Naturally grown marijuana has important medicinal purposes that can provide a cheap alternative to expensive drugs. As a recreational drug similar to alcohol an entire industry employing thousands can be created by its legalization. The retail sales of alcohol total over 150 BILLION dollars, that's alot of tax revenue generated plus job creation. The tobacco industry enjoyed over 100 BILLION in sales last year, again lots of tax revenue and jobs came from that. Obviously, alcohol abuse and tobacco use has undesirable consequences, but that too is a money making enterprise from prisons, healthcare, treatment centers, and all sorts of other industrys that add to our local, state, and national tax base. An arguement can be made that marijuana offers much less of the undesirable consequences thereby providing more bang for our buck, The Mexican drug war would practically end overnight saving the lives of thousands.Properly regulated, taxed, and controlled by government the legalization of marijuana could provide a much need jolt to the world's largest consumers....and we might just all get along a little better too!

I already outlined how to free up jobs for hundreds of thousands of Americans, way back in March of 2009:

http://24ahead.com/n/8902

I've since left that link in dozens of places and I've gotten no help with the plan from either the left or the right. And, that's despite how it could help alleviate joblessness at the same time as reducing spending on unemployment insurance.

The reason I've gotten no help with that is because the vast majority of the loudest political voices online are simply partisan hacks, and they do what their corrupt leaders want. And, their corrupt leaders don't want to enforce our immigration laws, whether it's to obtain cheap labor (the GOP) or votes (the Democrats).

So, how do you get those political hacks - like Ratigan and the rest of the MSNBC bunch - to promote that plan? You publicly shame them. Challenge them to put their hackery aside and do what's best for the U.S. Challenge Ratigan by tweeting him @DylanRatigan. Challenge him here at his own site by voting up this idea. Challenge him at the HuffPost by leaving comments. Your goal should be to make Dylan Ratigan - or anyone else who pretends to care about unemployment - look bad by failing to take realistic steps to alleviating unemployment.

Many other plans submitted here have no plan to get them considered. This is different: it includes both a plan to alleviate unemployment for hundreds of thousands of Americans, and also a plan to break through the political hackery engaged in by Ratigan, his colleagues at MSNBC, and other political hacks regardless of which party they're loyal to above all else.

It is time for citizens of this country to reclaim an attitude of fairness and equality in meeting each persons birthright to food, shelter, education, and employment opportunties. We can only accomplish this by opening up our hearts, minds, and energy to serving each other and solving problems on the local level, through active volunteer work and making a conscious choice to restore fairness and accountability in our workplace, schools, and health facilities that lean more in favor of the good of all and less towards what benefits the individual. We have the collective power to create substantial change together more quickly than we believe possible, if we have the courage to ..lean forward.

Journalists, lead by example by CHANGING THE NARRATIVE: demonstrating, presenting, TIME-LINES, graphing, charting, documenting both how & why voters have been their own worst enemy, and continue to do so. New constitutional amendments? Never; but MAYBE voter education narratives on their OWN suicidal choices as a WAY FORWARD. Have the courage to go to the root causes and the choices voters make. Quit railing uselessly against an abstract corrupt system without correlating back to voters their own economic suicidal acts of voting. 30 yrs ago, voters voted into power ignition of the skyrocketing Twin Deficits with the Conservative Revolution w Reagan's Reaganomics, voodoo economics & all. And awarded a landslide endorsement in 1984. Seemingly ultra cheap, Borrowed Prosperity", via our trade deficits, as opposed to "Japan/Germany styled Earned Prosperity" (via their trade surpluses, became the defacto political policy of feel good, free lunch, mortgage the future leadership choices of this country in 1980. Tax cuts felt great. Deficits financed EVERYTHING. The national credit-card financed an economic party & fiesta on BOTH critical trade & fiscal economic fronts; while it was do-gooder Jimmy Carter's choice in Fed Chairmen, Paul Volcker, to PAINFULLY kill off inflation that paid the ultimate price of Responsible Leadership: blame & defeat. Reagan ushered in a flood of cheap foriegn goods into America via Reagan's "Free Trade" policies and rhetoric and the great hollowing-out of America's economy began and decline of its own manufacturing base & well paying blue colar jobs. In 1971, Nixon defaulted America on the Bretton Woods agreement with the rest of the world on our obligations to balance our accounts with the rest of the world in trade, yet in 1972 voters award Nixon a landslide victory for that historic pivoting point towards suicidal trade deficits, and endorsed a failed, losing Vietnam war strategy to boot. Today, we have an $8 TRILLION Current Account trade deficit representing borrowed prosperity on an absolute epic scale, not to mention bearing the costs of costly losing wars in Vietnam, and as Iraq will prove out to be when it implodes, along with Afghanistan, yet those histories are yet unwritten. But Iraq is the $3 Trillion war of Bush's choice. The list is long, but regular segments, columns on voters voting for utterly disasterous policy choices & leaders that can be time-lined, charted, DEMONSTRATED... in order to change the narrative and educate a voter base on the ills of its ways. Their is no other way out of own created cesspool of choices.

Dylan – Do not invite as guests any talking heads associated with the two crime families. They and the multi-nationals have cut us out of the discussions on how to run our country, so let’s cut them out. Open up the debate beyond the corrupt Democrats and Republicans. Beyond the talking points they use to frame the discussions and distract from real solutions. Only invite non-aligned experts in the field of discussion. And if any guests cannot communicate in an intelligent and adult way – cut them off and throw them off. The two crime families have proven they do not want to be part of any solution, just to hold and consolidate their power further.

