Hear no evil, see no evil, proceed?
Jon Sanders has an excellent write-up on the latest on the academic scandal at UNC. It's well-worth reading the whole thing. As a husband, brother-in-law and good friend of UNC graduates, I appreciate his interest in strengthening the university, and the whole system of collegiate athletics, by steering them back to serving the real interests of the athletes, the other students, the faculty, and the citizens as a whole.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Friday, January 17, 2014
Friday, November 22, 2013
A Cost/Benefit Analysis of the War on Drugs
It's my belief that even operating under a number of different conventional political ideologies, the War on Drugs (hereafter WoD) is a functional failure, and should be scrapped for wholesale legalization of production, distribution, sale, possession and consumption. While my own beliefs lead me to point out that in a liberal society, the presumption on any voluntary activity is on legalization, the great and escalating cost, most importantly the human cost, of the WoD compels me to drop the ideological rhetoric and adopt a non-partisan, "Does it work?" approach in hopes of building a larger coalition to rid ourselves of it.
Initial disclaimer: I reference wikipedia as a convenience. In some cases I tried to track down the original linked source, but if you want to dispute the stuff there, be my guest. We can have that argument. I'm taking the liberty because this is a blog post, not an academic paper. I make no claims about the inherent accuracy of information found in any source posted.
Special thanks at the start to Tal Arrowood, who providing some thoughts and edits.
Hopefully my biases won't get the best of me. Here we go. If I've made a strawman of your beliefs, let me know.
Costs of the War on Drugs
1. Cartels and Civil Instability in Latin America
We're all pretty familiar with the idea of drug cartels operating in Latin America. For decades now, they've been a subject of periodic news coverage, pop culture treatment, and US political ire. But the reason drug cartels exist, is because people demand drugs (particularly in rich countries like the US), and there exists no legal mechanism for their production, distribution and sale. But it's easy to keep that as an abstract thought. To push to the back of your mind just what it means to be living in a country plagued by drug cartels.
Consider Mexico.
The official toll of Mexican drug violence in the six years of former President Felipe Calderon's tenure is 60,000 (1). It may well be higher, as there are an estimated 100,000 total homicides counting missing people, unsolved murders, etc (2). Alfredo Corchado, a Mexican-American journalist working for the Dallas Morning News covering the activity of the cartels in Mexico, puts the number at more than 80,000 (3). To put that in perspective:
(4)
You have to go back to the world wars and the Civil War to find wars that produced more American casualties. This is not exactly an apples/apples comparison, of course. One the one hand, while the numbers include civilian deaths, the American wars were not fought on American soil. But I don't include the numbers to compare the overall deadliness of the wars, but to force you to consider how you feel about American dead in wars, and then think those thoughts for our neighbors to the south. Mexico is in a state of effective war, with all the incumbent terror.
2. Gangs and Gang Violence in the US
Of course, not all of the black market violence is south of the border. When the drugs come to America, they must be distributed by someone, and gangs are the primary distributors of drugs within the US, according to the Department of Justice (9).
Not all of the drugs the gangs profit from are from outside the country. Manufacture of drugs like methamphetamine, as we all know, can take place just about anywhere. The drug trade within the US takes a small part of the violence we see in Mexico and imports it to the US. While it is very difficult to account for gang violence, it's estimated around 1,900 people are killed each year in America because of it (10). Some large portion of that because of the illicit drug trade.
3. Loss of Civil Liberties and Police Militarization
A recent news item told of man subjected, against his will, to multiple anal cavity probes. All because a police officer saw him "clinching his buttocks" as he got out of his car. This was supposedly probable cause for a search, which never turned up any drugs (despite a drug dog "alerting" - more on that later). There's plenty of reporting and commentary about the incident out there, like this (11). But while it's a particularly egregious example of how the WoD has gone wrong, it's far from the only one. There's another very instructive example. We're all fortunate though, that this time it happened to someone with the means to fight back.
i) Cheye Calvo
You may remember the story of Cheye Calvo, but if not, it starts with his being the unwitting victim of a drug smuggling ring. The ring operated to distribute drugs by shipping them to the target area to random people, who have no idea they're going to be getting the drugs. They're delivered while the people aren't home, and an inside man with the delivery company lets someone know at the other end to make the rounds and pick up the packages. If something goes wrong along the way, it's not traceable to any of the people on the receiving end, since the drugs are going to the victims' addresses.
This time, the police manage to intercept one of the packages. They decide to surreptitiously deliver the package themselves, and then raid the home when the people take it inside. This duty falls on Prince George's County Police. The person on the receiving end was Calvo, who was mayor of the town in which he lived: Berwyn Heights, MD.
After the mayor got home and took the package inside, completely unaware of its contents, his home was broken into by a SWAT team, which immediately shot his two dogs, including one that was running away, as they threw the mayor and his wife on the ground and held them at gunpoint as they ransacked their house for four hours. You can read his account here (12).
The bit about the dogs being shot is tragically routine. Radley Balko write about civil liberties issues and police abuses, and coined the grim hashtage #puppycide for tweets involving such incidents. Here are the search results (13). There's also a Kickstarter campaign underway to fund a documentary on the practice (14).
Raids like that on Calvo's house exist because of the WoD.
ii) Paramilitary Police Raids
The existence of paramilitary police raids puts multiple lives at risk. Not just criminals. Not just police. But innocent civilians. The Cato Institute started mapping incidents where these kinds of raids occurred.
Indeed, these seem to me like reasonable instances where police need to have a unique set of equipment and tactics. What is most notable about the list is what it doesn't cite as a main impetus: drugs.
And yet, the primary use of SWAT teams around the country today is in enforcing drug warrants. In response to the Calvo raid, the Maryland legislature passed a bill that would require reporting of how SWAT teams were used in Maryland, and the data began to come in.
That excerpt is from Radley Balko's book Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America (17). While not all such raids are focused on drugs (sometimes it's to breakup home poker games (18)), Balko figures a great majority of them are. And the consequences, not just to innocent canines, can be lethal.
a) Cops killed in raids
The person breaking the law is not the only person that can be harmed. The homes that cops are breaking into may contain armed people. Some may be guilty of some crime. Others may be completely innocent. But when people break down your door and are not dressed in normal police uniforms, it's not hard to imagine why armed citizens respond to what they think is a home invasion when someone points an MP5 or a shotgun in their direction after breaking in in the middle of the night. The raid map chronicles officers killed or injured during the raids.
b) Innocent civilians killed in raids
The raid map also captures completely innocent civilians who were killed in raids on wrong homes, or who were minors in the homes at the times of raids.
One of the worst cases was the killing of Kathryn Johnson of Atlanta in 2006. Police entered the home in plainclothes at night with a no-knock raid. Johnson fired out the door over the heads of the invaders, who responded by sending a hail of bullets into the house. The officers falsified reports that drugs were found at the home, and this was used to justify the raid initially. Then they planted marijuana at the home after the shooting. After Johnson was shot, she was handcuffed as she lay dying. (19)
iii) Civil Asset Forfeiture
One of the incentives for conducting raids on homes, and also often raids on people in their cars and business is because of civil asset forfeiture laws. These laws, which are in the place at the federal level, and in the state books (with North Carolina being a noted, blessed exception) allow property to be confiscated if there's a nexus to criminal activity. This seems like facially unconstitutional in light of the fourth amendment and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution. Property is seized without substantive due process. Drugs are often used a pretense.
In August of this year, the New Yorker described a town that was particularly notorious in how they confiscated property of people traveling through the town. One family was even threatened with having their kids taken away if they didn't relinquish the cash they were traveling with (20). The WoD facilitates these kinds of takings by providing two notable mechanisms available to police.
a) False Alerts
SCOTUS, in their wisdom, has ruled that you do not require reasonable suspicion to walk a drug dog around a car that has been stopped for any kind of violation. The idea being that this does not constitute an invasive search, since the dog is just examining odors being emitted out from the car.
This becomes problematic as drug dogs have been shown to falsely alert to the presence of narcotics. In some cases, this is based on the subtle cues given by handlers based on their own expectations. A UC-Davis investigation found this particular type of false alert common (21).
And in some cases, it may be more nefarious. Russ Jones is a former narcotics officer with experience dealing with police dogs. He now is a part of the organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). (22) He has come out and said that a drug dog is trained to satisfy his handler. And if the handler wants the dog to alert, he has cues he can use to make him alert. That alert is then used as probable cause to conduct a full search of the vehicle. Which all makes a mockery of the probable cause requirement, if a cop can just get a dog to give it to him whenever he wanted.
b) Drug Laced Cash Seized
Another tactic used by law enforcement is in testing cash for the presence of drugs. When people travel with large amounts of physical cash, they may be conducting perfectly legal business. But that money can be seized without due process if it is found to contain traces of drugs.
The problem is this: a whole lot of our money contains traces of drugs.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian leaning public interest law firm has a series of statistics on their website about how problematic seizure based on traces of drugs is.
A California woman had her cash seized by Nebraska police when dogs indicated the presence of drugs on the money, despite finding no evidence of drugs on her person or in her automobile. Thankfully in this case, the judge ordered the seized money returned (24).
The incentive is clear when local departments get to keep large amounts of the cash. Sometimes they desire the money because they're inadequately funded. Other times they desire it for more personal gain. NPR wrote of a Georgia Sheriff that hired inmates to build a house. It was accused the house became a personal party house for the Sheriff (25). The story in the New Yorker highlighted other ways in which LEOs benefited from seizing assets.
While I think civil asset forfeiture is a violation of due process rights in the first place, it is largely enabled by the WoD.
4. Mass Incarceration
It is an often-quoted statistic that while the United States has about 5% of the world's population, they have about 25% of the world's currently incarcerated. I have a bit of trouble with some of the details there, mainly because I do not trust the accounting of highly populated, autocratic regimes. However, the raw numbers are scary enough. It is indisputable that the US has the highest incarceration rate of any purported liberal democracy (26).
(image source: 27)
According to Saki Knafo at the Huffington Post
28
Note the mention there, by the way, of the disproportionate treatment of cocaine and crack-cocaine, and of the need to reform mandatory minimum sentencing. Both issues I am very concerned about, but are slightly outside the scope of this piece.
