An appropriate day to point out the great folly in much of the War on Drugs, IMO. Let's start reversing the curse by removing marijuana from Schedule II drugs. That is a move well supported by the science, and provides a fine opportunity for the Obama administration to demonstrate the superiority of science over faith and tradition, a major stated goal.

Just don't you dare light a cigarette after raising that pint!

Additionally, I wouldn't cling onto much hope that Obama is going to do anything particularly positive regarding the drug war, if his appointment of the noxious Eric Holder is any indication of things to come.

I'd also point out that "craft brewing" is an inherently bourgeoisie phenomenon reserved for the middle- upper-middle-class who can afford $6.75 for a bottle of good beer.

Don't get me wrong -- I love microbrews, but if you think that there are any fewer people out whose only consideration is the %ABV/cost ratio, you're probably spending too much time in the local overpriced Rogue Brewery outlet.

I started home-brewing years ago, and still do. Then and now, the best supplier is F.H. Steinbart's in NE Portland. I noticed the first time I saw their price list the notation 'Since 1918.' Apparently even during Prohibition it remained legal to sell barley malt, dextrose, hops, and yeast (probably winemaking stuff too).

So I lift a glass to F.H. and toast the freedom to ferment. (Though at the moment I have only a Cerveza Victoria in Oaxaca, Mexico, not my own home-brew.)

Prohibition ended 75 years ago yet we still have the antiquated, draconian O.L.C.C. A little piece of Kansas right here at home.

Thanks Jeff for a very thoughtful post. It's good to remember that while we may be able to celebrate 75 years of legal drinking in the U.S.A., we still have a drinking culture as twisted as they come. (Once again, we can thank the English and their hooligans for establishing a baseline well below us.)

And on a local policy level- yes, Dems rock- but as recently as a couple of years ago quality Dem leaders like Sen. Bill Morrissette in Springfield were pushing a hike on the beer tax. As someone who tends to see beer as a health product and model Oregon industry it didn't wash, even if I value funding for social services and this tax scheme had beneficial outcomes.

And I take issue with the rubbish feaux-classism that condemns the working man to a life without microbrews! Microbrews may be relatively expensive, but so are pickup trucks, flatscreen tvs and decent coffee. There're plenty of stores in Oregon to get you started on homebrewing ingredients, and every couple months there're Rogue garage sales for sweet treats. Besides, there's deeper structural stuff going on here. Maybe instead of an agri-policy that subsidized corn and soy we could have one that incentivized a traditional Oregon industry (hops!) and thus keep the price of beer down. And beer waste product as biofuel?! Yes, we can!

Here's a raised pint of Rogue to a beer-friendly tomorrow.

Anybody here go to University of Oregon and hang out at Max's Tavern? Max's was the first legal tavern to open after repeal, at least in Eugene.

As I heard the story many years ago over a frosty mug, Max Robinson graduated from the UO law school in the spring of 1933. Never even thought of taking the bar exam. Instead, he went a few blocks down 13th St. and spent the next several months renovating his parents' soda parlor. When repeal happened on this date in '33, Maxie was ready to open, had lined up suppliers and everything.

He kept stacks of law books in the tavern and all the law students and much of the faculty hung out there. Of course, in those days, a lot of lawyers educated at UO went into the state legislature. Some time later, I believe it was the late 1940s, there was an epidemic of binge drinking on the college campuses and one solution that the legislature considered was instituting a "dry zone" around each of the state campuses, wherein no alcoholic beverages could be sold. When the legislature passed this law, the dry zone around the UO campus stopped a half block short of Max's. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.

I was an underage collitch stoodint (age 16, graduated early, trying to live on my own without a clue), and I used to slip right into Max's and try to study with a pint of warm Guiness stout! WEll! Memories!

Of-topic, but pointed at the IQ ad in the margins. This is so freaking cool! My IQ, both scores I received, is higher than Bush, Cheney, Obama and every other icon I have yet seen in those li'l ads this year. I'm even smarter than PARIS HILTON TOO!

I am still waiting for them to post someone who measured out higher.

So this proves it: success IS utterly founded in EQ. NOT IQ.*** .... And, for some, silver spoonage, of course.

