unionised jobs and the number of jobs with American companies declined even further.     Personal indebtedness: The income stagnation that began under Reagan has had a devastating impact on personal savings. While it fluctuated considerably, the personal savings rate had more than doubled between 1949 and 1982, from 5.0 per cent up to 11.2 per cent. Ironically, one of the main stated purposes of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts, the basis for Reagan's 1981 tax cut bill, was to boost personal savings. Instead, they plunged precipitously, falling all the way down into negative territory by 2006.    Government Indebtedness: The idea that Reagan was "fiscally conservative" is false. The story of government indebtedness was even more bleak. Before Reagan, debt really wasn't a problem for America. From World War II to 1981, every president had reduced the debt as a percentage of GDP, except for the divided term of Nixon-Ford, which saw a tiny 0.2 per cent increase.   The debt-to-GDP ratio is much more significant than the debt alone, since the GDP represents the nation's total capacity to pay off the debt. And from WWII to 1981, the debt-to-GDP ratio fell from almost 120 per cent down to just 32.5 per cent. The sharpest drop came early on, but even during the supposed "big government" heyday of the Kennedy/Johnson years, the ratio fell by over 16 per cent in eight years. Conservatives then might have complained about the debt - and they certainly did - but no one knowledgeable about economics took them seriously, because the debt grew significantly slower than our ability to repay it. During Reagan's term, this changed dramatically. The ratio rose by over 20 per cent, and it rose another 13 per cent under his successor, George Bush Sr. It took a Democrat, Bill Clinton, to get the ratio headed down again - by almost 10 per cent during his two terms, before Bush Jr sent it skyrocketing again - by almost 28 per cent. It's rising fast under Obama as well - but that's to be expected as a result of the worst recession since the 1930s.  The idea that Ronald Reagan consistently opposed tax increases is false The idea that Ronald Reagan always opposed tax increases is completely untrue.  He raised taxes dramatically as Governor of California in 1967 - by a whopping 30 per cent. But he also raised them as president - 11 times. Sure, his 1981 tax increase, along with three smaller increases, was much larger than his total tax cuts. But his willingness to raise as well as lower taxes would have made him at least somewhat compatible with President Obama, and totally unacceptable to movement conservatives today, especially Tea Partiers. Bruce Bartlett was a leading supply-side economist in the 1970s, who helped draft the Kemp-Roth tax bill as a staff economist for Congressman Jack Kemp. He went on to serve in both the Reagan and Bush I administrations. In an April 2010 blog post, listing Reagan's 11 presidential tax hikes and four tax cuts, Bartlett wrote: "It may come as a surprise to some people that, once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, Republicans actually cared enough about budget deficits that they thought raising taxes was necessary to bring them down. Today, Republicans believe that deficits are nothing more than something to ignore when they are in power and to bludgeon Democrats with when they are out of power."  Bartlett was obviously overstating his case, given how the debt skyrocketed under Reagan. But things would have clearly been much, much worse if Reagan had never raised taxes. And if Reagan were around today, he would no doubt be denounced as a "socialist" for all the tax increases he signed onto. The idea that Reagan's tax cuts spurred job creation is false As noted in Bartlett's table of tax cuts and increases, Reagan followed up his 1981 tax cuts with increases in 1982 and 1983. And for good reason: The unemployment rate - already high when Reagan took office - continued to skyrocket after his tax cuts were passed - peaking at 11.2 percent in 1983, when the jobless rate finally started to come down. The exact mixture of cause and effect over such an extended period may be subject to debate. But one thing is certain: Reagan's 1981 tax cuts did not magically result in job creation in anything like the way that conservatives nowadays mindlessly claim. The idea that Reagan changed America's mind about taxes and the role of government is false Political scientist James Stimson, author of Public Opinion in America: Moods, Cycles, and Swings, has constructed an index of economic liberalism based on hundreds of public opinion questions asked repeatedly over the years. This index reached a low-point in 1980 and rose dramatically for the next seven years, reaching a plateau at levels not seen since Nixon's first term, as if Reagan's rhetoric were convincing more and more people of the exactly the opposite of what he was saying.   This rise was reflected, for example, in four questions asked in the General Social Survey, the most-cited data source for social scientists after the US Census. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of people saying the government was spending "too little" nationally increased 27.4 per cent on health care, 32.9 per cent on education, 67.8 per cent on welfare and 46.7 per cent on the environment. The questions all reminded people that increased taxes might be required if more was spent.   What's more, 20 years after Reagan's election, in 2000, federal tax receipts as a percent of GDP were up 8.4 per cent over what they had been the year Reagan was elected, indisputable proof that government's role had ultimately not decreased across that time-span. The idea that Reagan was a singularly popular president is false Reagan was quite fortunate in getting re-elected in 1984 when his popularity was particularly high, but that was not true of his record in general. According to Gallup, Reagan's overall average approval rating was only 52.8 per cent, lower than John F Kennedy (70.1 per cent), Dwight Eisenhower (65 per cent), GHW Bush (60.1 per cent), Bill Clinton (55.1 per cent), and Lyndon Johnson (55.1 percent). It's only modestly higher than George W Bush (49.4 per cent) and Richard Nixon (49.1 per cent).  Summing Up Surveying all these lies in a single panorama, it should be clear that neither Reagan's economic record nor his political one should provide any case at all for embracing conservative economics. Quite the opposite: They clearly point to failure on both counts. What's more, the only reason his mythology is possible at all is because he significantly backtracked by raising taxes, when doing otherwise would have completely exposed the failure of his principal economic intentions. President Obama is as drunk on Reagan's kool-aid as anyone else in Washington today. It will be difficult indeed for him to break the spell in time to save the country - and himself - from repeating the economic disaster that conservative policies led to just before he was elected. One thing about Reagan is true, however: His wife did play a significant role in saving him from following ideologues into dangerous folly on a number of occasions. Perhaps Michelle Obama is America's last best hope.  Perhaps she can see what her husband thus far cannot. Paul Rosenberg is the Senior Editor of Random Lengths news, a bi-weekly alternative community newspaper