5. Increased Danger from Drugs Themselves
Part of the rationale in prohibiting drugs is that people irrationally make choices that pose a danger to themselves. Even if, for the sake of argument, all negative externalities of drug use are nullified, some would still argue for the prohibition of drugs to protect people from themselves.
But what if the drug prohibition introduces harms to the drug users we're concerned about?
In a legally regulated open market, the amount of information about drugs, and the reliability of their content, would be greatly escalated. If you purchase a bottle of vodka, you will know from the label whether it is 40% alcohol by volume, or 50% alcohol by volume, or higher. Likewise, you can be almost perfectly certain that the bottle contains ethanol distilled from grain and water. However, when you buy a drug from someone at the corner, you don't know if the cocaine is cut with some cheap powder that may prove deadly.
In recent years, deaths across the world have been linked to fake ecstasy (29 , 30 , 31).
The track-record of open markets in ensuring reliability and open information about product formulation is not perfect, but it is remarkably high. While we often debate the efficacy of various degrees of regulatory intervention into markets, bringing drugs into the open market and out of the black market will help protect people from faulty and potentially more lethal products.
6. Criminalizing Addicts
Along the same lines, our concern for those struggling with drug abuse should lead us to ask what we may do to most effectively help them. But accepting help means admitting to use. As hard as it is to admit to being an addict, we have added the additional hurdle of requiring drug addicts to admit they are law-breakers as well.
7. Fiscal Cost
Last, and I would argue, least in my lists of costs of the WoD is the direct fiscal cost itself. The Cato Institute estimated:
Still, I think this is relatively minor in comparison to the tremendous human cost outlined in the other points.
Benefits of the War on Drugs
1. Lowered Use
So far, I haven't addressed the prudence, wisdom or morality of using any of the currently prohibited drugs. That's beyond the scope of what I'm addressing. In fact, I'm going to continue with the rhetorical assumption that use of drugs is bad - in whatever way you want to take it.
So one benefit of prohibition would be limiting the use of illicit drugs. It is an intuitive expectation that the prohibition of illicit drugs leads to less use of illicit drugs.
But to what degree? It's clearly not a binary phenomenon: with prohibition we have no drug use, and with no prohibition we do. It turns out this is a complicated matter which I'll address later. For the moment, lets assume that it does.
This has implications beyond those for the individual user. The use of drugs produces externalities (as with any activity). Some may be good, but I think most are bad. I would wager most people reading this would agree with that, though we may argue over the degree.
Directly under the influence of drugs, users may pose a danger to others. Most illicit drugs will impair driving, an activity that requires attention and coordination.
Aside: not all illicit drugs will - if the guy coming in the other direction has had trouble sleeping lately, I might would rather prefer he be on a small amount of amphetamines than not. This is why the Air Force has Fly/No Fly pills (also called Go/No Go pills). The fly pills are dextroamphetamine. Their use is controversial, but the rationale is apparent (33).
Beyond that, people high on a variety of different drugs may see a behavioral change to the violent, including drugs like cocaine, PCP,or alcohol (whoops - maybe we'll talk about our past experiments with prohibition later).
Chronic depressant use may induce a lethargy that depresses a person's economic contribution to their family and everyone else around them.
And almost every single drug carries a risk of overdose from toxicity, asphyxiation, injury from impaired activity, etc.
Another aside: there has still never been a single confirmed case of direct overdose from the use of cannabis (34).
Anyway, you may have noticed that I'm not including references for the harms posed by drug use. That's because I'm willing to accept them for the sake of argument and stack the deck against myself.
All that being said, any accounting of the costs and benefits of the WoD must include the amount to which drug use can be restricted, and the concurrent reduction in the negative externalities of said drug use.
2. State as Provider of Moral Censure
I think this particular line of reasoning is somewhat out-of-step with the political preconceptions I bring to the issue. But it will resonate with traditional conservatives (and ironically, maybe with progressives as well, if you swap out some of the normative terminology (or maybe even if you don't!)).
To many people, drug use represents something more than just a casual, imprudent or selfish (or all of the above) indulgence. It is, in fact, morally wrong. And within their political ideology, things that are clearly morally wrong, or perhaps sufficiently morally wrong, should not enjoy the legal freedom to exist. Even if all penalties were stripped, and drugs were totally "decriminalized", the very existence of an unenforced, un-penalized, but still official censure that contained the legal imprimatur of the state would contain value. It is a signal that as a society, we do not condone the activity.
Again, I do not share this view of the role of the state. But for those that do, legal prohibition has a very real value.
Disputed Results of the War on Drugs
1. Restricted Minor Access
I think a very, very large majority of people would agree that it is a legitimate goal to keep mind altering drugs out of the hands of kids (in the context of recreational use). Nearly as many will identify this as a legitimate public policy goal.
But does the WoD serve this function? It's not immediately obvious to me that a drug sold in a legal, regulated market would be more available to minors than a drug sold exclusively in the black market. This is anecdotal, and reliant on my memory (so essentially: rubbish - feel free to skip ahead), but it seems to me, looking back, that in Middle and High School, marijuana was as easy to acquire as alcohol or tobacco. Now this is just one person's experience, and I was only ever interested in acquiring one of those three things (tobacco). But still, given the legal availability of alcohol and tobacco, and the much larger ratios of the adult population that used those substances compared to marijuana, one would expect them to be comparatively plentiful.
I think there's a logical explanation for why that might not be the case. Adults, when given the option to acquire any item, would prefer operating through a legal market over a black market, all else being equal. Even in the face of excise or other sales taxes, with differing people responding differently based on how they value legality, the risks of lawbreaking, the perceived quality, blah blah blah.
Point is, almost every adult who buys alcohol or tobacco does so through the legal market. Vendors in these markets have a decided interest in complying with age related laws (and their own moral reasoning). Not all retailers do, of course, but compared with the incentives faced by the illegal drug dealer, the difference would be dramatic.
But this is still an empirical question. And shame on me for rambling this far along without finding the data. Problem is, I don't know the data, and I haven't yet found much reliable data, so I'm just relating my own intuition.
2. Lowered Use
I put lowered use in the section on the benefits of the WoD. It is not clear, though, the degree to which prohibition lowers drug use. Empirical evidence is hard to come by, but we do have a couple of examples to consider.
i) Portugal
In 2001, Portugal passed a law removing the criminal penalties for possession of drugs, treating all such cases as administrative. This is not the widespread legalization proposed in ending the WoD, but it may give some clue as to the effect changing drug laws can have.
The results have been mixed, with many sides of the argument picking and choosing and spinning. Overall drug use increased slightly, but was down among teenagers. HIV incidence rate among users dropped steadily, as the decriminalization was pared with harm reduction efforts (aside: for which money would become available as would-be felons are routed out of prison and into treatment programs). Various statistics and claims and analysis can be found here (35) and here (36).
What did not happen was an explosion of drug use.
ii) Drugs are Cheaper and More Pure
According to a recent report, drugs around the world are cheaper and more pure than ever, suggesting competition is driving down prices and driving up quality. If the WoD was successful in separating willing consumers from willing buyers, scarcity would drive prices up. But don't trust my analysis, the researchers have said as much themselves:
Mixed Results of the WoD
The massive reduction in costs associated with policing the WoD is a burden we need to get off the public fisc. That said, a lot of that money goes into employing lots of people. I don't mean to confuse costs and benefits here, but it must be considered that large swaths of bureaucracy and law enforcement would become redundant. On balance, in the long-run, this would be an improvement. But considerations could be made, particularly for those trained up in law enforcement. The blow could be softened to a great degree by reducing headcounts by attrition (closing open positions instead of hiring people to fill them), and by providing retraining assistance. As for the companies that make money making products and providing services tied to the drug war, there may be capital sunk into those enterprises which cannot be retrieved.
But all of that ends up being arguments to end the WoD sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the higher those sunk costs rise. Just as no one wants to be the last person to die in a losing war, no one wants to invest the last dollar in the cottage industry that was enabled by it.
Thanks to Tal for pointing out that particular result, which was missing from my initial consideration.
Conclusion
Tens of thousands of lives lost. Communities in Latin America terrorized. Youth in America turned into felons. Homes broken into. Property seized on flimsy pretense. Governments around the world corrupted. Users afraid of seeking treatment. People killed by black market knock-off drugs that are more dangerous than their pure counterparts. A trillion dollars spent (38). And drugs are still used and readily available.
What are we getting for all this? How is this worth it?
Now you may think it's necessary to reform. Maybe trim some around the edges. Start with legalizing marijuana, because maybe you know marijuana is safer than alcohol anyway and it just kinda makes sense.
While that may be a step in the right direction, legalizing marijuana will do nothing to address most of the problems. People don't need treatment for marijuana addiction, a drug with little physical dependency. And drug cartels aren't fighting in the streets over meager crumbs of a cheap drug that grows better in Canada.
I know this is radical. And I may well be wrong.
One big gotcha against my point: legalizing production in the United States may not completely eradicate illegal activity in other countries if they do not change their laws. However, I would say 1) if the US changed its drug laws, it would drastically increase the likelihood of other countries in our hemisphere of doing the same. Usually the US is applying pressure to prevent Latin American countries from exploring legalization. 2) While the US does not have the climate of, say, Colombia, I am sure a legalized cocaine industry would perfect growing coca leaves, or in acquiring raw material through legal channels.
I also recognize that it's really hard to weigh these things in a balance. It's a lot of anecdotes, with some data thrown in. It's fuzzy and messy.
But this is what I believe. When I stack up the pros and cons, I don't see how drug prohibition works. I don't see how it works for families. I don't see how it works for communities. I don't see how it works for our nation.
BTW, there are two other matters that come to mind that escaped mention here, but I think are important. One is the lesson of alcohol prohibition. The other is the way in which our WoD has a disproportionate impact on the poor and minorities. I think the first issue is generally well understood by most people. The second is one that deserves more attention, perhaps in a future blog post.
