Why the sudden increase in Income Inequality ??

If I see one more Rent Seeker trying to get more money for the Democrat Party Vote Farm by pointing out income inequality, unequal growth, and comparisons of The Golden Age Of Disco to now, I'm going to lose my damn mind. 

Yes.  The bottom 10% of the lowest quartile has not done as exponentially well as the upper quintile of the top 1%.  Or something.  

This disparity will only increase with globalization, and I'm glad of it.  Bill Gates has done far more for me than I've done for him.  This also applies to office personnel in Korea and Shanghai who use Bill Gates' software. 
Gates make money in ways that Henry Ford couldn't touch.  Very few Fords made it to Korea and Shanghai in Henry Ford's lifetime. 

Justin Bieber sells well in Russia and in Jerusalem.  Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale" who died in 1887, did not. 

But I digress.....

Here's one of the only charts that matter.  Male earnings are in red, female in blue.  Bachelor's degrees are at the top, less than a high school diploma is at the bottom. 

Look upon this, and despair. 

Let's take it a notch higher, shall we? 

Paul Krugman had a column in today's issue of Pravda about "The Undeserving Rich".  (Paul Krugman's net worth is now around $2.5 million.  And unless worth is generated by flip-flopping around like a catfish on a riverbank, Krugman is truly undeserving of his millions.) 

The column linked to this gem by Lawrence Mishel and Colin Gordon. 

Disregard that people generally don't wake up in one income percentile and stay there for their entire lives. 
Disregard that there is a 20% chance that you will, for one year of your life, be part of the Top 2%. 
Disregard that America's poor have higher incomes than the average European. 

Here's the income change from 1979 to 2012, according to Mishel and Gordon.  This is on the front page of the piece linked to by Krugman. 

But, thanks be to God, you can hit the little button on the right and take a look at what has happened since "The Greatest Government Orgy Of Recovery And Jobs Spending In History" took place. 

Despair some more, O Ye Keynesians. 

That's all I've got. 

Hope you finish school.  Don't get pregnant to someone you're not married to, and don't get married until you're about 25.  Don't become an alcoholic or a drug addict.

Abide by that, and you have a 98% chance of escaping poverty. 

Unless, of course, Barack Obama decides to help us some more.  The Porkulus Package, Cash For Clunkers, the Green Scams, and most all legislation of the last 5 years were for the rich, and not for you. 

If Washington keeps helping, then all bets are off.  Go ahead and start your drug habit now. 

Nyquil, Guns, and Wal-Mart

My friend Harper at Passed Up Strange, is getting ready for a holiday filled with drugs and guns and other weapons. 

She also has weighed in on Janet Napolitano's ghastly visage appearing on TV screens at Wal-Mart. 

Worth reading every day, that Harper.  Nyquil.  Guns.  Wal-Mart.  The three things that make life worthwhile. 

Why I don't like foreigners

There are lots and lots of reasons to dislike foreigners, immigrants, and people who aren't like us. 
Look what we're having to put up with, courtesy of WGN in Chicago:

An elderly couple says Cook County sheriff’s police on a drug raid smashed into their Southwest Side house late Thursday night, terrorizing them before admitting they had the wrong house.

With her husband already asleep, 84-year-old Anna Jakymek was just turning out the lights when she heard loud noises at the back and front doors about 11:30 p.m.

Ok, let's start there.  What kind of name for an American is Jakymek?  Americans should be named Smith, Jones, or Patterson.  

Her initial thought was that her 89-year old husband had fallen out of bed, but she realized something else was happening when she looked into the front room.
“I see maybe 20 guys come in and see the door knocked open,” she said…
Son Andrew said the most potent drug in the home is aspirin.

Right.  With a name that sounds like something from a bad brewpub?  Jakymek?  I'm not buying it. 

“They don’t smoke, drink or even watch TV. They believe in America,” he said.
He added that his father, Andrij, suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease and has terminal cancer.
“He won’t even take pain medicine,” he said…

Andrij ??  Andrij ?? Someone named Andrij isn't rolling up a fat one every night?  Gimme a break.

His mother, he said, called him after the raid at the request of the supervising sergeant on the scene. When he got there, he said he was told the officers had raided the wrong home.

“When I arrived the officer explained they had misinformation, but said his job was over, and he was leaving. They left a copy of the warrant, but he absolved himself of any responsibility for the raid or the damage,” Andrew Jakymec said.