***[I dare not even contemplate approaching any bonafide EQ measures!!!!]

You were right in saying that the women of the Temperance Movement wanted to stomp out drinking, but you are wrong in your assumption that it was only the “pious women” and that prohibition was not about husbands and family finances.

Temperance and women’s suffrage for many years was a common goal for 19th century activist women. Suffrage was about women’s rights to the legal system, the family’s money and who got to control it. It was an acronymous fight spread out over 70 years that came to a head at the same time that the secret ballot came to fruition in American politics (1890s) as well as the Initiative and Referendum (1902 in Oregon).

Abusive drinking was a perceived blight upon the American family that destroyed homes and caused no end of suffering (see the character “Pap” in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn). To get rid of the blight meant women had to have the power of the ballot box to elect officials who would pass the necessary laws.

The first Initiative passed in Oregon was to allow a jurisdiction, down to the precinct level, to rid itself of saloons (Local Option Act). And often when a jurisdiction went dry, it was ignored by the County’s District Attorney and Sheriff until Oregon’s Governor Oswald West (1911-1915) began his crusade against errant elected county law officers in 1912 to get them to prosecute law breaking saloon owners who allowed 24 hour a day, seven days a week drinking, underage drinking, prostitution and gambling on the premises. (Previous to West any crusading politician that closed down saloons and brothels was quickly run out of office).

Women’s suffrage activists in the 19th century wanted our government to allow women the legal right to control half of community property shared by a husband and wife and to allow women to keep what they earned in their own business by allowing them legal ownership. That required sympathetic elected officials.

Elected officials knew that to stay in office they had to keep their constituents happy. There constituents up to then were white males that voted. The white males voted against any politician that tried to bring women’s suffrage to the table. It was well known that giving women the vote would also bring prohibition. The franchised voters wanted to continue drinking.

In addition the saloon culture was a lucrative business. It made money for brewers, such as Henry Wienhard in Portland, among others, and the dealers in spirits, like W.S. Ladd and Henry Corbett, both who had liquor interests for many years after coming to Portland as merchants.

This business class lobbied against women’s suffrage because they also believed it would bring prohibition. A large contributor to “Wet” politicians seeking office was the Liquor Wholesalers Association. (Sound familiar?). Two of Portland’s newspapers took sides, The Morning Oregonian was on the “Wet” side while the Oregon Daily Journal fought for the “Dry.”

But the saloon economy went deeper than that. Money was made by the gambling taking place in the saloons, and from prostitution. Drinking was a loss leader. Most saloons demanded that the customer get drunk and to do so fast so they could be steered to the Faro tables and lose all their money. This often meant the man lost not only the money in his pocket but the family savings and often his farm. Stories of wives and children turned out into the night by the new owners appear in many newspapers. The wives had no legal recourse when the husband lost all money and property. That was one of the injustices activists wanted changed. It was why they demanded suffrage. It was why Temperance and suffrage activists were partners and often one and the same.

Prostitution was a cottage industry that could make a living for the small time operator, a simple madam and three or four girls, or the big time operators in cities like Portland. In 1900 it was estimated that 600 prostitutes were employed in an area of Portland known as the “North End.” An area today surrounding Union Station bordered by Burnside on the south. At the time of the Lewis and Clark Exposition one establishment took up an entire city block and had over 200 prostitutes working. The young ladies employed in brothels large and small were recruited usually as teenagers from the rural backwater villages, gotten drunk and then raped by the madam’s boyfriend, or pimp. The shamed girl had no recourse but to continue work as a prostitute. Many died of disease, alcoholism, drug addiction or suicide before they reached 30 years old. Often they had just left broken homes ruled by abusive, alcoholic parents.

Activists often blamed liquor interests and elected officials for enabling these red light districts to flourish.

City and county jurisdictions made millions of dollars in licensing fees on saloons. Up until the early 1900s it was common practice to use these same drunken male customers to sway an election by buying votes with a $2 credit for beer in the saloons. In the 1870s railroad baron want-a-be Ben Holliday spent $250,000 to bring in the vote this way for his candidates and turned Oregon into a Republican state for the first time.