Sources and Links
1 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/calderon-finishes-his-six-year-drug-war-at-stalemate/2012/11/26/82c90a94-31eb-11e2-92f0-496af208bf23_story_1.html
2 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexicos-crime-wave-has-left-up-to-25000-missing-government-documents-show/2012/11/29/7ca4ee44-3a6a-11e2-9258-ac7c78d5c680_story.html
3 - http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Mexico-Reporters-Countrys-Darkness/dp/159420439X/ref=as_at?tag=thedailybeast-autotag-20&linkCode=as2&=
4 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war
5 - http://www.cato.org/events/understanding-mexicos-epidemic-violence-telling-stories-new-media-technology-big-data
6 - http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2010/08/lives-of-policemen-in-mexico.html
7 - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/30/fear-and-loathing-in-mexico.html
8 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Mexico
9 - http://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs11/13157/
10 - https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Measuring-the-Extent-of-Gang-Problems
11 - http://www.popehat.com/2013/11/07/what-is-the-quantum-of-proof-necessary-for-police-to-rape-and-torture-you-in-new-mexico/
12 - http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-09-20/opinions/36891058_1_internal-affairs-county-police-front-door
13 - https://twitter.com/search?q=%23puppycide&src=typd
14 - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1850434439/puppycide-the-documentary
15 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT
16 - http://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/militarized_police_overreach_oh_god_i_thought_they_were_going_to_shoot_me_next%E2%80%9D/
17 - http://store.cato.org/reports/overkill-rise-paramilitary-police-raids-america
18 - http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_me_i_was_reading_a_book_the_new_warrior_cop_is_out_of_control/
19 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting
20 - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman
21 - http://blog.sfgate.com/pets/2011/02/02/handlers-beliefs-influence-drug-sniffing-dogs-performance/#ixzz1D2nQC9Ir
22 - http://www.leap.cc/some-of-our-speakers/russ-jones-3/
23 - http://www.ij.org/canine-sniffs-yield-unreliable-evidence-for-forfeiture-2
24 - http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/judge-orders-1-million-returned-exotic-dancer-151044009.html
25 - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91638378
26 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
27 - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/05/us-usa-prisons-idUSBRE9A405120131105
28 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/08/prison-overcrowding_n_4235691.html
29 - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/green-rolex-fake-ecstasy-pills-2043831
30 - http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95562
31 - http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/19/deaths-spur-research-into-exactly-whats-in-little-pills-calling-themselves-ecstasy-hint-it-isnt-always-mdma/
32 - http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/budgetary-impact-ending-drug-prohibition
33 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextroamphetamine#Military_usage
34 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_cannabis#Toxicity
35 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#cite_note-Hughes2-15
36 - http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/greenwald_whitepaper.pdf
37 - http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/01/world/war-on-drugs-failing/
38 - http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals/
Initial disclaimer: I reference wikipedia as a convenience. In some cases I tried to track down the original linked source, but if you want to dispute the stuff there, be my guest. We can have that argument. I'm taking the liberty because this is a blog post, not an academic paper. I make no claims about the inherent accuracy of information found in any source posted.
Special thanks at the start to Tal Arrowood, who providing some thoughts and edits.
Hopefully my biases won't get the best of me. Here we go. If I've made a strawman of your beliefs, let me know.
Costs of the War on Drugs
1. Cartels and Civil Instability in Latin America
We're all pretty familiar with the idea of drug cartels operating in Latin America. For decades now, they've been a subject of periodic news coverage, pop culture treatment, and US political ire. But the reason drug cartels exist, is because people demand drugs (particularly in rich countries like the US), and there exists no legal mechanism for their production, distribution and sale. But it's easy to keep that as an abstract thought. To push to the back of your mind just what it means to be living in a country plagued by drug cartels.
Consider Mexico.
The official toll of Mexican drug violence in the six years of former President Felipe Calderon's tenure is 60,000 (1). It may well be higher, as there are an estimated 100,000 total homicides counting missing people, unsolved murders, etc (2). Alfredo Corchado, a Mexican-American journalist working for the Dallas Morning News covering the activity of the cartels in Mexico, puts the number at more than 80,000 (3). To put that in perspective:
You have to go back to the world wars and the Civil War to find wars that produced more American casualties. This is not exactly an apples/apples comparison, of course. One the one hand, while the numbers include civilian deaths, the American wars were not fought on American soil. But I don't include the numbers to compare the overall deadliness of the wars, but to force you to consider how you feel about American dead in wars, and then think those thoughts for our neighbors to the south. Mexico is in a state of effective war, with all the incumbent terror.
How much terror?
In a panel on Mexican drug violence, the NY Times' Mexico City desk reporter, Karla Zabludovsky, shared that police in Mexico are often seen wearing masks to hide their identities (5). Other targets of the cartels include journalists that report on Mexico's drug violence. Note that I didn't say those that report on Mexico's drug cartel. Zabludovsky says journalists often fear reporting on the violent activities that arise because of drug cartels, even without attribution to the cartels themselves. So it is not uncommon to come across the scene of a shooting, but then never read about it later. That or anonymous Twitter users report the event (this was a particular focus of that Cato panel).
(image source: 6)
The previously mentioned Alfredo Corchado had a well-publicized death-threat issued against him by cartels (7). Thankfully they have not carried out their threat. But here is a depressing list of journalists killed in Mexico since 2000 (8).
The people who report the news and the people who protect and serve live in fear of these cartels. Corruption is rampant in various levels of Mexican government according to Corchado's work. And all of this is, in large part, to supply drugs to countries like the US.
Now it is too simplistic to say the cartels would vanish if the WoD were truly ended (including legalizing production, distribution and sale). After all, we still have moonshiners in America, and the cartels have other revenue streams like human trafficking. But it's clear that most of their revenue comes from the illicit drug trade (citation needed - but I'm not gonna dig for one - they're called "drug" cartels for a reason), and if there were a legal market for those illicit drugs, most all of the demand would be met by that legal market (taking into account the elasticity of how users would respond to differences in prices - taxes would have to be set with an eye towards minimizing black market activity). The chance of citizens of Mexico to live a normal life may hinge on our willingness to end the WoD.
A note on enforcement: attacking the drug cartels directly seems not to have worked. Those 60,000 official deaths occurred over a period of time in which the Mexican administration waged direct war on the cartels. While corruption may be partly to blame for their failures, there's been no lack of violence between the army and cartels themselves, and very little to show for it.
2. Gangs and Gang Violence in the US
Of course, not all of the black market violence is south of the border. When the drugs come to America, they must be distributed by someone, and gangs are the primary distributors of drugs within the US, according to the Department of Justice (9).
Not all of the drugs the gangs profit from are from outside the country. Manufacture of drugs like methamphetamine, as we all know, can take place just about anywhere. The drug trade within the US takes a small part of the violence we see in Mexico and imports it to the US. While it is very difficult to account for gang violence, it's estimated around 1,900 people are killed each year in America because of it (10). Some large portion of that because of the illicit drug trade.
3. Loss of Civil Liberties and Police Militarization
A recent news item told of man subjected, against his will, to multiple anal cavity probes. All because a police officer saw him "clinching his buttocks" as he got out of his car. This was supposedly probable cause for a search, which never turned up any drugs (despite a drug dog "alerting" - more on that later). There's plenty of reporting and commentary about the incident out there, like this (11). But while it's a particularly egregious example of how the WoD has gone wrong, it's far from the only one. There's another very instructive example. We're all fortunate though, that this time it happened to someone with the means to fight back.
i) Cheye Calvo
You may remember the story of Cheye Calvo, but if not, it starts with his being the unwitting victim of a drug smuggling ring. The ring operated to distribute drugs by shipping them to the target area to random people, who have no idea they're going to be getting the drugs. They're delivered while the people aren't home, and an inside man with the delivery company lets someone know at the other end to make the rounds and pick up the packages. If something goes wrong along the way, it's not traceable to any of the people on the receiving end, since the drugs are going to the victims' addresses.
This time, the police manage to intercept one of the packages. They decide to surreptitiously deliver the package themselves, and then raid the home when the people take it inside. This duty falls on Prince George's County Police. The person on the receiving end was Calvo, who was mayor of the town in which he lived: Berwyn Heights, MD.
After the mayor got home and took the package inside, completely unaware of its contents, his home was broken into by a SWAT team, which immediately shot his two dogs, including one that was running away, as they threw the mayor and his wife on the ground and held them at gunpoint as they ransacked their house for four hours. You can read his account here (12).
The bit about the dogs being shot is tragically routine. Radley Balko write about civil liberties issues and police abuses, and coined the grim hashtage #puppycide for tweets involving such incidents. Here are the search results (13). There's also a Kickstarter campaign underway to fund a documentary on the practice (14).
Raids like that on Calvo's house exist because of the WoD.
ii) Paramilitary Police Raids
The existence of paramilitary police raids puts multiple lives at risk. Not just criminals. Not just police. But innocent civilians. The Cato Institute started mapping incidents where these kinds of raids occurred.
Initially, the use of paramilitary equipment and tactics by law enforcement was rare. It was introduced as a way to mitigate situations in which there is imminent danger to peoples' lives. The term S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons and Tactics) dates back to Philadelphia in 1964, but gained notoriety in Los Angeles, where Inspector Daryl Gates was a prominent supporter of the teams (15).
They were used to great effect to put down the heavily armed Symbionese Liberation Army in LA in 1974. In a report following the incident, some important rationales were given for the necessity of the heretofore unusual approach to police work: "the emergence of snipers as a challenge to civil order; political assassinations; and the threat of urban guerrilla warfare by militant groups." (quoted from wikipedia - tried to track down the pdf, but it's a dead link in the page - would like to find it somewhere).