Don't these freakin' foreigners know that there's a drug war going on?  And that we're in a constant battle to save people from....themselves? 
Can Andrew Jakymec pull his Eastern European head out of his rear end long enough to see the truth?  We need to preserve the monopolies of the Mexican Drug Lords and the Afghan Opium Poppy farmers. 
Every once in a while, somebody's gonna get hit with friendly fire.  Don't try playing the victim card just because you have a funny name.
We're in a drug war.  Love it or leave it.  

He estimated the damage to broken doors, locks and windows at up to $3,000.
“Everything was violently opened. Cabinets were ripped open, clothes and sheets were everywhere, and pieces of wood where the doors were rammed were all over the place,” he said.

Radley Balko is claiming that the Jakymeks came here in the 1960's from the Ukraine.  Something about escaping Soviet oppression. 
Well, if they're going to be bitching and moaning every time our police bust up the wrong house looking for small amounts of marijuana, they can take their asses back to Russia. 
How are we going to justify building a border fence without a drug war, Mr. Radley Balko? 
How can we "save and create" jobs for border patrol guards unless we continue our twin policies of drug prohibition and sharia law? 
Do you think we can continue fighting in Afghanistan for the next century without giving our enemies a monopoly on opium products?  Why, if we were to end prohibition, the Taliban would go broke in a month.  Then who would we fight?  
Now that I've had time to think about it, what kind of name is Balko?  It doesn't sound Texan.   

Remember: Foreigners bad.  Drug war good. 

Driving You To Drink

Check this out, from a link provided by Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine:

These are the top contributors to the main group opposing marijuana legalization in California. 

The #1 contributor is SA Recycling.  Guess what they recyle? 
Metal cans. 

The #2 contributor? 
The California Beer & Beverage Distributors.

#3 is someone named Diane Lake.  If the Diane Lake is the person whose contributions are shown here, she has given a ton of money to various Republicans and Barack Obama.  Not that there's any difference between the two on this issue. 

Ms. Lake is followed by the Deputy Sheriffs and the Narcotics Agents, two groups who are concerned about job security (their own, not the people whose lives they destroy because of a victimless crime).

Late and $5000+ Contributions Received
NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR CITY STATE/ZIP
GEORGE ADAMS ANAHEIM CA / 92869
ID NUMBER EMPLOYER OCCUPATION
SA RECYCLING RECYCLING
AMOUNT TYPE TRANS. DATE FILED DATE TRANS #
$10,000.00 INITIAL 9/9/2010 9/9/2010 1517618-INC85

NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR CITY STATE/ZIP
CALIF BEER & BEVERAGE DISTRIBUTORS STATE ISSUES SACRAMENTO CA / 95814
ID NUMBER EMPLOYER OCCUPATION
1326337
AMOUNT TYPE TRANS. DATE FILED DATE TRANS #
$10,000.00 INITIAL 9/7/2010 9/7/2010 1517176-INC54

NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR CITY STATE/ZIP
DIANE LAKE BAKERSFIELD CA / 93309
ID NUMBER EMPLOYER OCCUPATION
N/A NONE
AMOUNT TYPE TRANS. DATE FILED DATE TRANS #
$5,000.00 INITIAL 9/7/2010 9/7/2010 1517176-INC53

NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR CITY STATE/ZIP
PLACER COUNTY DEPUTY SHERIFF'S ASSOCIATION PAC LOOMIS CA / 95650
ID NUMBER EMPLOYER OCCUPATION
890856
AMOUNT TYPE TRANS. DATE FILED DATE TRANS #
$1,000.00 INITIAL 9/1/2010 9/2/2010 1516741-INC52

NAME OF CONTRIBUTOR CITY STATE/ZIP
CALIF. NARCOTIC OFFICERS' ASSOC. SANTA CLARITA CA / 91355
ID NUMBER EMPLOYER OCCUPATION
AMOUNT TYPE TRANS. DATE FILED DATE TRANS #
$20,500.00 INITIAL 7/13/2010 7/13/2010 1500207-INC17

Here's Steve Fox, co-author of Marijuana Is Safer, on the surprising number of Bud Distributors (the drink, not the weed) opposing marijuana legalization:

Unless the beer distributors in California have suddenly developed a philosophical opposition to the use of intoxicating substances, the motivation behind this contribution is clear. Plain and simple, the alcohol industry is trying to kill the competition. They know that marijuana is less addictive, less toxic and less likely to be associated with violent behavior than alcohol. So they don't want adults to have the option of using marijuana legally instead of alcohol. Their mission is to drive people to drink.

Pic came from here 

Dutch government to close 8 prisons - Not enough criminals

From Race Hochdorf's Facebook page, comes a link to the MPP Blog:

Netherlands To Close Prisons; Not Enough Criminals

For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed — falsely — that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:

The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don’t have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.