In a 1906 study by a church group in Portland it was found that many of the properties in the North End, that is, Couch’s Addition, were sold as investment properties. A boarding house would be built and the rents collected by a property manager or a lawyer, insulating the owner from any illicit commerce that was going on at the boarding house. Many of these properties were owned by the wealthy class of Portland who conveniently ignored reports of prostitution, gambling and drinking going on in their “investment.”

For over twenty years before 1900, Fourth Avenue from Stark to Union Station was lined on both sides of the street with cheap, two story, clapboard houses, prostitutes sitting in windows beckoning passengers on the train that ran down the center of Fourth to come visit. It was abhorrent and sleazy, but the official solution was to build a second rail station at the south end of Portland’s downtown allowing women and children to get off before they reached the sordid spectacle rather than clean out the brothels.

In the towns of Milwaukie, The Dalles, Salem, Huntington and others across Oregon the saloon culture spawned alcoholism that destroyed farm families by the dozens, loss of property to gamblers, teenage alcohol abuse, fights in the small town streets, from simple two or three people assaults to brawls of a hundred besotted men. Robbery, murders and rape occurred that were ignored by authorities. A 1915 study of the men in Oregon’s State Prison (about 30 men) who were convicted of sex abuse said over 60 percent had raped their own daughters. Suicides were common news stories in the daily papers. These weren’t everyday occurrences, Oregon still had a small and rural population before the Great War, but these things happened often enough.

This is the culture that the Temperance Union was trying to put to a stop. To do so they needed the power of the ballot box. They worked hard with their sister activists to help win suffrage. Progressives like William U’Ren and Democratic governors of Oregon like Governor George Chamberlin (1903-1909) and West did what they could. Abigail Scott Duniway and the women of Oregon won suffrage in 1912. The result was that the complete prohibition that came to Oregon in 1915 and nationwide in 1919, did not work per se, but it did break the back of white males dominating and allowing this sordid underground to flourish in large and small communities. After prohibition drinking was highly regulated and soon came to be recognized as a dilabating factor on the economy.

People often make fun of prohibition as the work of abstinent do gooders, but the facts point otherwise. Drinking liquor and beer 100 years ago was not the leisurely hipster recreation it is now. Putting the brakes to the saloon culture and allowing women the vote I think can be considered a major attribution as to why America became one of the greatest economies the world has ever seen so that we can now drink $4 Belgium beer while eating Argentinean mussels cooked in a white (Australian) wine sauce while sitting at a bar on 21st Avenue.

Brian C:

Prohibition ended 75 years ago yet we still have the antiquated, draconian O.L.C.C.

Bob T:

Yup -- the New-Dealish "managed" economy model.

Bob Tiernan

Robert Schoenberg:

You were right in saying that the women of the Temperance Movement wanted to stomp out drinking, but you are wrong in your assumption that it was only the “pious women”....

Bob T:

That's right. There were numerous groups fighting to achieve prohibition over many years, with different groups appearing to take turns being the main voice.

One key group was a large faction of progressives who saw the stomping out of alcohol as a way to make better workers out of us, thus "good for the whole". Populists, too (some overlapping there).

Robert Schoenberg:

This business class lobbied against women’s suffrage because they also believed it would bring prohibition.

Bob T:

Oddly enough, there was also a large organization of black women who opposed universal women's suffrage. Their reason was that they saw that it would add X-number of blacks to the voter rolls, but six or so times that for white women, putting whites many millions ahead than they were earlier. An explanation for sure, but a silly argument in the end.

By the way, Oregon had statewide Prohibition by 1914 I believe, so it lasted for 20 years here.

Try to catch a 1932 film titled The Wet Parade -- an Upton Sinclair story that is both anti-Prohibition and anti-alcohol at the same time. At one point a Prohibition agent looks right into the camera while complaining about its failures, and so on.

Bob Tiernan

Aaaand- good intentions on the fast track to bad policy. Greater and broader family responsibility over shared finances = good, crippling local agricultural production, fostering a repressive alcohol culture, the mob, and byzantine liquor laws persisting 70 years later = bad. Very bad. Legally stigmatizing goods which have been easily produced, shared and consumed for centuries only forces the goods and the people who produce, share and consume into dark shadows. As I think you can see this argument's been constructed to apply not just to beer.