For the last half of 2009, SWAT teams were deployed 804 times in the state of Maryland, or about 4.5 times a day. In Prince George’s County alone, which has about 850,000 residents, a SWAT team was deployed about once a day. According to an analysis by the Baltimore Sun, 94 percent of the state’s SWAT deployments were to serve search or arrest warrants, leaving just 6 percent that were raids involving barricades, bank robberies, hostage takings, and other emergency situations. Half of Prince George’s County’s SWAT deployments were for what were called “misdemeanors and nonserious felonies.” More than one hundred times over a six-month period, Prince George’s County sent police barreling into private homes for nonserious, nonviolent crimes. Calvo pointed out that the first set of figures confirm what he and others concerned about these tactics have suspected: SWAT teams are being deployed too often as the default way to serve search warrants, not as a last resort.16
That excerpt is from Radley Balko's book Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America (17). While not all such raids are focused on drugs (sometimes it's to breakup home poker games (18)), Balko figures a great majority of them are. And the consequences, not just to innocent canines, can be lethal.
a) Cops killed in raids
The person breaking the law is not the only person that can be harmed. The homes that cops are breaking into may contain armed people. Some may be guilty of some crime. Others may be completely innocent. But when people break down your door and are not dressed in normal police uniforms, it's not hard to imagine why armed citizens respond to what they think is a home invasion when someone points an MP5 or a shotgun in their direction after breaking in in the middle of the night. The raid map chronicles officers killed or injured during the raids.
b) Innocent civilians killed in raids
The raid map also captures completely innocent civilians who were killed in raids on wrong homes, or who were minors in the homes at the times of raids.
One of the worst cases was the killing of Kathryn Johnson of Atlanta in 2006. Police entered the home in plainclothes at night with a no-knock raid. Johnson fired out the door over the heads of the invaders, who responded by sending a hail of bullets into the house. The officers falsified reports that drugs were found at the home, and this was used to justify the raid initially. Then they planted marijuana at the home after the shooting. After Johnson was shot, she was handcuffed as she lay dying. (19)
iii) Civil Asset Forfeiture
One of the incentives for conducting raids on homes, and also often raids on people in their cars and business is because of civil asset forfeiture laws. These laws, which are in the place at the federal level, and in the state books (with North Carolina being a noted, blessed exception) allow property to be confiscated if there's a nexus to criminal activity. This seems like facially unconstitutional in light of the fourth amendment and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution. Property is seized without substantive due process. Drugs are often used a pretense.
In August of this year, the New Yorker described a town that was particularly notorious in how they confiscated property of people traveling through the town. One family was even threatened with having their kids taken away if they didn't relinquish the cash they were traveling with (20). The WoD facilitates these kinds of takings by providing two notable mechanisms available to police.
a) False Alerts
SCOTUS, in their wisdom, has ruled that you do not require reasonable suspicion to walk a drug dog around a car that has been stopped for any kind of violation. The idea being that this does not constitute an invasive search, since the dog is just examining odors being emitted out from the car.
This becomes problematic as drug dogs have been shown to falsely alert to the presence of narcotics. In some cases, this is based on the subtle cues given by handlers based on their own expectations. A UC-Davis investigation found this particular type of false alert common (21).
And in some cases, it may be more nefarious. Russ Jones is a former narcotics officer with experience dealing with police dogs. He now is a part of the organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). (22) He has come out and said that a drug dog is trained to satisfy his handler. And if the handler wants the dog to alert, he has cues he can use to make him alert. That alert is then used as probable cause to conduct a full search of the vehicle. Which all makes a mockery of the probable cause requirement, if a cop can just get a dog to give it to him whenever he wanted.
b) Drug Laced Cash Seized
Another tactic used by law enforcement is in testing cash for the presence of drugs. When people travel with large amounts of physical cash, they may be conducting perfectly legal business. But that money can be seized without due process if it is found to contain traces of drugs.
The problem is this: a whole lot of our money contains traces of drugs.
The Institute for Justice, a libertarian leaning public interest law firm has a series of statistics on their website about how problematic seizure based on traces of drugs is.
Scientists, in studies stretching back to 1987, have consistently found that a third to 97 percent of all bills in circulation are tainted by cocaine.[3] The latest study, presented in August 2009 to the American Chemical Society, found cocaine on 90 percent of 234 banknotes from 18 U.S. cities. The findings, arrived at by means of a new method of gas chromatography, confirm numerous previous studies.[4]23
In 1987, a Drug Enforcement Agency scientist found that one-third of all money at the Federal Reserve Building in Chicago had traces of cocaine. The study recommended “that trace analysis of currency for general enforcement or seizure be stopped.”
A California woman had her cash seized by Nebraska police when dogs indicated the presence of drugs on the money, despite finding no evidence of drugs on her person or in her automobile. Thankfully in this case, the judge ordered the seized money returned (24).
The incentive is clear when local departments get to keep large amounts of the cash. Sometimes they desire the money because they're inadequately funded. Other times they desire it for more personal gain. NPR wrote of a Georgia Sheriff that hired inmates to build a house. It was accused the house became a personal party house for the Sheriff (25). The story in the New Yorker highlighted other ways in which LEOs benefited from seizing assets.
While I think civil asset forfeiture is a violation of due process rights in the first place, it is largely enabled by the WoD.
4. Mass Incarceration
It is an often-quoted statistic that while the United States has about 5% of the world's population, they have about 25% of the world's currently incarcerated. I have a bit of trouble with some of the details there, mainly because I do not trust the accounting of highly populated, autocratic regimes. However, the raw numbers are scary enough. It is indisputable that the US has the highest incarceration rate of any purported liberal democracy (26).
According to Saki Knafo at the Huffington Post
The problem: There are 219,000 inmates in the federal prisons system -- compared with 25,000 in 1980. About half are there for drug offenses.
28
Note the mention there, by the way, of the disproportionate treatment of cocaine and crack-cocaine, and of the need to reform mandatory minimum sentencing. Both issues I am very concerned about, but are slightly outside the scope of this piece.
5. Increased Danger from Drugs Themselves
Part of the rationale in prohibiting drugs is that people irrationally make choices that pose a danger to themselves. Even if, for the sake of argument, all negative externalities of drug use are nullified, some would still argue for the prohibition of drugs to protect people from themselves.
But what if the drug prohibition introduces harms to the drug users we're concerned about?
In a legally regulated open market, the amount of information about drugs, and the reliability of their content, would be greatly escalated. If you purchase a bottle of vodka, you will know from the label whether it is 40% alcohol by volume, or 50% alcohol by volume, or higher. Likewise, you can be almost perfectly certain that the bottle contains ethanol distilled from grain and water. However, when you buy a drug from someone at the corner, you don't know if the cocaine is cut with some cheap powder that may prove deadly.
In recent years, deaths across the world have been linked to fake ecstasy (29 , 30 , 31).
The track-record of open markets in ensuring reliability and open information about product formulation is not perfect, but it is remarkably high. While we often debate the efficacy of various degrees of regulatory intervention into markets, bringing drugs into the open market and out of the black market will help protect people from faulty and potentially more lethal products.
6. Criminalizing Addicts
Along the same lines, our concern for those struggling with drug abuse should lead us to ask what we may do to most effectively help them. But accepting help means admitting to use. As hard as it is to admit to being an addict, we have added the additional hurdle of requiring drug addicts to admit they are law-breakers as well.
7. Fiscal Cost
Last, and I would argue, least in my lists of costs of the WoD is the direct fiscal cost itself. The Cato Institute estimated:
...legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government.32
Approximately $8.7 billion of the savings would result from legalization of marijuana and $32.6 billion from legalization of other drugs.
Still, I think this is relatively minor in comparison to the tremendous human cost outlined in the other points.
Benefits of the War on Drugs
1. Lowered Use
So far, I haven't addressed the prudence, wisdom or morality of using any of the currently prohibited drugs. That's beyond the scope of what I'm addressing. In fact, I'm going to continue with the rhetorical assumption that use of drugs is bad - in whatever way you want to take it.
So one benefit of prohibition would be limiting the use of illicit drugs. It is an intuitive expectation that the prohibition of illicit drugs leads to less use of illicit drugs.
But to what degree? It's clearly not a binary phenomenon: with prohibition we have no drug use, and with no prohibition we do. It turns out this is a complicated matter which I'll address later. For the moment, lets assume that it does.
This has implications beyond those for the individual user. The use of drugs produces externalities (as with any activity). Some may be good, but I think most are bad. I would wager most people reading this would agree with that, though we may argue over the degree.
Directly under the influence of drugs, users may pose a danger to others. Most illicit drugs will impair driving, an activity that requires attention and coordination.
Aside: not all illicit drugs will - if the guy coming in the other direction has had trouble sleeping lately, I might would rather prefer he be on a small amount of amphetamines than not. This is why the Air Force has Fly/No Fly pills (also called Go/No Go pills). The fly pills are dextroamphetamine. Their use is controversial, but the rationale is apparent (33).
Beyond that, people high on a variety of different drugs may see a behavioral change to the violent, including drugs like cocaine, PCP,
Chronic depressant use may induce a lethargy that depresses a person's economic contribution to their family and everyone else around them.
And almost every single drug carries a risk of overdose from toxicity, asphyxiation, injury from impaired activity, etc.
Another aside: there has still never been a single confirmed case of direct overdose from the use of cannabis (34).
Anyway, you may have noticed that I'm not including references for the harms posed by drug use. That's because I'm willing to accept them for the sake of argument and stack the deck against myself.
All that being said, any accounting of the costs and benefits of the WoD must include the amount to which drug use can be restricted, and the concurrent reduction in the negative externalities of said drug use.
2. State as Provider of Moral Censure
I think this particular line of reasoning is somewhat out-of-step with the political preconceptions I bring to the issue. But it will resonate with traditional conservatives (and ironically, maybe with progressives as well, if you swap out some of the normative terminology (or maybe even if you don't!)).
To many people, drug use represents something more than just a casual, imprudent or selfish (or all of the above) indulgence. It is, in fact, morally wrong. And within their political ideology, things that are clearly morally wrong, or perhaps sufficiently morally wrong, should not enjoy the legal freedom to exist. Even if all penalties were stripped, and drugs were totally "decriminalized", the very existence of an unenforced, un-penalized, but still official censure that contained the legal imprimatur of the state would contain value. It is a signal that as a society, we do not condone the activity.
Again, I do not share this view of the role of the state. But for those that do, legal prohibition has a very real value.