Just for fun, let’s compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California’s actual prison population is 171,000.

So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?

If marijuana did not exist, the Prison Guards Union, the Prison Construction Lobby, the Parole Officers, and the SEIU would have to invent it.  God, what a waste of lives, money, and taxes, all in the name of "saving and creating jobs". 

Wyndham Wilson, Richard Pazdur, Natalie Compagni Portis, and Jean Grem - Bureaucrats who know more than your doctor

You may have heard of Avastin. 

Last month, an FDA advisory board recommended withdrawing government approval of Avastin as a treatment for advanced breast cancer. The decision betrays a bias that puts costs above treatment, and unless the FDA leadership overrules its own experts, the 40,000 women killed by breast cancer each year will be denied an important clinical option.

From a series of links provided by Instapundit.....

Here's Ann Althouse, quoting the Wall Street Journal:

So here we have government-anointed medical patriarchs substituting their own subjective view of Avastin's risks and costs for the value that doctors and patients recognize. If Avastin is rescinded, thousands of dying women will lose more than proverbial false hope in the time they have left. They will lose a genuinely useful medicine.

And here's Ms. Althouse:

There are death panels. They don't want to be seen as death panels, because to be seen as death panels will undermine their relentless, bureaucratic work. So see them.

Who are they?  Nobody really knows, do they?  They meet in their little rooms, cast their little votes, and then hand down their verdicts predicated on the idea that they know more than your doctor.  Here's Instapundit one last time, on the subject of "naming names":

And name names, which, as I’ve noted before, undercuts the diffusion of responsibility that bureaucrats prefer. In this case, some names are Wyndham Wilson, the chair of the committee, and Richard Pazdur, the FDA’s cancer chief. Also committee members Natalie Compagni Portis, and Jean Grem, both quoted here.

Here's the difficulty, IMAO.....   The government has set up an elaborate series of hurdles that any pharmaceutical company must jump before a new drug is approved for sale in the U.S.     I've read estimates claiming a regulatory cost of one billion dollars per medicine.  Here's one estimate that puts it at 800 million.   Much of this cost is overkill.
Combine this with the elaborate series of hurdles known as Medicare and Medicaid, and you have the perfect storm.  Your health is now in the hands of dueling bureaucracies.   One bureaucracy is charged with ensuring that you are 100% safe, regardless of the cost.  The other is charged with ladling out treatment in an approved, inexpensive manner.  Which side is gonna win?

Back to Avastin.  For the love of God, it is a freakin' cancer medication.  And if you have cancer and your doctor doesn't find a treatment, you are going to die. 
Would it lower the morale of our Bureaucratic Lords And Masters if they simply said "Look, you folks are free to try this medicine.  Hell, you're dying.  The pharmaceutical companies are free to manufacture this medication for the lowest cost possible.  Consider yourselves part of the research.  The medicine can now be produced at a much lower price, as long as it has a red stamp on the lid that says UNREGULATED."

Now, transfer that thinking to all pharmaceutical products.  Transfer that thinking to restaurants, stepladders, florists, beauty salons, and funeral homes. 
If you trust a cabal of bureaucratic hacks more than you trust your doctor, your neighbors, or word of mouth, then you should be free to pay more for the regulated products. 
If not, you should be free to make your own choices. 

Food For The Machine

I have an acquaintance named James who just got sent to jail for four months.

James and I have a mutual friend named Judy, who called me yesterday, absolutely frantic. James had already gone to be an Involuntary Guest Of The State, he had no way to prepay four months’ rent on his small garage apartment, and unless Judy could find a way to get the rest of his possessions to a storage facility, everything James owned would either be dumped out on the curb or sold for back-payment of rent.
I was able to help Judy get the remainder of James’s furniture moved to a 10’x10’ storage space that she and another friend had rented. Had those two ladies not been willing to do this, James would have been released from prison owning absolutely nothing.

Think about that for a minute….starting over with a criminal record, and owning nothing. Then think of having to face a plague of counselors, probation officers, parole officers and other leeches, all with their hands in your pockets, trying to collect their Oversight Fees, payments for counseling sessions, payments for drug tests, and other legal rip-offs.

James will probably spend the rest of his life as food for this vile machine, ensuring that some Civil Service lifer is able to collect a good pension at the age of 50.

So what did James do to deserve such treatment?

Did he injure someone with his vehicle, the way Ted Kennedy did, and then leave his victim to drown?
Did he try and fail to blow up some buildings, like Bill Ayers?
Or did he drug and rape a 13-year old, like Roman Polanski?