And since when is drinking hipster? Did they get that before or after foreign movies?

Every social movement has it's apologists, I guess. (Do Prohibition apologists take a blog-lap around on anniversary day each year to re-tell the history?) But as to the state of dining out on NW on 21st, I'd put "Cinema 21" or "Uptown but not NW 23rd" way before Prohibition on the causation list.

My father, who was raised in the Nebraska and Kansas, was exposed to more enlightend attitudes towards drinking overseas during WWII. He also minored in psychology during the postwar era.
He believed that having wine at the dinner table, in sherry glasses for kids, was a way of creating a healthy habit of drining for taste in moderation. No one ever got drunk, but alcohol was always available. I grew up without thinking that alcohol was "forbidden" or "evil" or "mysterious."

My siblings and I now all drink in very moderate amounts, as best as I can tell. My drinking is more limited by worries about calories (family history of diabetes) than it is by the evils of drink.

Now the media and talk shows seem to be promoting the idea that anyone who gives any alcohol to a minor is a child-abuser.

oops typo "drining" (drinking)_

@Robert Schoenberg

Thanks so much for your post on the history of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. It was not about being "pious" suggested in Jeff's inaccurate characterization, but it was the roots of feminism in this country. At a time when women and children had no legal protections against abuse, at a time when alcoholism was rampant and the primary victims were women and children, who suffered the ravages of domestic violence and economic neglect, it needs saying that there was good reason why prohibition came into being. It also needs saying that the church was the spawning ground for the feminist movement in this country, and its growth into feminism and demands for equality.

So many of the secularist bloggers, who are so hostile towards Christianity, and so dismissive of the role of the church and the Christian ethos of social justice, particularly among the traditional mainstream Protestant churches, many of whom are today supportive of gay rights as well. The fact remains that alcohol is among the most dangerous drugs being used in our culture today and the abuse of it, and addiction to it, among the most destructive, along with nicotine, heroin, meth, and so on. Alcohol remains strongly associated causes of domestic violence.

Technically it is 75 years since the repeal of blanket, Federal alcohol prohibition. Some salient points about that:

It was only in 1978 that Congress passed an Act exempting a certain amount of beer brewed for personal or family use from taxation (one hundred gallons/adult/annum to max 2, I believe). President Carter signed the Act, which addressed other issues as well, stemming from a miscopy of the original repeal where a line was skipped by the secretary typing up the Bill.

States remain free to restrict, or even prohibit, the manufacture of beer, mead, hard cider, wine and other alcoholic beverages at home. For example, Ala. Code § 28-1-1 make it illegal to manufacture alcoholic beverages in Alabama, without any exception for personal use brewing. Clearly, we have a major body of case law saying that regulation of drugs, particularly recreational ones, is not a Federal interstate trade issue, but a right retained by the States. Hence the new think about States' allowing medical marijuana being a violation of the Fed's ability to regulate commerce is complete crap.

The mob still take a sizable piece out of the profitability of all kinds of industries. They could never have existed as they do today without prohibition to line their pockets.

Abraham Lincoln is said to have predicted that alcohol prohibition would be a disaster (though no one ever seems to have the reference on this one; he was an avid cricketer, so I beleive it.). He reasoned, "You cannot legislate against a man's appetites."

The legislation against alcohol was supported largely by big oil and women's suffrage advocates. Once in a debate with my 102 year old great-grandmother, who had to wait for suffrage to vote, I was shocked to discover that I might have been against the suffrage Act. She made a very convincing case that women's getting the right to vote was moral arm twisting to get alcohol prohibited. The logic went that women only wanted the right to vote to prohibit men drinking, which, to be fair, is exactly what they did immediately. People forget that prohibition was Federal law much earlier than "prohibition". It took the States years to ratify it, though, as we remember with the ERA process