Disputed Results of the War on Drugs
1. Restricted Minor Access
I think a very, very large majority of people would agree that it is a legitimate goal to keep mind altering drugs out of the hands of kids (in the context of recreational use). Nearly as many will identify this as a legitimate public policy goal.
But does the WoD serve this function? It's not immediately obvious to me that a drug sold in a legal, regulated market would be more available to minors than a drug sold exclusively in the black market. This is anecdotal, and reliant on my memory (so essentially: rubbish - feel free to skip ahead), but it seems to me, looking back, that in Middle and High School, marijuana was as easy to acquire as alcohol or tobacco. Now this is just one person's experience, and I was only ever interested in acquiring one of those three things (tobacco). But still, given the legal availability of alcohol and tobacco, and the much larger ratios of the adult population that used those substances compared to marijuana, one would expect them to be comparatively plentiful.
I think there's a logical explanation for why that might not be the case. Adults, when given the option to acquire any item, would prefer operating through a legal market over a black market, all else being equal. Even in the face of excise or other sales taxes, with differing people responding differently based on how they value legality, the risks of lawbreaking, the perceived quality, blah blah blah.
Point is, almost every adult who buys alcohol or tobacco does so through the legal market. Vendors in these markets have a decided interest in complying with age related laws (and their own moral reasoning). Not all retailers do, of course, but compared with the incentives faced by the illegal drug dealer, the difference would be dramatic.
But this is still an empirical question. And shame on me for rambling this far along without finding the data. Problem is, I don't know the data, and I haven't yet found much reliable data, so I'm just relating my own intuition.
2. Lowered Use
I put lowered use in the section on the benefits of the WoD. It is not clear, though, the degree to which prohibition lowers drug use. Empirical evidence is hard to come by, but we do have a couple of examples to consider.
i) Portugal
In 2001, Portugal passed a law removing the criminal penalties for possession of drugs, treating all such cases as administrative. This is not the widespread legalization proposed in ending the WoD, but it may give some clue as to the effect changing drug laws can have.
The results have been mixed, with many sides of the argument picking and choosing and spinning. Overall drug use increased slightly, but was down among teenagers. HIV incidence rate among users dropped steadily, as the decriminalization was pared with harm reduction efforts (aside: for which money would become available as would-be felons are routed out of prison and into treatment programs). Various statistics and claims and analysis can be found here (35) and here (36).
What did not happen was an explosion of drug use.
ii) Drugs are Cheaper and More Pure
According to a recent report, drugs around the world are cheaper and more pure than ever, suggesting competition is driving down prices and driving up quality. If the WoD was successful in separating willing consumers from willing buyers, scarcity would drive prices up. But don't trust my analysis, the researchers have said as much themselves:
They found that illegal drugs have become cheaper while their potency has increased, indicating that efforts to control "the global illegal drug market through law enforcement are failing."(37)
Mixed Results of the WoD
The massive reduction in costs associated with policing the WoD is a burden we need to get off the public fisc. That said, a lot of that money goes into employing lots of people. I don't mean to confuse costs and benefits here, but it must be considered that large swaths of bureaucracy and law enforcement would become redundant. On balance, in the long-run, this would be an improvement. But considerations could be made, particularly for those trained up in law enforcement. The blow could be softened to a great degree by reducing headcounts by attrition (closing open positions instead of hiring people to fill them), and by providing retraining assistance. As for the companies that make money making products and providing services tied to the drug war, there may be capital sunk into those enterprises which cannot be retrieved.
But all of that ends up being arguments to end the WoD sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the higher those sunk costs rise. Just as no one wants to be the last person to die in a losing war, no one wants to invest the last dollar in the cottage industry that was enabled by it.
Thanks to Tal for pointing out that particular result, which was missing from my initial consideration.
Conclusion
Tens of thousands of lives lost. Communities in Latin America terrorized. Youth in America turned into felons. Homes broken into. Property seized on flimsy pretense. Governments around the world corrupted. Users afraid of seeking treatment. People killed by black market knock-off drugs that are more dangerous than their pure counterparts. A trillion dollars spent (38). And drugs are still used and readily available.
What are we getting for all this? How is this worth it?
Now you may think it's necessary to reform. Maybe trim some around the edges. Start with legalizing marijuana, because maybe you know marijuana is safer than alcohol anyway and it just kinda makes sense.
While that may be a step in the right direction, legalizing marijuana will do nothing to address most of the problems. People don't need treatment for marijuana addiction, a drug with little physical dependency. And drug cartels aren't fighting in the streets over meager crumbs of a cheap drug that grows better in Canada.
I know this is radical. And I may well be wrong.
One big gotcha against my point: legalizing production in the United States may not completely eradicate illegal activity in other countries if they do not change their laws. However, I would say 1) if the US changed its drug laws, it would drastically increase the likelihood of other countries in our hemisphere of doing the same. Usually the US is applying pressure to prevent Latin American countries from exploring legalization. 2) While the US does not have the climate of, say, Colombia, I am sure a legalized cocaine industry would perfect growing coca leaves, or in acquiring raw material through legal channels.
I also recognize that it's really hard to weigh these things in a balance. It's a lot of anecdotes, with some data thrown in. It's fuzzy and messy.
But this is what I believe. When I stack up the pros and cons, I don't see how drug prohibition works. I don't see how it works for families. I don't see how it works for communities. I don't see how it works for our nation.
BTW, there are two other matters that come to mind that escaped mention here, but I think are important. One is the lesson of alcohol prohibition. The other is the way in which our WoD has a disproportionate impact on the poor and minorities. I think the first issue is generally well understood by most people. The second is one that deserves more attention, perhaps in a future blog post.
Sources and Links
1 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/calderon-finishes-his-six-year-drug-war-at-stalemate/2012/11/26/82c90a94-31eb-11e2-92f0-496af208bf23_story_1.html
2 - http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexicos-crime-wave-has-left-up-to-25000-missing-government-documents-show/2012/11/29/7ca4ee44-3a6a-11e2-9258-ac7c78d5c680_story.html
3 - http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Mexico-Reporters-Countrys-Darkness/dp/159420439X/ref=as_at?tag=thedailybeast-autotag-20&linkCode=as2&=
4 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war
5 - http://www.cato.org/events/understanding-mexicos-epidemic-violence-telling-stories-new-media-technology-big-data
6 - http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2010/08/lives-of-policemen-in-mexico.html
7 - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/30/fear-and-loathing-in-mexico.html
8 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Mexico
9 - http://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs11/13157/
10 - https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Survey-Analysis/Measuring-the-Extent-of-Gang-Problems
11 - http://www.popehat.com/2013/11/07/what-is-the-quantum-of-proof-necessary-for-police-to-rape-and-torture-you-in-new-mexico/
12 - http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-09-20/opinions/36891058_1_internal-affairs-county-police-front-door
13 - https://twitter.com/search?q=%23puppycide&src=typd
14 - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1850434439/puppycide-the-documentary
15 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT
16 - http://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/militarized_police_overreach_oh_god_i_thought_they_were_going_to_shoot_me_next%E2%80%9D/
17 - http://store.cato.org/reports/overkill-rise-paramilitary-police-raids-america
18 - http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/%E2%80%9Cwhy_did_you_shoot_me_i_was_reading_a_book_the_new_warrior_cop_is_out_of_control/
19 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting
20 - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman
21 - http://blog.sfgate.com/pets/2011/02/02/handlers-beliefs-influence-drug-sniffing-dogs-performance/#ixzz1D2nQC9Ir
22 - http://www.leap.cc/some-of-our-speakers/russ-jones-3/
23 - http://www.ij.org/canine-sniffs-yield-unreliable-evidence-for-forfeiture-2
24 - http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/judge-orders-1-million-returned-exotic-dancer-151044009.html
25 - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91638378
26 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
27 - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/05/us-usa-prisons-idUSBRE9A405120131105
28 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/08/prison-overcrowding_n_4235691.html
29 - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/green-rolex-fake-ecstasy-pills-2043831
30 - http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=95562
31 - http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/19/deaths-spur-research-into-exactly-whats-in-little-pills-calling-themselves-ecstasy-hint-it-isnt-always-mdma/
32 - http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/budgetary-impact-ending-drug-prohibition
33 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextroamphetamine#Military_usage
34 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_cannabis#Toxicity
35 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal#cite_note-Hughes2-15
36 - http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/greenwald_whitepaper.pdf
37 - http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/01/world/war-on-drugs-failing/
38 - http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals/
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Executive Warmaking, Then and Now
After President Obama's "kinetic military action" utilized our military to attack a foreign enemy without Congress passing a declaration of war (indeed, without the President adhering to the even more lenient War Powers Act), people have been comparing him to something of a king, instead of a constitutionally limited chief executive.
Which is why the following passage jumped out at me as I was reading through the Wikipedia entry on the Battle of Agincourt (which I hear was like bringing a knight to a longbow fight):
Indeed. Now, I'm not familiar enough with England's history to know if this was typical pre-Glorious Revolution. I know the history between the sovereign and the people is contentious enough, including a civil war and regicide. But I do find it very interesting that Henry V sought approval from the Great Council (the equivalent of parliament at the time, as far as I understand) before going to war with France over abrogation of the Treaty of Bretigny (itself an interesting item of history that saw the King of France giving over his princes as collateral for his personal ransom from an English prison).
Contrast this with our current President, theoretically more strictly bound by our formal Constitution, who claims broad authority to conduct war (and war it is, despite his semantic games), without seeking approval from, or even giving later counsel to, the Congress.
Bonus observation: It will be especially interesting to see if the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force is trotted out as an authorization to attack Syria, given the wording of the authorization and the fact that some rebel forces in Syria have been identified with al Qaeda.
