Addictive Drugs and the Damage they Do !

Drug Addiction, it`s a Disease...4/30/09

By : Don Jones

If you have not dealt with drug addiction in your immediate family, consider yourself very fortunate. Drugs not only destroy the person taking them, they destroy entire family`s ! It is a terrible hideous disease. Our law enforcement officials are doing what they can do, which is not very much. They enforce the law. However this does not cure the disease or the problems that go along with drug addiction ! Putting a drug addict in jail is merely a temporary stopping point. I believe it is a waste of time and money. Drug cost is astronomical, I`m not just talking the cost of the drug itself, but the hidden cost it is to family`s and government agency's and society itself. I`ve heard people say, put them in jail and throw away the key. These people have never dealt with drug addiction and know not what they say. Our court system is almost totally in adequate. They cannot and have not dealt with drug addicts in a positive manner in the past or in the now ! There are seven (7) day withdrawal clinics, where a patient/addict can go and be treated for seven (7)days...My advice, is save your money. They do not work ! Then there are 30 day clinics, they work at times ! But, it is expensive ! Then there are the exclusive clinics that last six (6) months to a year. they seem to work better, but, hold on most of us cannot pay the cost of these clinics, Only the very wealthy. I believe we are already spending millions of dollars on this problem. We need to begin attacking this devastating problem from another prospective, It is a fact that, what we are now doing is not working and has not for a longtime. So a new beginning is needed, the new beginning is to treat drug addiction as a disease ! Some people will say that it is a self-inflicted addiction, I have no argument against that. However, the way we are approaching drug addiction today is not working. We may as well pour our money down a drain. So a new beginning is needed. I do not have all the answers, I just know that what we are doing in today's drug fight, is futile and cost huge amounts of money. If we are going to spend this money, and we are ! Why not spend it in a productive manner ? I have run across another approach to this problem, it is a new approach, my first reaction was not good. Then, I began to think about it, and said this a new and untried approach to dug addiction. Maybe, we should look at it more closely ? The one draw back is that it cost at the present time $12,000.00 for forty (40)days.
If I have a point, it is that we are going to spend this money on addiction one way or another. Why not try some innovative ways ? As I said earlier, what we are doing is not working ! I have said that drug addiction is the blight of the world, I hate drugs ! Drugs rob us of those people we seem to love most. If you will click on the title of this blog, it will carry you to Spirit Lake, surf the site, call for information, I did ! They will be glad to answer all your questions, if they have the answer, and if they do not have the answer, they will tell you that also. Here is the web-site again...

http://www.spiritlakerecovery.com/about/staff.php

CEO Pay Out of Control ! Even During Bad Times !

Executive PayWatch: CEO Perks Rise as Workers’ Wages, Jobs Wilt...
by James Parks, Apr 14, 2009

Even as the U.S. economy went into a tailspin, the median salary for CEOs of 200 large corporations increased by 4.5 percent to $1.08 million. On top of that, these corporations keep plying executives with generous freebies, despite the public outcry over private jets and other executive perks.The 2009 AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch site, which launches today, points out that the perks for executives rose on average by 12.5 percent in 2008 to $336,248—or nine times the median salary of a full-time worker. Even more appalling is the practice of rewarding executives who drive their companies into the ground. For example, the site reports that in 2007—the year the financial crisis began to unfold—the top 10 recipients of the federal government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) collectively paid their CEOs a combined $242 million in total annual compensation. That averages nearly $25 million per CEO to run companies that might have gone bankrupt if not for billions of dollars in taxpayer assistance.The PayWatch site also features an e-mail action. Click here to send a letter to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.), chairmen of the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, respectively. Let them know we’re counting on them to draft legislation that truly strengthens our financial regulations and begins curing the disease that has infected our economic system.This year’s Executive PayWatch highlights 10 case studies that show the multiple ways CEOs profited big time, while the average worker could barely hang on. There is the well-known case of AIG, which has been kept afloat by more than $170 billion in federal assistance—about $1,500 for every household in the nation—and still paid out more than $500 million in salaries and bonuses to hundreds of senior employees.Here are other prime examples in the case studies of corporate failure: While retirees worry over the fate of Deere & Co.’s pension surplus, which is shrinking because of stock market losses, the value of Deere CEO Robert Lane’s retirement income increased $5.5 million in fiscal 2008 to $22.5 million. Lane and other senior executives participate in not one but three different pension plans. SunTrust Bank, which received $4.9 billion from the federal bailout fund, wants shareholders to approve a mega-grant of $7.7 million in stock options for James Wells, its chairman and chief executive officer, even as investors have lost billions. While workers who are laid off in these tough economic times are lucky if they receive anything more than their last paycheck, Richard Bond, who retired as CEO of Tyson Foods in January, stands to collect more than $14 million in “golden parachute” severance payments. Want to know what your CEO made last year? The Executive Paywatch site offers three user-friendly ways to find out. And if you want to have a little fun at the CEO’s expense, play the “Boot The CEO” game and kick the money out of the greedy CEO’s hands.

Buy American...If You Can ?

Buy American...If You Can ?

The 2010 Ford Fusion is the hottest American hybrid. But this new American car is built in Mexico and Japan, not in America. America’s car of the future is here but it won’t save American jobs. Congressman Don Manzullo has a plan that will save American jobs though. Rep. Manzullo has introduced the New Automobile Voucher Act of 2009 which would give Americans $5,000 to put towards a new car. He says his plan will “bolster automobile manufacturing and sales and will put millions of Americans back to work”.