Marijuana prohibition, though essentially racist, was thought up as a bone to big oil when prohibition was repealed and stems from that date. It was ramrodded through the Congress by Harry Anslinger (which name still sounds like a medical condition) who lied to Congress telling them that the AMA had no problem with the legislation. In fact, it was roundly panned by the AMA who were shocked at its enactment. Hemp was a very serious competitor to the fledgling petro chemicals (read plastics) industry. This cozy relationship with the government led to a lack of US support during the war for Jews in concentration camps, as many petro chemical concerns were heavily vested in German industry.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission, besides being a good example of what's wrong with any commission, has a charter to promote temperance and reduce alcohol consumption. This is taken in the absolute, without any consideration for the positive health effects of wine, ale, etc. This is a litigation time bomb. It should be straight-forward to demonstrate that a person would have had lower cholesterol and a longer lifespan had they had a certain quantity of red wine, and that their perception and behavior was directly influenced by OLCC which set out to influence that behavior. From what we've seen with tobacco, there could be definite liability there. It makes no sense that an Oregon microbrewer or vintner has to pay taxes to support a commission that, by charter, promotes a zero alcohol consumption policy. This may not be the feeling of those in charge, but it is their charter. If they're following it, it's outdated stupid nonsense, and if they're not, then they're just another expensive, unaccountable commission doing whatever they happen to dream up.

New constituents of hop oil are being discovered every day that are anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and posses a number of positives for health. Hops are the first cousin and closest living relative to Cannabis. Observe the female buds in May when all the little white hairs are on display and you'll see what I mean. One can be grafted onto the other. Pull out a pound bag of sticky hop buds on Trimet and see if you don't get looks.

The War on Drugs has been gussied up as a lot of things, but, bottom line, the effect of the policy has always been pointedly racist. Our first drug laws, the Opium prohibitions, were only enacted after the California Supreme Court ruled that fining individuals for carry loads on their heads was racist. Alcohol prohibition stems from a time when the US was absorbing huge numbers if Irish, German and Italian immigrants. All were stereotyped as alkies. By 1932 the brown menace was considered a bigger threat. Racism aside, there were never threats against those Irish, German and Italians having wine at Mass. The period of the Peyote prohibitions was even beyond the Pale for prohibition.

The Mayflower landed were it did, not because of anything special about Plymouth, but because the ship had run out of ale. No matter how desperate you are for a homebrew, you don't build a fire on board a ship. It was "liquid bread" then, and common for children to have a pint of ale at breakfast. Puritan children.

The German Rheinheitsgebot law that says that you can only use barley, yeast, hops and water to brew beer was the first product purity law in the West. It has largely been found to be an illegal barrier to trade under EU administration and contributes to Bavaria's having the lowest compliance rating in the EU. Belgium is the disneyland of ale. They use bacteria that are death to most brewers, some living in the same wooden fermentation vessel since the middle ages. Many now use Oregon fruit. (So why aren't we making these high dollar brews like Kriek Lambic?)

Though it's a moving target, PDX arguably has more brew pubs, per capita, than any city other than Dublin. Check one out tonight! The story of microbrewers in the NW running all the major industrial manufacturers out of the area is a consumer success story that could be emulated in so many other areas.

And a personal opinion. The patchwork quilt of liquor laws? MADD could have a very practical benefit reducing alcohol related road deaths if they would promote aligning all those liquor laws. There is no better way to get a kid in the car driving for alcohol than for the law to be different "just across the line".

Scabbers:

[My father] believed that having wine at the dinner table, in sherry glasses for kids, was a way of creating a healthy habit of drining for taste in moderation. No one ever got drunk, but alcohol was always available. I grew up without thinking that alcohol was "forbidden" or "evil" or "mysterious."

Bob T:

Yes, that's it exactly. America's stupid attitude toward alcohol (post-Prohibition, that is) is the opposite of what we should have in a free society that ties freedom to responsibility. Having some wine at dinner even when you're in grade school is better for future bahavior than telling a kid for 21 years that he "can't touch the stuff -- it's bad", and then suddenly on his 21st birthday it's, "Okay, now you can have all you want". By then he's already had quite a bit.

Bob Tiernan

Beer, wine, liquor, all can be great tasting stuff, but alcohol doesn't really need any flavor at all for the interest many people have in it. In just casual, throughout the day observation, to realize how many people want to be drinking alcohol simply for the purpose of being semi-functionally snockered, is a disturbing thing, for me at least.