Tags: debt ceiling, gop, obama

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-debt-ceiling/2011/07/06/gIQANwF01H_story.html

 Five myths about the debt ceiling

By Bruce Bartlett, Published: July 7

In recent months, the federal debt ceiling — last increased in February 2010 and now standing at $14.3 trillion — has become a matter of national debate and political hysteria. The ceiling must be raised by Aug. 2, Treasury says, or the government will run out of cash. Congressional Republicans counter that they won’t raise the debt limit unless Democrats agree to large budget cuts with no tax increases. President Obama insists that closing tax loopholes must be part of the package. Whom and what to believe in the great debt-limit debate? Here are some misconceptions that get to the heart of the battle.

1. The debt limit is an effective way to control spending and deficits.

Not at all. In 2003, Brian Roseboro, assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial markets, explained it best: “The plain truth is that the debt limit does not affect the deficits or surpluses. The critical revenue and spending decisions are made during the congressional budget process.”

The debt ceiling is a cap on the amount of securities the Treasury can issue, something it does to raise money to pay for government expenses. These expenses, and the deficit they’ve wrought, are a result of past actions by Congress to create entitlement programs, make appropriations and cut taxes. In that sense, raising the debt limit is about paying for past expenses, not controlling future ones. For Congress to refuse to let Treasury raise the cash to pay the bills that Congress itself has run up simply makes no sense.

Some supporters of the debt limit respond that there is virtue in forcing Congress to debate the national debt from time to time. This may have been true in the past, but the Budget Act of 1974 created a process that requires Congress to vote on aggregate levels of spending, revenue and deficits every year, thus making the debt limit redundant.

2. Opposition to raising the debt limit is a partisan issue.

Republicans are doing the squawking now because there is a Democrat in the White House. But back when there was a Republican president, Democrats did the squawking. On March 16, 2006, one Democratic senator in particular denounced George W. Bush’s request to raise the debt limit. “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” the senator thundered. “Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. . . . Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.”

That senator was Barack Obama, and he, along with most Democrats, voted against a higher limit that day. It passed only because almost every Republican voted for it, including many who are now among the strongest opponents of a debt-limit increase.