Which is why the following passage jumped out at me as I was reading through the Wikipedia entry on the Battle of Agincourt (which I hear was like bringing a knight to a longbow fight):
Henry V invaded France following the failure of negotiations with the French. He claimed the title of King of France through his great-grandfather Edward III, although in practice the English kings were generally prepared to renounce this claim if the French would acknowledge the English claim on Aquitaine and other French lands (the terms of the Treaty of Bretigny).[7] He initially called a Great Council in the spring of 1414 to discuss going to war with France, but the lords insisted that he should negotiate further and moderate his claims. In the following negotiations Henry said that he would give up his claim to the French throne if the French would pay the 1.6 million crowns outstanding from the ransom of John II (who had been captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356), and concede English ownership of the lands of Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, Brittany and Flanders, as well as Aquitaine. Henry would marry Princess Catherine, the young daughter of Charles VI, and receive a dowry of 2 million crowns. The French responded with what they considered the generous terms of marriage with Princess Catherine, a dowry of 600,000 crowns, and an enlarged Aquitaine. By 1415 negotiations had ground to a halt, with the English claiming that the French had mocked their claims and ridiculed Henry himself.[8] In December 1414, the English parliament was persuaded to grant Henry a "double subsidy", a tax at twice the traditional rate, to recover his inheritance from the French. On 19 April 1415, Henry again asked the Great Council to sanction war with France, and this time they agreed.[9]
Indeed. Now, I'm not familiar enough with England's history to know if this was typical pre-Glorious Revolution. I know the history between the sovereign and the people is contentious enough, including a civil war and regicide. But I do find it very interesting that Henry V sought approval from the Great Council (the equivalent of parliament at the time, as far as I understand) before going to war with France over abrogation of the Treaty of Bretigny (itself an interesting item of history that saw the King of France giving over his princes as collateral for his personal ransom from an English prison).
Contrast this with our current President, theoretically more strictly bound by our formal Constitution, who claims broad authority to conduct war (and war it is, despite his semantic games), without seeking approval from, or even giving later counsel to, the Congress.
Bonus observation: It will be especially interesting to see if the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force is trotted out as an authorization to attack Syria, given the wording of the authorization and the fact that some rebel forces in Syria have been identified with al Qaeda.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
TSA: What we need is a little empathy
My solution, or part of it at least, to the controversy over the TSA's latest dehumanization campaign is simple:
1) Make every TSA employee pose for a fancy new x-ray backspatter image.
2) Put the images in a searchable, public database online, along with full names and portraits.
While we're at, we might as well start at the top of DHS...
1) Make every TSA employee pose for a fancy new x-ray backspatter image.
2) Put the images in a searchable, public database online, along with full names and portraits.
While we're at, we might as well start at the top of DHS...
Monday, October 04, 2010
Jeremy Clarkson: consider yourself on notice
10:10 mini-movie - No Pressure
And you thought it would be the Morris Marina Owners' Club that would do you in. These people will surely get you first.
Warning: graphic violence at the link. Note: this is not an anti-AGW parody.
And you thought it would be the Morris Marina Owners' Club that would do you in. These people will surely get you first.
Warning: graphic violence at the link. Note: this is not an anti-AGW parody.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Another wire service editorial
Reuters: Bush lifts offshore drilling ban in symbolic move
...
Now if they simply made the statement that it was symbolic just because of the legislative ban, then that’s fine. But the writer is clearly implying that the move is also symbolic because it would not produce oil any time in the near future. This is patently ridiculous. First of all, even if it didn’t have any effect on prices in the near-term, that it would eventually have an effect means that is not symbolic. By their same logic, quitting smoking at the age of 25 would be a symbolic move, because the serious health effects of smoking likely won’t manifest in the near term. And never mind that part of it, because the idea that gas prices aren’t at all affected by a future expectation of the market is just plain ignorant. And I wonder how many who would make such a claim are the same who have been on a rage demonizing speculators for driving up the price of oil?
(essentially cross-posted here)
Actually, come to think of it, even the fact that half of the barrier is down could have an effect on market anticipation. Prices should still be affected, if only slightly.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday lifted a White House ban on offshore drilling to try to drive down soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic bid unlikely to have any short-term impact on high gasoline costs.
...
Congress too has a ban on offshore drilling and while it expires on September 30, it could be renewed. Plus, federal officials say it would take years for any oil to be produced in those areas, together making Bush's move largely symbolic. [emphasis added]
Now if they simply made the statement that it was symbolic just because of the legislative ban, then that’s fine. But the writer is clearly implying that the move is also symbolic because it would not produce oil any time in the near future. This is patently ridiculous. First of all, even if it didn’t have any effect on prices in the near-term, that it would eventually have an effect means that is not symbolic. By their same logic, quitting smoking at the age of 25 would be a symbolic move, because the serious health effects of smoking likely won’t manifest in the near term. And never mind that part of it, because the idea that gas prices aren’t at all affected by a future expectation of the market is just plain ignorant. And I wonder how many who would make such a claim are the same who have been on a rage demonizing speculators for driving up the price of oil?
(essentially cross-posted here)
Actually, come to think of it, even the fact that half of the barrier is down could have an effect on market anticipation. Prices should still be affected, if only slightly.
The Obamessiah ain't got nothin' on Judson C. Hammond
I'm reading through Gene Healy's The Cult of the Presidency. It's a fascinating examination of how the office of the Presidency has transformed from its original role of a simple Chief Magistrate, to one of a more enlightened, benevolent deity figure. As the book jacket quotes (haven't gotten to it yet, I think), "Very few Americans seem to think it odd, says Healy, 'when presidential candidates talk as if they're running for a job that's a combination of guardian angel, shaman, and supreme warlord of the earth.'"
Anyway, turns out this encroachment is nothing new. At the end of the chapter, "'Progress' and the Presidency," which is a chapter on how early 20th-century progressives pushed for an expanded executive authority, Healy recounts what must be an equally hilarious and disturbing film:
Unreal. I have to think it's slightly exaggerated, but I sure hope not. I MUST find this movie and see it. And I hope an excerpt that long was well within fair use. I'll shoot the author an email with a link to see if he minds. Two points in my defense: 1) I have found the book so far to be very enjoyable, and would encourage folks to read it -and- 2) No one reads this blog anyway.
Anyway, turns out this encroachment is nothing new. At the end of the chapter, "'Progress' and the Presidency," which is a chapter on how early 20th-century progressives pushed for an expanded executive authority, Healy recounts what must be an equally hilarious and disturbing film:
A remarkable film produced in 1932 and released shortly after FDR's election captured the changes in the public's orientation toward the presidency. Financed by William Randolph Hearst and starring Walter Huston, Gabriel over the White House depicts a president literally touched by an angel and empowered to heal the country and the world. The movie's fictional president, Judson C. Hammond, begins as an unflattering amalgam of Harding and Coolidge, a party hack more interested in bedding his comely assistant than in dealing with the country's ongoing economic woes.
After Hammond is gravely injured in a car crash, the archangel Gabriel visits him in the hospital. Gabriel imbues the comatose Hammond with the Holy Spirit of presidential activism. Hammond awakens from the coma, declares a state of emergency, and threatens Congress with a declaration of martial law should they refuse to pass his legislative program, which includes federally subsidized agriculture, a ban on mortgage foreclosures, and a CCC-style "Army of Construction" that will give a job to every unemployed man in America. To eradicate organized crime, Hammond authorizes a special army unit to fight gangsters, several of whom are convicted via military tribunal, then executed with the Statue of Liberty visible in the background. Toward the end of the movie, President Hammond uses a demonstration of American air power to force other world leaders to disarm, thereby ending the scourge of war. Then, with his work on Earth done, the president ascends into Heaven."
Unreal. I have to think it's slightly exaggerated, but I sure hope not. I MUST find this movie and see it. And I hope an excerpt that long was well within fair use. I'll shoot the author an email with a link to see if he minds. Two points in my defense: 1) I have found the book so far to be very enjoyable, and would encourage folks to read it -and- 2) No one reads this blog anyway.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Keep on rockin' in the Free World
Alternate title: The Freedom of Religion and Expression are dormant in Canada
Too much?
Read this and decide for yourself.
And did you see what I did there with the Canadian artist in the title?
Anyway, money quotes:
And from a commenter:
Here is the letter in question, that appeared in the Red Deer Advocate, a local paper in Alberta.
Now personally, I think publicly crafting an idea of battle between homosexuals and heterosexuals is a very wrong thing to do. I think Christians should be reaching the world with the Gospel, and let the chastening of God do the changing. All beside the point, though. The idea that such writings should not be protected speech is outrageous. And present a very real example for the slippery slope argument that has been employed against "Hate Crime" legislation since the beginning.
ht: jlf lr
Too much?
Read this and decide for yourself.
And did you see what I did there with the Canadian artist in the title?
Anyway, money quotes:
A Christian pastor has been given a lifetime ban against uttering anything "disparaging" about gays. Not against anything "hateful", let alone something legally defined as "hate speech". Just anything negative.
So a pastor cannot give a sermon.
But he must give a false sermon; he is positively ordered to renounce his deeply held religious beliefs, and apologize to his tormentor for having those views.
And then that pastor is ordered to declare to his entire city that he has renounced his religious views, even though he has not.
And from a commenter:
-The truth is no defense
-Intent is no defense
-The rules of evidence do not apply
-The precedents in courts do not apply
-Legal jurisdiction does not apply
-The Constitution does not apply; including the Charter
-Consistency and sense do not apply
-Mens rea and Actus rea do not apply
-Burden of proof does not apply
-Canadian law itself does not apply; including the Charter of rights and freedoms
-The Magna Carta and 800 years of legal inheritance does not apply
-Human rights do not apply
-Democracy does not apply
-Sanity does not apply
-The fine country we call Canada.... does not apply
Those in the Star Chamber will pass their judgment on us all and drive out the witches among us.
Welcome to Salem.
May | 06.06.08 - 6:53 pm | #
Here is the letter in question, that appeared in the Red Deer Advocate, a local paper in Alberta.
Now personally, I think publicly crafting an idea of battle between homosexuals and heterosexuals is a very wrong thing to do. I think Christians should be reaching the world with the Gospel, and let the chastening of God do the changing. All beside the point, though. The idea that such writings should not be protected speech is outrageous. And present a very real example for the slippery slope argument that has been employed against "Hate Crime" legislation since the beginning.
ht: jlf lr
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The Minimum Wage, Eugenics, and the NAACP
This morning on NC Spin, the panelists were addressing the NAACP in North Carolina and their effectiveness, after their rally in Raleigh, in which they presented their 14 point agenda. Included was the following item:
The sterilization part is in reference to a horrid, dark period in our state's history. Long after eugenics had fallen out of favor, the North Carolina eugenics program continued into the late 70s!