I enjoyed Robert Schoenberg and Chris Lowe's comments that detail parts of the evolution our society has come to today in its disposition toward alcohol in daily life. Alcohol abuse today is still bad, but there at least seems to more awareness of and conscientious effort to limit the negative effects of that danger than there was in decades past.

It can be a fine thing to have a drink of beer, good wine, or some JD over snacks with friends. It's alarming though, how even in such a social setting, how disarmingly imperceptible the dividing line between having the drink for flavor enhancement, conviviality, and just plain getting drunk can be. I guess that's due in part to the sort of risque aspect that even intelligent, responsible drinking has today.

While we're itemizing the historic red tape, can we at least get the Feds out of the nonsense of regulating what can go on a label and making sure- seriously, big enforcement on this one- making sure that no one puts nutritional information on the label.

Seriously, check out the tale of poor Bert Grant and his Madarin Orange Hefeweizen. He's had ATF thugs all over his place since he dared print nutritional info. on the label. Lagunitas IPA crossed out the word "Chronic" rather than remove it from it's label, where it is now overwritten with "Censored". The Belgian Coulotte ale can't be imported becasue the cartoon girl on the swing has her panties showing. But we can't afford more education budget.

An appropriate day to point out the great folly in much of the War on Drugs, IMO. Let's start

You can start by realizing that you have no say in the issue at all. Prohibition was only repealed because Henry Raskob, the DNC chairman, tried to torpedo his own candidate, FDR, by adding it to the platform to split Northern and Southern Democrats. Henry Ford was the industrialist who preached "without prohibition we can not have competitive American industry". He was supported by Wall Street, specifically Prescott Bush, and given a job by Dupont when he went back to private life.

Those people tried to overthrow FDR and install a fascist government were behind Nixon and the current Bush family are the direct perpetrators. For 70 years every Republican administration has had either a Nixon or Bush on the ticket and has tried to create financial chaos to rationalize installing a totalitarian government during the panic.

They have tried and on occasion succeeded in killing President's that didn't fit the agenda. As you celebrate the bone you were thrown to choke on, consider that they are planning the discrediting and torpedoing of everything the new administration tries, assuming they're not on board too, and the current President continues to sign away all of our rights with impunity.

...a pint of warm Guiness stout!...

...I heard the story many years ago over a frosty mug,...

If you are ever debating yellow fizzy beer vs. craftbrew, have the yellow fizzy enthusiast taste both warm. American beer is drunk cold so you can't taste it. Good beer tastes good. Crap beer tastes like shite. At any rate you can't taste the malts and like when it's too cold.

We would also do our beer a better service by not indulging the common habit of calling it "warm beer". It's room temperature. If you live in Florida, that's warm beer, but where it's produced best room temp usually ain't warm.

Finally, could the OLCC actually do some enforcement where it might help a bit? Do people in Portland speak some weird variant of English? Domestic means produced at home/nationally/locally, right? Last time I checked. Imported doesn't mean imported from across the street, does it? So what is with all these restaurants, every last one, using the word domestic to refer to yellow fizzy beer, but a beer brewed across the street, literally, on Albina, is "not-domestic". That's just a rip-off to get people to buy the domestic happy hour special. Can you name one place that doesn't perpetrate this fraud? And I'm supposed to trust what goes in the brew...

Bob and Bill, the attitude that says horrible things were happening to the women and children, so we had to engage in a disaster of a social policy which is a good example of what religion does for society, is precisely why you get the attitude you get from "secular bloggers". Hide your faces in shame that white Anglo Saxon society is one of the very few that has been so preditory against its own rather than celebrate your cunning intervention. It's like listening to Serbs talk about what's good and necessary for the Balkans. White devils all.

The people that I just met in South Africa who are dieing of HIV/AIDS because Nelson Mendela was persuaded by American Christian evangelicals to promote abstinence over condoms aren't very appreciative either. You never have a clue, always have a plan and are always ready to proclaim how necessary the act was, regardless of disaster it causes. You saved their soul.