3. Financial markets won’t care much if interest payments are just a few days late — a “technical default.”

Some Republicans believe that bondholders know they will get their money eventually and will understand that a brief default — just a few days — might be necessary to reduce future deficits. “If a bondholder misses a payment for a day or two or three or four,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told CNBC in May, “what is more important [is] that you’re putting the government in a materially better position to be able to pay their bonds later on.”

This is nothing but wishful thinking. The bond-rating agencies have repeatedly warned that any failure to pay interest or principal on a Treasury security exactly when due could cause the U.S. credit rating to be downgraded, which would push interest rates upas investors demand higher rates to compensate for the increased risk.

J.P. Morgan recently surveyed its clients and asked how much rates would rise if there was a delay in payments, even a very brief one. Domestic investors thought they would go up by 0.37 percentage points, but foreign buyers — who own close to half the debt — predicted an increase of more than half a percentage point. Any increase in this range would raise Treasury’s borrowing costs by tens of billions of dollars per year.

Some may think that a rise in rates would be temporary. But there was a case back in 1979 when a combination of a failure to increase the debt limit in time and a breakdown of Treasury’s machines for printing checks caused a two-week default. A 1989 academic study found that it raised interest rates by six-tenths of a percentage point for years afterward.

4. It’s worth risking default on the debt to prevent a tax increase, given the weak economy.

While Republicans’ concerns about higher taxes are not unreasonable, most economists believe that any fiscal contraction at this time would be dangerous. They note that a large cut in spending back in 1937 brought on a sharp recession, which undermined the recovery the country was making after the Great Depression.

Republicans respond that tax increases are especially harmful to growth. However, they made the same argument in 1982, when Ronald Reagan requested the largest peacetime tax increase in American history, and again in 1993, when Bill Clinton also asked for a large tax boost for deficit reduction. In both cases, conservative economists’ predictions of economic disaster were completely wrong, and strong economic growth followed.

5. Obama must accept GOP budget demands because he needs Republican support to raise the debt limit.

Republicans believe they have the president over a barrel. But their hand may be weaker than they think. A number of legal scholars point to Section 4of the 14th Amendment, which says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned.”

Some scholars, including Michael Abramowicz of George Washington University Law Schooland Garrett Epps of the University of Baltimore Law School, think this passage may make the debt limit unconstitutional because by definition, the limit calls into question the validity of the public debt. Thus Treasury may be able to just ignore the debt limit.

Other scholars, such as Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School, say the 14th Amendment will force Obama to prioritize debt payments and unilaterally slash spending to pay bondholders. But this would involve the violation of laws requiring government spending.

Either way, a failure to raise the debt limit would force the president to break the law. The only question is which one.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the-debt-ceiling/2011/07/06/gIQANwF01H_story.html

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

Prohibition in the United States (sometimes referred to as the Noble Experiment)[1][2] was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933.[3] The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It was repealed on December 5, 1933.

  A quote from a letter, written in 1932 by wealthy industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., states:
"When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before."

Congress passed the Volstead Act, the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto on October 28, 1919, and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor, as well as penalties for producing it.[8] Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, the federal government did little to enforce it. By 1925, in New York City alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.[9]
While Prohibition was successful in reducing the amount of liquor consumed, it stimulated the proliferation of rampant underground, organized and widespread criminal activity.[10] The bulk of America became disenchanted after the St. Valentine's Day massacre in 1929. Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the Great Depression, especially in large cities.
On March 22, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. However, United States federal law still prohibits the manufacture of distilled spirits without meeting numerous licensing requirements that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal beverage use.
Alcohol and alcoholism have been a contentious topic in America since the colonial period.
In May of 1657, the General Court of Massachusetts made the sale of strong liquor "whether known by the name of rumme, strong water, wine, brandy, etc." illegal.[12]
In general, informal social controls in the home and community helped maintain the expectation that the abuse of alcohol was unacceptable. "Drunkenness was condemned and punished, but only as an abuse of a God-given gift. Drink itself was not looked upon as culpable, any more than food deserved blame for the sin of gluttony. Excess was a personal indiscretion."[13] When informal controls failed, there were always legal ones.
One of the foremost physicians of the late 18th century, Benjamin Rush, argued in "The Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind" in 1784 that the excessive use of alcohol was injurious to physical and psychological health and went so far as to label drunkenness as a disease (he believed in moderation rather than prohibition).[14] Apparently influenced by Rush's widely discussed belief, about 200 farmers in a Connecticut community formed a temperance association in 1789. Similar associations were formed in Virginia in 1800 and New York in 1808. Within the next decade, other temperance organizations were formed in eight states, some being statewide organizations. The words of Rush and other early temperance reformers served to dichotomize the use of alcohol for men and women. While men enjoyed drinking and often considered it vital to their health, women who began to embrace the ideology of 'true motherhood' refrained from consumption of alcohol. Middle-class women were considered the moral authorities of their households and consequently rejected the drinking of alcohol, which was considered a threat to the home.[15]
In 1830, the average American consumed 1.7 bottles of hard liquor per week, three times the amount consumed in 2010.