As you can expect, the NAACP is rightly denouncing this horrible practice. And if any of the people affected by this program remain, then I hope they seek restitution.
But there is an irony here for the NAACP. As mentioned by Chris Fitzsimon, the NAACP fought especially hard for the minimum wage increase in the state in the last session. And the historical impetus for the minimum wage is not too distant from that of Eugenics, as I first saw here. As Sidney Webb, early minimum wage warrior, put it:
The minimum wage would price the 'undesirables' out of the labor market. Eugenics through economics. So it just seems funny to me to see the NAACP simultaneously condemning (rightly) eugenics with the one hand, and unwittingly attempting to advance it with the other.
Restitution for the 1891 Wilmington race riots and sterilization of poor, black women in the first half of the 20th century
The sterilization part is in reference to a horrid, dark period in our state's history. Long after eugenics had fallen out of favor, the North Carolina eugenics program continued into the late 70s!
As you can expect, the NAACP is rightly denouncing this horrible practice. And if any of the people affected by this program remain, then I hope they seek restitution.
But there is an irony here for the NAACP. As mentioned by Chris Fitzsimon, the NAACP fought especially hard for the minimum wage increase in the state in the last session. And the historical impetus for the minimum wage is not too distant from that of Eugenics, as I first saw here. As Sidney Webb, early minimum wage warrior, put it:
Of all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites [undesirable classes], the most ruinous to the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners.
The minimum wage would price the 'undesirables' out of the labor market. Eugenics through economics. So it just seems funny to me to see the NAACP simultaneously condemning (rightly) eugenics with the one hand, and unwittingly attempting to advance it with the other.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
We're from the government, and we're here to fix your soul.
Alternate title: Theocracy on the Left
Since I just had a post about Obama as demigod, this needed a post on here.
Michelle Obama, during a speech at UCLA about a month ago, said:
Creepy stuff.
Since I just had a post about Obama as demigod, this needed a post on here.
Michelle Obama, during a speech at UCLA about a month ago, said:
That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls - our souls are broken in this nation.
Creepy stuff.
Monday, February 18, 2008
YES WE CAN (walk on water?)
Ok. This is scary. On first brush, I don't know if the author of that blog is being tongue-in-cheek or not. But the compilation of earnest quotes tells the story all the same.
Yikes.
HT: Ed Lasky at American Thinker via Hal Young at JLF
Yikes.
HT: Ed Lasky at American Thinker via Hal Young at JLF
Monday, December 17, 2007
and speaking of Boortz...
The Fair Tax is taking a lot of hits with every added bit of publicity (for those that don't know, the Fair Tax would replace all federal taxes with a 23% point-of-sale consumption tax on retail purchases). Huckabee recently gave a very simplistic reason for supporting it, and made a bit of a mistake in the process:
The WSJ editorial board, particularly James Taranto in his often entertaining Best of the Web today online column, jumped all over the claim. Taranto correctly pointed out that because no drug dealer or pimp will actually report the money he makes so as to pay the Fair Tax, such items and services would actually be purchased with pre-tax income! That's right, just like contributions to your 401k.
To be fair, while Huckabee's claim is way too far-reaching, the Fair Tax might do more to limit the tax-loss effects of the underground economy when it comes time for the drug dealers and pimps to purchase their own retail goods with the money they made from their illegal trade. Under our current system, their income would never be taxed directly. One could certainly argue that the Fair Tax would do more to tax nere-do-wells than our current system.
Instead of simply pointing out that the OpinionJournal crew were treating Huckabee a bit harshly for his gaffe, and merely pointing out what I just did in the above paragraph, Boortz (who co-authored the Fair Tax books with congressman John Linder) went into full-fledged defense mode. He began engaging Taranto & Co. in a semantical argument, in his typical snarky, self-satisfied manner:
This is really quite embarrassing when you examine it for more than a few seconds. The two books can't possibly the same item. A book that retailed at $100 under the current system would not magically cost 23% less in the Fair Tax. Whether the cost is $100 on the sticker, or $100 at the register, the retailer is only getting $77 in revenue by selling the item at $100 with the Fair Tax. Before he was getting $100. That assumes that the retailer is willing to eat the entire cost of the Fair Tax himself (minus whatever the savings in supply-side cost in the production of the book promised by the Fair Tax). That's simply not going to happen. Anytime a sales tax is levied on a retail purchase, the burden in a normal supply/demand market is shared to some degree by consumer and retailer (with the government getting a share, and with a share being lost as dead-weight loss). This is basic economics. Things WILL cost more at the register under the Fair Tax.
But that shouldn't be a problem for the Fair Tax supporters. With Americans controlling all of their income, they have more incentive to save money (one of the stated benefits of the Fair Tax), and have more purchasing power. This is not to mention the "prebate" given to all citizens in the form of a cash payout with the intention of covering all necessities.
It may sound like I am firmly against the Fair Tax. I'm not. I'm not exactly for it at this point either, but it's worth consideration. But right now the two most public faces are out their making ridiculous and unsupportable claims about their own position. Boortz was rightly called out on his own kind of voodoo economics (a term much more applicable here than when disingenuously used by the original iffy-conservative Republican, George H.W. Bush). Just today I heard him questioning the intellectual capacities of the WSJ editorial board. All this after he falls for the Huckabee magic as easily as Jim Gilchrist did. It's just not looking too good for him these days.
With friends like Huckabee and Boortz, the federal consumption tax idea might ponder the need for enemies.
"You end the underground economy," Huckabee said at a recent luncheon for the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce. "Illegals, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers, drug dealers - everybody pays taxes."
The WSJ editorial board, particularly James Taranto in his often entertaining Best of the Web today online column, jumped all over the claim. Taranto correctly pointed out that because no drug dealer or pimp will actually report the money he makes so as to pay the Fair Tax, such items and services would actually be purchased with pre-tax income! That's right, just like contributions to your 401k.
To be fair, while Huckabee's claim is way too far-reaching, the Fair Tax might do more to limit the tax-loss effects of the underground economy when it comes time for the drug dealers and pimps to purchase their own retail goods with the money they made from their illegal trade. Under our current system, their income would never be taxed directly. One could certainly argue that the Fair Tax would do more to tax nere-do-wells than our current system.
Instead of simply pointing out that the OpinionJournal crew were treating Huckabee a bit harshly for his gaffe, and merely pointing out what I just did in the above paragraph, Boortz (who co-authored the Fair Tax books with congressman John Linder) went into full-fledged defense mode. He began engaging Taranto & Co. in a semantical argument, in his typical snarky, self-satisfied manner:
So I've picked out three statements from the Wall Street Journal editorial to answer. Here we go:
"But while proponents use that 23% figure as an easier political sell, the rate is closer to 30% when it's calculated like any other sales tax, with the levy on top of the price."
We really do hate to break it to the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal, but the simple fact of the matter is that the FairTax is not calculated like other sales taxes. The FairTax is included in the price, not added on top of the price. Perhaps the board would be less inclined to misstate the terms of the FairTax if they actually read the book or H.R. 25, but we're patient people, so we'll explain this one more time:
(a) Current state sales taxes: You look at the item on the shelf. The item is priced at $100.00. You take that item to the cashier. The cashier adds the state sales tax to the $100. If that sales tax is 7 percent, you pay $107, take your receipt and walk out.
(b) FairTax: You look at the item on the shelf. The item is priced at $100. You take the item to the cashier. The cashier asks you for $100. You pay your $100, take your receipt and walk out. You look at the receipt. The receipt tells you that 23 percent of the $100 you paid for that item is the FairTax and will be forwarded to the federal government. You call upon your years of education and quickly calculate that $23 is 23 percent of $100.
This is really quite embarrassing when you examine it for more than a few seconds. The two books can't possibly the same item. A book that retailed at $100 under the current system would not magically cost 23% less in the Fair Tax. Whether the cost is $100 on the sticker, or $100 at the register, the retailer is only getting $77 in revenue by selling the item at $100 with the Fair Tax. Before he was getting $100. That assumes that the retailer is willing to eat the entire cost of the Fair Tax himself (minus whatever the savings in supply-side cost in the production of the book promised by the Fair Tax). That's simply not going to happen. Anytime a sales tax is levied on a retail purchase, the burden in a normal supply/demand market is shared to some degree by consumer and retailer (with the government getting a share, and with a share being lost as dead-weight loss). This is basic economics. Things WILL cost more at the register under the Fair Tax.
But that shouldn't be a problem for the Fair Tax supporters. With Americans controlling all of their income, they have more incentive to save money (one of the stated benefits of the Fair Tax), and have more purchasing power. This is not to mention the "prebate" given to all citizens in the form of a cash payout with the intention of covering all necessities.
It may sound like I am firmly against the Fair Tax. I'm not. I'm not exactly for it at this point either, but it's worth consideration. But right now the two most public faces are out their making ridiculous and unsupportable claims about their own position. Boortz was rightly called out on his own kind of voodoo economics (a term much more applicable here than when disingenuously used by the original iffy-conservative Republican, George H.W. Bush). Just today I heard him questioning the intellectual capacities of the WSJ editorial board. All this after he falls for the Huckabee magic as easily as Jim Gilchrist did. It's just not looking too good for him these days.
With friends like Huckabee and Boortz, the federal consumption tax idea might ponder the need for enemies.
Huckabee Does Not Heart Federalism, Limited Government
Ouch! For all the talk of the Republicans learning their lesson after 7 years of breaking the bank and expanding federal government, the current star of the GOP Primary is... Mike Huckabee?
A scathing explanation of his past as a governor can be found here.
Some highlights:
and
While there are candidate willing to take up the mantle of Barry Goldwater (Paul) and Ronald Reagan (Thompson, I guess), which was supposed to be the platform to get the Republicans back in power, everyone's darling is another W in the making. Thompson is floundering and Paul is still a longshot (even though I think his poll numbers are lower than reality because many likely voters don't show up as 'likely primary voters' by the pollsters' standards).
