I left a prior comment, and sometimes I stir the pot a little and like to hear what others have to offer. I saw this post by our local politician, apparently running for re-election, you don't usually hear about these guys unless they are arrested or something, so I took a second to read his post, it's not like I'm some sort of voracious reader devouring everything online in the Patch, but here's a guy who wants some recognition for helping out the down-trodden cabbies and groomers, so I took a look and commented. Following the comments just did not happen, wow, there were none! either no one reads this blog, or nobody gives a crap about what our pol's do when they actually do something. Too bad the law was passed to begin with! What I want to know is who authored a bill that would target dog groomers and cabbies, and what can we do to run this guy out of office and all those craven elected officials who voted along with him instead of standing up for these down trodden working stiffs. I would like to see any of these guys on Smith Hill roll up their sleeves and wash some dirty dog for $8 an hour! What kind of conscience do they have or not have? Whatever, ain't like anyonez listening

There are so many issues being spun by everyone with an agenda to advance, but what is so glaringly obvious is the fact that we simply ignore history, why are we so adverse to learning from past lessons, from the simple to the sublime. The tax issues are pretty simple, time for the tax dodgers to pony up, they got caught gouging the hell out of us in the name of trickle down economy, if the corporations and the banksters would pay their fair share, the country would be solvent, pretty simple! And the historical lessons apparently unlearned from the Fall of the Roman Empire, the middle class crushed under the burden of supporting a giant military, well if you add in all the corrections cash being sucked out of our economy housing real criminals, the pot smokers, close to 800,000 of them in our prisons costing us about $60,000 per year per head on a for profit basis in this new prison industrial complex, just do the math on incarceration costs, I'm just not seeing why America is allowing this insanity to cost us trillions in this futile and epic failure of the war on drugs for decades, we are the prison kings of the world! I hope Michael Phelps with his 20 Olympic medals draped across his chest, steps up and says, "Well, it certainly didn't ruin my life!" Regulation aside, that is a discussion for another day, pot smokers are no more criminals than are beer drinkers. That's the reality of that, prisons lobby hard for their money, the middle class can no longer afford this!

I'll check out those links, but I have been following this monstrous hydra for years, and the 800 plus new laws carefully crafted by its lobbying partner ALEC, for example, I have spoken of this ad nauseum, but it is imperative that this law gets repealed. "Such a simple law, raise the drop-out age to 18" It sounds so righteous when Chafee says, the kids need to be in school! The No Child Act and the mandatory testing which has reduced creative thinking overall by 19%, as a side effect! Poorer students are tacitly shown the door by teachers whose job is on the line if test scores don't make the grade. These kids can't catch up, hate school and want to quit, learn to turn a wrench, bang nails or whatever, but not anymore! The new law makes then truant and shepherds them off to a new incarceration facility, where they are now in the corrections system, good luck getting out of that! so, this law is the ULTIMATE SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE! The ALEC group had already built a new facility before the law was passed, knowing that this new revenue stream will be imminent. This simply robs these kids of any shot at life, throw away kids, heads for the beds. I find this outrageous, we need to repeal this law and the other 799 laws ALEC wrote and their toadies passed into law! They lost their privilege to dictate how America should live! Just my opinion.

Thanks, Larry, just spent some q-time with the rude one! definitely speaks my language!