No, you didn't. You only lost yours. You're the good American, the good Christians, eh? You'll destroy both, thank God! I need to send away for an absentee next round. I'm voting Palin; hasten the end! Screw Copenhagen, exactly one year and counting. Put us all the closer to a real solution to your pious values. Jeff's only inaccuracy was the oft-repeated saw that Jimmy Carter legalized homebrewing. Z boy got it right. Impressed, Pat, with the Fiorello story. Not many care about that; way too real and consequential for today.

Chris Lowe:

Likely Bob Tiernan will want to turn this observation into another claim about liberalism, but it's more complicated than that...

Bob T:

I never mentioned liberalism in the first place (because I stick to an earlier and more realistic definition of the term).

I didn't see much I disagreed with in what you just wrote. I did say that many groups or mindsets were pushing for Prohibition, including populists and progressives, but all we hear nowadays is that it was just a "right wing religious" movement.

I'm more interested in the fact that we had many people in the 20s who were mature enough in their thinking to change their minds about Prohibition within a decade of it becoming national policy, and the fact that the establishment could also change in such a short time.

Had the 18th Amendment and the legislation creating Prohibition come about in 1950 instead of 30 years earlier, we might still have it because of the law-enforcement-industrial-complex and demonization of even discussing repeal, like we have with harder drugs. In school in the 70s I was never given both sides of the drug issue -- it was supposed to be a given that the stuff should never be legal. But I doubt it was that one-sided in the teens and 20s.

As for another person's comment on Henry Ford's support for Prohibition (in a message otherwise filled with conspiracy theory garbage), Ford was proved wrong by the fact that within 12 years of the repeal of Prohibition our people did their best to work themselves out of the depression and successfully fought both Japan and Germany. We did indeed have lots of industry going with millions of workers and soldiers despite the legal availability of alcohol.

But was there anything I said that you agreed with, or disagreed with in particular, Chris?

Bob Tiernan

Chris, maybe I got the exact mechanism a bit confused, or maybe that's the way perception is, but that sure is accepted on the ground in ZA. No one denies the role of "Africa Think" in perpetuating the problem, but all testify to the way the televangelicals exploit it. We are talking about a sub-type, as there are evengelicals that purely minister to the sick. They don't get much press or money.

But I meant a blanket point, that this is a BIG, global problem, stemming with US evangelicals. I do assume that when the Society of Professional Journalists picks an article out of 1200 for their first place winner for the Delta Sigma Chi awaward for Excellence in Online Journalism that it's not totally bunkum. I refer to the April 12, 2007 piece, "Divine Intervention: U.S. AIDS Policy Abroad," which looked at 16 countries, most notable ZA.

As for another person's comment on Henry Ford's support for Prohibition (in a message otherwise filled with conspiracy theory garbage),

Man, thanks for the heads up! When I read that I thought, "now that's the kind of real fact that would be panned by most as online consipiracy theory non-sense. These people must have it together". Thanks for the clarification!

What is your all's problem? The poster referred to facts Raskob admits, and an incident that was on the front page of every newspaper and over which Congressional hearings were held! I guess the big conspiracy piece is either "Nixon wasn't a self made man" or the "Bush's are a regular political family"? I wonder why the power brokers think they can get away with anything. Or maybe the bit about Bushs causing financial chaos for greater martial powers. Have you looked at the state of the banks? Who the president is? The executive orders and homeland security orders signed in the last 6 months?

Obviously, if it's not on Fox, it's a conspiracy theory.

Bland Person: please enumerate what rights the president-elect has signed away for us? As far as I know, he's not sat in the chair yet... are you sure those rights rapidly circling the drain are not the Bush Team's last, devilish ninety-day push to fuck the people one last time?

Just askin'.

"...the Bush Team's last, devilish ninety-day push to fuck the people one last time?" rw

Yeah, off topic, but according to a Dec 2nd article in the NYtimes, like the Bush administration's recent approval of a rule "...that will make it easier for coal companies to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys." Robert Pear/Felicity Barringer/ NYtimes

Destroy, Destroy, Destroy... .

Chris - you are fulfilling my own personal dream. I learned some years ago that without a Masters or a nursing degree, there was no way I was going to be able to get out to Africa to work AIDS, cholera, Hepatitus, unless I was willing to batter people's ravaged hearts with a bible on my off-hours. I checked. Good for you to keep your eye on the dream and GET THERE. It's not over with yet. Not by a long shot. And the picture is now getting more-complicated by the economic shitstorm we are in.

