Today's news that 2Q GDP would be revised upwards to 3.1% is welcome news indeed -- the first green shoots of a true economic recovery.
However, much of this recovery could remain perilous at best, not only in the short-term recovery after Hurricane Harvy and Hurricane Irma but in the long run vis a vis the success of the Trump tax reform schematic and our ability to secure the homeland for the next 20 years.
When we talk about infrastructure, we often think of roads and towers, rails and pipelines. Yet human infrastructure is every bit as critical to our national security as any other facet of it, and "hardening" this vital and important part of our infrastructure against security threats is an critical and necessary role for the national government.
Drug addiction in this nation and the routes by which America's enemies seek to infiltrate our schools and communities deserves the immediate attention of policy makers in Washington.
To date, we are left with the old tools of interdiction and interception forged during the 1990s. As the War on Terrorism gathered the resources and attention of the federal government these last 15 years, the cartels in northern Mexico became more sophisitcated and deadly. As marijuana decriminalization has lowered the price on the street and increased the quality of THC, the Mexican cartels switched to a more potent alternative -- heroin.
This epidemic combined with the rising opioid epidemic from overprescription has combined with an economic malaise... and the results are tragic indeed.
Death from overdoses, especially in the black community, firearm deaths, over 500 in Chicago this year as gangs fight over drug turfs -- a loss of American life more deadly from year to year than our warfighters faced in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan.
At some point, the national security concerns over the "drug war" have to be addressed. We cannot allow the status quo to continue, nor can we blithely ignore the human costs of legalization and decriminalization without assessing the very serious social costs.
Some news and articles we recommend for information and discussion purposes, none of which necessarily represent the position of A/O:
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