United States

Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,

Following Portugal’s model, Hawai`i could become the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize all drugs — including cocaine and even heroin.

“[D]espite a longstanding policy that enforces illicit drug prohibition and imposes some of the world’s harshest penalties for drug possession and sales, illicit drug use in the United States has been increasing,” states a resolution that passed, amended by the Hawai`i House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Following yesterday's breakdown of 2015 GDP growth components, there was little surprise that the biggest source of "growth" for the US economy in the past year was healthcare growing at an absolute dollar pace nearly double that the second highest category (recreational vehicles of all things, because in the eyes of the BEA the US has gone on unprecedented Winnebago spending spree).

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

 

While the US manufacturing sector has been in a clear recession for the past year as a result of the collapsing commodity complex, so far the stable growth in low-paying service jobs - at least according to the BLS' statistical assumptions - such as those of waiters and bartenders have kept the broader service economy out of contraction (even though recent Service PMI data has been downright scary). 

This is now changing: as we showed a month ago, according to the lagged effect of the collapse of the Restaurant Performance Index, that party is over:

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

If you want to know why we have a $19 trillion national debt and a fiscal structure that will take that already staggering figure to $35 trillion and 140% of GDP within a decade, just consider the latest campaign fracas. That is, the shrieks of disbelief in response to Donald Trump’s sensible suggestion that the Europeans pay for their own defense.