James didn’t do anything to harm anyone else, the way those three guys did. He's only guilty of doing something that our last three presidents have done.

James was pulled over because of his license plate or inspection sticker was expired. The cops used that as an excuse to rip his car open from bumper to bumper. They finally found an ounce of marijuana and hauled James to jail.
Unlike presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, or contenders like John Kerry, Al Gore, and Sarah Palin, all of whom have smoked weed, James is in jail.
Unlike Barack Obama, who did cocaine as a teenager, James is in jail.

Chances are, you have voted for at least two of the politicians listed above. Why is it that you don’t hold drug use against presidential candidates and will support them in their efforts to be Leaders Of The Free World, but if a night-shift welder is caught with 4 joints’ worth of marijuana, you believe he should go to prison and then have to spend years explaining himself to, and being monitored by, government munchkins?

We have a higher percentage and a higher raw number of prisoners than any other country on earth. We are devastating the male African-American population for the sole purpose of “saving and creating jobs” in the counseling, drug-testing, prison-building and law enforcement industries.

Mexican drug lords are destroying their country - all for the right to be monopoly drug suppliers for the United States. The parallels between 2010 and our failed 1920's alcohol prohibition experiment are too obvious for even the most dense politician to ignore. Al Capone and a plethora of other gangsters grew wealthy supplying something that everyone wanted. Grandmothers started making their own bathtub gin. Lawlessness erupted around the border – but in this case, it was our border with Canada!

In places where we legalized alcohol, the bootlegger violence stopped. Alcohol usage didn’t skyrocket, it merely moved out into the open again, and there was no sudden increase in alcoholism.

There are only two politicians of note who are willing to go on record stating that they favor marijuana legalization – Republican Ron Paul (TX) and Democrat Jim Webb (VA).
The other politicians no longer have ignorance as an excuse. They aren’t misguided or misinformed, and they aren’t looking out For The Children®.

They are evil.

An Army officer comments on the Columbia Missouri drug raid

This video has now been seen by more than 1.2 million people.

Go here for my thoughts on why we continue to put up with government employees breaking down a door in the middle of the night, shooting two of the family dogs in front of a 7-year-old boy, finding a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, and then charging the homeowner with "child endangerment".
(It's because we're sheep.) 



Here's an email to Radley Balko from an army officer serving someplace in Afghanistan:

I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.


For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they're after is present at the location, and that it's too dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be pretty tough to convince, too. (I'm a staff liason, and one of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required permission.)

Generally, our troops, including the special ops guys, use what we call "cordon and knock": they set up a perimeter around the target location to keep people from moving in or out,and then announce their presence and give the target an opportunity to surrender. In the majority of cases, even if the perimeter is established at night, the call out or knock on the gate doesn't happen until after the sun comes up.

Oh, and all of the bad guys we're going after are closely tied to killing and maiming people.

What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority of our targets surrender when called out.

I don't have a clear picture of the resources available to most police departments, but even so, I don't see any reason why they can't use similar methods.

And here's Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit on the officer's comments:

Quite different from using door-busting tactics to serve warrants on nonviolent drug offenders. Of course, one difference is that we care about winning the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan . . . .

Missouri SWAT team raids home, shoot two dogs in front of 7-year old, find "small amount" of marijuana: Mission Accomplished ! !

Back in March, I linked to a Radley Balko post about a nasty incident in Missouri where a SWAT team broke into a family's home, shot and killed one of their dogs, and then shot an injured their Corgi. All in front of a 7-year old.

Those Corgis, you gotta watch out for them.

Since Obama's goon squad discovered a misdemeanor-level amount of marijuana on the premises, they were able to charge the homeowner with possession and child endangerment.

In the words of Mr. Balko:

So smoking pot = “child endangerment.”

Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.
Just so we’re clear.

My take on Obama's Boys In Black went as follows:

Yeah, you can argue that the police were just doing their job. And the courts, when they convict someone of marijuana possession, they're just doing their job. So are the jailers, the social workers, the prison guards, the prison construction lobby, and the drug cartels that depend on our laws to preserve their monopoly.

When are we going to stop paying people to do this job?

We now have the Gestapo's Swat Team's video of the incident.  Imagine this is your home.  It's your yard.  That's your son, and those are your pets. 
The homeowner is named Jonathan Whitworth.  His reaction at the 2:50 mark is heartbreaking. 



How much longer are we going to put up with this? Especially when our last three presidents have affirmed that they've smoked marijuana?  Or in Obama's case, used cocaine? 