Huckabee knows how to pander and demagogue. I heard Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, telling Alan Handelman that he will be endorsing Huckabee because of his new immigration plan. Never mind that Huckabee was seen very recently as being an open-border fan.
And that's not the only instance of political opportunism. The consummate big-government conservative has endorsed the Fair Tax, garnering him praise from faux Libertarian radio talk show host Neal Boortz.
My only hope is that he'll split some votes amongst the other front runners, and maybe open a narrow window for Thompson or (yeah right) Paul.
A scathing explanation of his past as a governor can be found here.
Some highlights:
On its annual governor's report card, Cato gave Huckabee an "F" for fiscal policy during his final term, and an overall two-term grade of "D." Only four governors had worse scores, and 15 Democratic governors got higher grades, including well-known liberals like Ted Kulongoski of Oregon, Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania.But Huckabee doesn't just embrace big government in the form of big taxes. He truly appears to believe that if something is a good idea it should be a federal government program.
and
Under the Bush administration, the Republican Party has increasingly drifted away from its limited government roots. It has come to be dominated by a new breed of conservatives who believe in increasing the size, cost and power of government to achieve "conservative ends," even if that means limiting personal freedom in the process. Bush has brought us No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and a 23-percent increase in domestic discretionary spending, and Huckabee's been right there with him.
On election night in 2006, 55 percent of voters leaving the polls said they believed the Republican Party had become the party of big government. Mike Huckabee is doing his best to convert the other 45.
While there are candidate willing to take up the mantle of Barry Goldwater (Paul) and Ronald Reagan (Thompson, I guess), which was supposed to be the platform to get the Republicans back in power, everyone's darling is another W in the making. Thompson is floundering and Paul is still a longshot (even though I think his poll numbers are lower than reality because many likely voters don't show up as 'likely primary voters' by the pollsters' standards).
Huckabee knows how to pander and demagogue. I heard Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, telling Alan Handelman that he will be endorsing Huckabee because of his new immigration plan. Never mind that Huckabee was seen very recently as being an open-border fan.
And that's not the only instance of political opportunism. The consummate big-government conservative has endorsed the Fair Tax, garnering him praise from faux Libertarian radio talk show host Neal Boortz.
My only hope is that he'll split some votes amongst the other front runners, and maybe open a narrow window for Thompson or (yeah right) Paul.
Monday, October 22, 2007
More libertarian misconceptions
If you repeat it enough, it might as well be true.
The surprising fund raising numbers for Rep. Ron Paul are causing people to take notice of the libertarian movement. Unfortunately, the wrong ideas many people have about libertarianism are beat into their heads through repetition. And why not? The entrenched political elite on either side of the aisle are so engrossed in their Zoroastrian struggle that any deviation from The Way is heresy. So whether you're reading Time or even the Wall Street Journal (which is going to be as sympathetic as any big media outlet), you can't be surprised to hear the same old canards.
The following piece appeared in Time magazine. I saw it linked by Mitch Kokai over at the Locker Room.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1673265,00.html
I'll just quote from my email discussing the article with Mr. Kokai:
The Opinion Journal piece can be found here.
So: libertarians are not the same as libertines. The protection of rights cannot be achieved through anarchy. And the desire to keep troops close to home in most all circumstances (a far from certain tenet of libertarianism to begin with) has not the first thing to do with protectionism/isolationism.
The surprising fund raising numbers for Rep. Ron Paul are causing people to take notice of the libertarian movement. Unfortunately, the wrong ideas many people have about libertarianism are beat into their heads through repetition. And why not? The entrenched political elite on either side of the aisle are so engrossed in their Zoroastrian struggle that any deviation from The Way is heresy. So whether you're reading Time or even the Wall Street Journal (which is going to be as sympathetic as any big media outlet), you can't be surprised to hear the same old canards.
The following piece appeared in Time magazine. I saw it linked by Mitch Kokai over at the Locker Room.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1673265,00.html
I'll just quote from my email discussing the article with Mr. Kokai:
It does have some interesting political commentary, but again libertarianism comes off as horribly misrepresented in a MSM publication. Now the author does go out of his way to note that he’s speaking in completely unfair generalizations, but that’s no excuse for trotting out the tired, “Libertarians are against government in all its manifestations.” You can also learn from the article that being against or skeptical of pre-emptive, foreign military intervention makes one an isolationist (which I’m sure would come as a shock to the trade policy folks at the Cato Institute), and that government and society are essentially the same thing (which I’m sure would come as a shock to Alexis de Tocqueville).
Of course, reading such in Time was not nearly as disappointing as reading hints in an Opinion Journal piece that Libertarianism is essentially a sort of amoral, free-wheeling nihilism; a notion that a moderately libertarian conservative / very serious Christian such as myself finds particularly noxious.
My thanks [for linking] was not at all sarcastic. It is good to see that libertarianism is getting some publicity, perhaps largely because of the surprisingly serious campaign of Ron Paul. But the article also shows that some misconceptions will take silver bullets and wooden stakes.
The Opinion Journal piece can be found here.
So: libertarians are not the same as libertines. The protection of rights cannot be achieved through anarchy. And the desire to keep troops close to home in most all circumstances (a far from certain tenet of libertarianism to begin with) has not the first thing to do with protectionism/isolationism.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
NC Lotto Highlighted in NY Times
Article found here.
The article mentions the lackluster revenues from the lottery compared to predictions, and how higher payouts (and thus, lower returns) will be used to bring in more customers.
A couple of highlights:
It's definitely worth a read. H/T: JLF LockerRoom.
The article mentions the lackluster revenues from the lottery compared to predictions, and how higher payouts (and thus, lower returns) will be used to bring in more customers.
A couple of highlights:
States including Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina have enacted laws that prohibit substituting lottery dollars for money that would have otherwise gone to education. But such laws have not stopped legislators.Somehow, that sounds familiar.
States are also trying to bolster the number of “core” players, according to interviews with lottery officials in several states. Such players typically represent only 10 percent to 15 percent of all players but account for 80 percent of sales, according to Independent Lottery Research, which does research and marketing for state lotteries.I wonder. Will targeting that demographic be a regressive or progressive revenue grab?
It's definitely worth a read. H/T: JLF LockerRoom.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Pro Choice? Really?
Something occurred to me today about the candidates out there for President. I'm sure pretty most all of the Democratic choices would describe themselves, with varying degrees of certainty and pride, as pro choice.
Lets examine that.
Choice as to how you pay for your health care? Nope.
Choice as to how and when you actually receive your health care?
In one case, no. But for others, it's an inevitable slippery slope.
How about letting proprietors decide if their establishment will allow people to smoke? Or allow consumers or workers to choose which such establishments to patronize / work in? Surely you jest.
Lets examine that.
Choice as to how you pay for your health care? Nope.
Choice as to how and when you actually receive your health care?
In one case, no. But for others, it's an inevitable slippery slope.
How about letting proprietors decide if their establishment will allow people to smoke? Or allow consumers or workers to choose which such establishments to patronize / work in? Surely you jest.
Choice at the grocery store? Choice as to what candidates your money supports? Choice as to what views and opinions you listen to / watch / read?
Not in their America. But you can choose to end the life growing inside of you if you're a pregnant woman. And apparently that's enough to make you pro choice.
BTW, this phenomenon can be found on the 'GOP' side as well.
The supreme irony of all of this is that the candidate in either primary that most supports choice is the 0% NARAL rated OB/GYN from Texas who has delivered numerous babies.
Not in their America. But you can choose to end the life growing inside of you if you're a pregnant woman. And apparently that's enough to make you pro choice.
BTW, this phenomenon can be found on the 'GOP' side as well.
The supreme irony of all of this is that the candidate in either primary that most supports choice is the 0% NARAL rated OB/GYN from Texas who has delivered numerous babies.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Remember Reuters in the Israeli conflict in Lebanon?
Not to be outdone, the AP rubberstamps the following 'news' item:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_US?SITE=NCWILHN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
“In a region where the tradition of hospitality outweighs personal opinions about people…”
Says who?
“While Ahmadinejad likely expected at worst a hostile grilling by the audience, Bollinger's sardonic comments reflected a blatant disregard for the tradition of hospitality revered in the
Says who?
While you can’t expect a report out of
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Free Lunch
So there's a convenience store I like to stop at around work (won't specify which one). It's nearby, they have Saranac Ginger Beer, and the inked up guy behind the counter is always really nice. Anyway, I dropped in today to pick up some Tums. We started talking about what works for controlling heartburn besides just antacid tablets. I mentioned I had used Prilosec before. The clerk said that Nexium works really well. And then he said something I wasn't expecting. "I've got plenty of it if you want to try some." Which was very nice of him, of course. But I kinda shrugged him off. He was persistent: "No really, if you're around here Saturday, come by and pick some up. The stuff cost like $300 a bottle, but my insurance pays for it, and I've got a ton of the stuff."
You don't say...
You don't say...
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Robin Hoodwinked
As I was looking at the vote for the revamp(ir)ed corporate giveaway package, unsurprisingly, it fell largely along party lines. Only four Republicans and three Democrats crossed over the aisle. But then I started thinking about what those parties usually represent. Specifically, I was thinking back to a comment I read in this N&O article. "Tire manufacturing is coveted because of the pay and benefits associated with the jobs. Goodyear pays its Fayetteville workers an average of $55,000 a year. Hourly workers at Bridgestone also earn $55,000 a year." Now, socialist minded redistributionists, which the Democratic party presumably represents (at least more than the Republicans... I hope) might have a problem with that. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the per capita income in NC in 2005 was $31,041. I'm guessing, but am not entirely sure, that a fair amount of people between that number and the tire plant workers are paying something in State taxes. Wouldn't that make this a regressive redistribution? Perhaps not overall. Obviously those above $55,000/year are paying more of the taxes. But still, there are those making less than the tire plant workers that are helping to pay their wages. I'm not sure I've ever heard someone passionately claim they were, "Stealing from the lower middle class and giving to the middle middle class!!!"
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