Consider that this November, 2010, voters in California will be asked to legalize marijuana in America's most populous state, and as an enducement to push for this perverse drive to push for expanding the envelope for more "freedoms" and so-called "civil liberties," proponents of the voters' initiative are offering to tax marijuana as a panacea to fix California's fiscal mess.
California's current fiscal budget hole has skyrockted to over US$ 20 billion, and growing as this once great state implodes from within. Given the deep economic recession resulting from America's overall collaspsing financial institutions and economic infrastructures, with joblessness, home foreclosures, personal and business bankruptcies exploding all over, it is desperation and lunatic times in America's biggest and most populous state.
As American pundit and the late President Ronald Reagan's speechwriter Peggy Noonan aptly put it, " We (Americans) are living under times of collaspe, with collaspsing institutions from government, churches, jounalism etc." How perilous but on point indeed.
This latest piece of marijuana news originating from California exemplifies the depth and breath of drug and alcohol abuse in the West, with London in Europe, and Los Angeles serving as metaphors of a decaying West.
Go visit any major American and European cities.... from London to San Francisco, New York City to Vancouver, Paris to Philadelphia, the sights of drug addicts, alcoholics, social miscreants, panhandlers, beggars, crazies wallowing in these cities' mean streets are telling and shocking.
In the L.A. Times today, the L.A. City Council reportedly has decided to put a grip on the proliferation of marijuana purveyors passing as "medicinal cannabis clinics.
By latest estimate, there are more than 1,000 to 1,200 of these dope houses operating in Los Angeles. Check out the link below:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100119/ap_on_re_us/us_medical_marijuana_los_angeles
Over a century and a half ago, China and its people went through the scourge of Opium. And the pejorative diss words, "The sick man of Asia" was aptly ascribed to China. That "sick man" insult continues to haunt China and its peoples today.
It is now historical "deja vu." History has a way of repeating itself. Empires rise and empires fall. Are Californians at the precipice ?