Good for you.

David Lee Donnell:

What is your all's problem? The poster referred to facts Raskob admits, and an incident that was on the front page of every newspaper and over which...

Bob T:

I've just re-read Bland's post and found at least 95% of it to be crap.

Bob Tiernan

I've just re-read Bland's post and found at least 95% of it to be crap.

Bob Tiernan

What a valuable service! Maybe Kari can get typepad to shoot posts over to your inbox so that you can mark up the crap. Funny you re-read the post. I went to the CR, a suggested, and found 95% of it to be true! A great example of why you're needed.

Chris Lowe:

Bob T., I suspect we will have to agree to disagree, but IMO even "managed economy" liberals still are fundamentally liberals in most classic political economy terms -- believe primarily in using market mechanisms (disagree with economic liberal & libertarian conservatives about degree & kinds of appropriate regulation)...

....and persistent red-baiting by conservatives that seeks to confuse government regulation or tax-policy choices whose distributional effects they don't like as "socialism"...

Bob T:

When it comes to regulations, I always make a distinction between the kind that has to do with safety, etc (making sure a building won't collapse because someone slams a door; sending workers into a fume-filled room with protective masks, etc) and those that supposedly "manage" the business decisions regarding finances, sales, etc in order to allegedly prevent anything from cut-throat competition to obtaining a monopoly (?) to whatever.

It's the latter type I have a real problem with because they allow the government (people like the current Illinois governor, and out-going senators like the one from Alaska) to pick winners and loser and that means it's thrown into the political process because of the power game. De-regulation is a word thrown around without distinguishing between the two, so that people think of flimsy buildings, looking the otherway at corner-cutting safety etc, and say No when it's the other kind of regulations in mind.

For example, any time the issue of the government-created and protected taxi-cab cartel of Portland is discussed, in terms of dereg, all we hear are scare stories about passengers who'll be raped, tires falling off when turning corners, drivers charging $100 for three-block rides, and so on. Sorry, but I'm talking about the regs that prevent people from entering that market--regulations that are absurd such as ban on any cab company (or one-man cab company of we had them) operating in just one area of the city (such a Kenton-St. Johns). Interesting that when I was reading about this quite a bit in the late 80s-early 90s there were cities around the country preventing some African immigrants from starting a cab company (in Denver, for example) but who were prevented from doing so by decades-old regulations (they had to "prove" that a new company was needed -- how do you do that?), and in Portland there was the group of Ethiopian immigrants who wished to enter the market (Smart Cab now), and that led to the city council allowing two more companies (one an existing one operating out of Milwaukee). I sent my letter to the city council -- did you? What's worse, when a state law was being discussed in Salem regarding entry into the market, I was one of 13 people who testified in favor of it and we were all regular private citizens with no plans to do anything more than be a passenger once in a while, while the 14 or so opponents were all bureaucrats and politicians, and one existing cab driver (sadly, one of the Ethiopians who suddenly wanted to deny to others what he sought for himself). Where were you guys, eh? So much for helping the little guy and fighting cartels.

Bob Tiernan

Great post topic, Jeff. I wish the comments did it justice!

I think BB was trying to bring up the obvious, or at least what would have been part of a decent discussion, imo, namely why prohibition was repealed. How can you have 5 days of discussion about why it happened and wave off as conspiracy theory any discussion of how it ended? The first response was right on. Let's extend it to the WOD. But that wouldn't be very easy, would it? So how was the repeal of prohibition such a freebie?

There's something very, very disturbing about watching a catfight over regulations when the protagonists don't seem to know or care what they did to produce the positive result they are celebrating!

Ahhh, so frustrating if this is progressive. I think I'll take Elliot Ness' good example to a reporter that ran up to him with the news that prohibition had been repealed and "have a drink".

It's not progressive to take God out of policy! What's wrong with "pious" motives? I'm not talking about religion, but spirituality. Would you trust a man to build a bridge that didn't believe in gravity? Why accept policy from people that don't believe in God? There structures will be no more sound.