SteelOnWheels.com: This is a no brainer if MSNBC wants more interactive participation & buy-in from its ENTIRE viewer base. What the Dylan Ratigan team has done here is nothing short of genius and all of MSNBC should be proud to tout it and solicit the MSNBC lean forward nation's ideas. Could pay unimaginable dividends. This should earn "Completed" status ASAP. Maybe it's too soon to start touting widely by the DR Show, maybe it has its downside, I don't know. The Ratigan team seems to have staged, phased roll-out strategy they are playing out here. But at the appropriate time... GET MSNBC fully behind it. The very least MSNBC could do. Protecting one's turf is pretty juvenile if it comes down to that and fails to get other anchors' buy-in. That would indeed be shameful. Communcated ideas, their implimentation... are what mankind's universe is ALL about. Otherwise, we're still cavemen.

Ramp up viewership & msnbc lineup crossover interaction, inputs, feedback, ideas, comments while primarily creating another idea/highlight tool for DR & his producer gang at the msnbc website to post online. Seeing is believing -- post it: Video clips, articles, links, etc posted by the DR gang, hopefully some go viral. If there is ONE show in the msnbc lineup, that truly gets the Big Picture, it's the DR Show. And this DR Show NEEDS to "bleed into" the other msnbc line-up BIG TIME via the msnbc website. DR should be in primetime as a national priority ;-) , but short of that, primetime viewers should be able to EASILY navigate their way to the DR world of truly "getting it". Nobody in the broadcast business is focusing on the Big Picture the way DR is, and every avenue of outlet, inlet needs to be utilized. On top of that, DR & gang would benefit too from input/feedback from their intelligent audience. Wisdom in crowds. Great wisdom in intelligent crowds. Long overdue.

By their fellow journalists. Name names; shame the shameful. It's journalists duty to "police" their own profession & industry. Playing nice to get one's phone calls always returned, to have politicos always eager to appear on one's show, as a journalistic priority, is to trample the public's trust. It's a journalist's job to hold politicians accountable & responsible and get the FIRST draft of history correct. Especially their impact on the Big Picture. There seems to be NO ABILITY whatsoever of jouranalists in general to tie politicians to the Big Picture of fiscal & trade responsibility. Budgets are pretty much theee primary & dominant tool politicos have to manage the public's affairs and they are in mega, mega, MEGA DEFICITS for decades now -- we're going off the deep end into an abyss... but it's almost as if it's IMPOSSIBLE to link acccountability to politicos via the poor job most journalists do on that front. But on these fronts, fiscal & trade, it's pretty easy: conservatives have demonized taxes, slashed revenues unsustainably, and been chanting free trade over fair trade for 30 yrs. Results? A massive $2.455 TRILLION fiscal & trade twin deficit, plus Net Interest carrying cost, combined HOLE for 2009 alone!!! Hellooooooo! Equal treatment of the two parties is not called for on the fiscal & trade fronts, except for DINO's. Those advocating tax cuts & free trade are assasin killers of the American Empire... and its hopes & dreams. Do your job, journalists.

Sen Bernie Sanders wrapped up his patriotic 8+ hour filibuster, Senate floor speech by saying: "The Narrative needs to change in America." Think about that phrase, its meaning, and what Sen Sanders talked about for 8+ hours. Change to encompass and correct NOT simply day to day political transgressions, but 30 to 40 years of 'wrong direction' that consisted of a long series of short-term, feel-good charge-it & forget-it policies of: tax cuts, deficit financing, 'can' kicking, kids being the ones paying for those policies with their futures and burdens, opening the flood gates for cheap imported goods (at the cost of building those goods ourselves; that in the end, counter-productively hollowed out our economy), along with get rich schemes via UNPRODUCTIVE financial engineering that imploded at the end of this 30 - 40 year unsubstainable period of American history. And rank & file Americans were the ones who bailed out "feel good" policies THAT THEY VOTED FOR via the ballot box because of America's fixation on the WRONG narrative. The end result has been a HOLLOWED OUT economy filled with poor-paying jobs, adding little value to anything of substance; importmania, and with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, and middle class SLIDING into an abyss, as evidenced by the top 1% in the 70's owning 9% of America's wealth resources and today them owning whopping 24%. The top 1% !! Narrative? Business as usual? Day to day horse race reporting? Or leaning forwards with a new focus on a new & improved Big Picture for America's future? It all starts with the national narrative. And that's got to change. Truly.

Great concept and use here, but the software's flaw is "the earliest in" have been collecting the most votes via being on top in the splash screen AND by collecting votes the longest, I'm guessing. Can't fix longest, but on top as well? There is oddly no "horse race" of ideas dynamic here. If vendor could randomize the order, or newest ideas first, maybe that might level the playing field for all ideas, oldest & newest, and all in between? Maybe a "Random" tab first, followed by "New". Top Ideas maybe should be harder to find, navigate to? People love being reaffirming. The vendor should be well aware of its Achille's Heel on this front... with a fix or leveling agent mod. It should be an old fashioned horse race of ideas... on a level race track.

Steel on Wheels idea challenge is a great addition to the obvious solution motivation of Dylan & gang. And since uneducated voters are Enemy #1, our own WORST enemy, gutless leaders simply following their voters, telling them/us what we WANT TO HEAR, wedge issues and all, a focus on "the voter problem" being bottomline responsible in this country should be well within the mix, demonstating what we've actually been voting and endorsing, time-lines, acts, defaults, policies, results, ramifcations... while we spiral down the drain as a sustainable empire over the past 30 years racking up $25 TRILLION in twin deficts & carrying costs as just a "minor" footnote. Current Events fixation is lousy at looking back. Look back to look forward; educate those responsible, the voters. Chart, graph, correlate our pathetic performance at the managment booth: the balot box.