In 1881, Kansas became the first state to outlaw alcoholic beverages in its Constitution, with Carrie Nation gaining notoriety for enforcing the provision herself by walking into saloons, scolding customers, and using her hatchet to destroy bottles of liquor. Nation recruited ladies into the Carrie Nation Prohibition Group, which Nation also led. While Carrie Nation's vigilante techniques were rare, other activists enforced the cause by entering saloons, singing, praying, and urging saloon keepers to stop selling alcohol.[21] Many other states, especially in the South, also enacted prohibition, along with many individual counties.
Many court cases also debated the subject under different lights and for different situations, there was an overall lean towards prohibition, however, many cases still ruled opposed to the believed effects. In Mugler v. Kansas, 1887, Justice Harlan, wrote, "We cannot shut out of view the fact, within the knowledge of all, that the public health, the public morals, and the public safety, may be endangered by the general use of intoxicating drinks; nor the fact established by statistics accessible to every one, that the idleness, disorder, pauperism and crime existing in the country, are, in some degree... traceable to this evil."[22] In support of prohibition, Crowley v. Christensen, 1890, said, "The statistics of every state show a greater amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits obtained at these retail liquor saloons than to any other source."[22]
In the Progressive Era (1890–1920), hostility to saloons and their political influence became widespread, with the Anti-Saloon League superseding the Prohibition Party and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union as the most influential advocate of prohibition, when the latter two groups chose to piggyback other social reform issues, such as women's suffrage, onto their prohibition platform.
Prohibition was an important force in state and local politics from the 1840s through the 1930s. The political forces involved were ethnoreligious in character, as demonstrated by numerous historical studies.[23] Prohibition was demanded by the "dries" – primarily pietistic Protestant denominations, especially the Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, Quakers and Scandinavian Lutherans. They identified saloons as politically corrupt and drinking as a personal sin. Other active organizations included the Women's Church Federation, the Women's Temperance Crusade, and the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction. They were opposed by the "wets" – primarily liturgical Protestants (Episcopalians, German Lutherans) and Roman Catholics, who denounced the idea that the government should define morality.[24] Even in the wet stronghold of New York City there was an active prohibition movement, led by Norwegian church groups and African-American labor activists who believed that Prohibition would benefit workers, especially African-Americans. Tea merchants and soda fountain manufacturers generally supported Prohibition, thinking a ban on alcohol would increase sales of their products.[25]
Prohibition represented a conflict between urban and rural values emerging in the United States. Given the mass influx of immigrants to the urban dwellings of the United States, many individuals within the prohibition movement associated the crime and morally corrupt behavior of the cities of America with their large immigrant populations. In a backlash to the new emerging realities of the American demographic, many prohibitionists subscribed to the doctrine of “nativism” in which they endorsed the notion that America was made great as a result of its white Anglo-Saxon ancestry. This fostered xenophobic sentiments towards urban immigrant communities who typically argued in favor of abolishing prohibition.[26] Additionally, these nativist sentiments were a part of a larger process of Americanization taking place during the same time period.[27]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

Tags: corruption, crime, failure, prohibition
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