First they came for the Corgis, and I did not speak up....

Please email this post to every drug warrior you know. 

Happy 4-20

From Snopes.com:

It's both more and less than people make it out to be. '420' began its sub-rosa linguistic career in 1971 as a bit of slang casually used by a group of high school kids at San Rafael High School in California. '420' (always pronounced "four-twenty," never "four hundred and twenty") came to be an accepted part of the argot within that group of about a dozen pot smokers, beginning as a reminder of the time they planned to meet to light up, 4:20 p.m. Keep in mind this wasn't a general call to all dope smokers everywhere to toke up at twenty past four every day; it was twelve kids who'd made a date to meet near a certain statue. It's thus incorrect to deem that '420' originated as a national or international dope-smoking time, even though the term began as a reference to a particular time of day.

These days '420' is used as a generic way of declaring one likes to use marijuana or just as a term for the substance itself. Its earliest connotation of having to do with the time a certain group of students congregated to smoke wacky tobaccy is unknown to the overwhelming majority of those who now employ the term.

Here's a short little video on why marijuana is illegal.  The answer, of course, is politics. 



I'm indirectly responsible for the drug-testing program for one section of my company, and I support the program 100%.   If employers don't want to hire people who smoke dope, drink alcohol, cuss, don't love Jesus, or are left-handed, that's nobody's business but their own. 
But should any of the above be criminalized, as long as smoking dope, drinking alcohol, cussing, failing to love Jesus, or being left-handed harms no one else? 
No.  Absolutely not. 

Happy 4-20 ! 

The New Jim Crow - by Michelle Alexander

* There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.


* As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.


* If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits -- much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.

Scary stuff, isn't it?

During my morning mandatory treadmill time, I watched the following C-Span interview with Michelle Alexander.

She's the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Age Of Colorblindness. 

The video is around 45 minutes long, and I'm posting it here for future reference.  Lord have mercy, what an indictment against our government.   



I see victims of the system every day.  They come in applying for jobs.  They've been unemployed for years.  Decades, in some cases. 
Why?  Because when they were 19 years old, they got busted for marijuana possession. 
They have a permanent mark on their record that leaves most employers unwilling to take a chance on hiring them. 
Combine that with idiotic, racist, minimum wage legislation, and Ta-Da !    You've created permanent Food For The Machine. 

Let me explain. 

We have more prisoners than any other nation - 25% of the world's total, despite having only 6% of the world's population.  According to the Michelle Alexander interview, if we were to go back to the 1970's-era incarceration rates, we would have to release 4 out of 5 prisoners currently doing time.

We have so many prisoners that we're having to privatize the cages that we're using to lock up black kids.  Ordinarily, Big Gubmint likes to run everything, but this particular growth industry is beyond them.  Marijuana prohibition creates tens of thousands of jobs, public and private. 

The prison lobby advocates building more and more cages.  (Here's a great link on the prison lobby.  Here's a more specific one on how it works in Texas.)

When the prisoners are released, many of them have to pay for part of the cost of their incarceration. 
They often have to pay for their own parole officers, counseling sessions, etc. and after talking to ex-cons for about 10 years, I'm of the opinion that most of these counselors couldn't counsel a 3-year-old to go the potty. 

If they fail to make these payments, they're either locked up again, or their paychecks are garnished.  After all, the private prison system has to be paid, right?  (Some of these private prison groups are traded on Wall Street.)

Now that you have all that info, can you explain the difference between the current system and slavery?
Do you understand why the prison lobby, in its public and private form, fights so hard to preserve the system? 

Go here to read about John Kerry, John Edwards, and John Dean's "youthful indiscretions" with marijuana use.  Go here to read about Al Gore smoking weed.  Then add George W. Bush, who affirms that he's smoked marijuana, and Barack Obama, who admits to all of the above, plus cocaine. 

What would've become of Barack Obama if he'd been locked in a cage at age 19? 

Marijuana use isn't held against presidential candidates.  So why the hell are we using it to justify creating slaves for the government? 

South Texas, Afghanistan, and the cost of prohibition

From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

MEXICO CITY — As more U.S. states permit medical marijuana, and California considers legalizing cannabis sales to adults, Mexico is voicing irritation at the gap between drug laws north and south of the border and saying it undercuts the battle against Mexico's violent drug cartels.

Mexico Secretary of the Interior Fernando Gomez Mont said last week the U.S. medical marijuana trend was "worrisome" and "complicates in a grave way" efforts to resolve Mexico's soaring drug-related violence.

....More states are permitting medical marijuana use, and New York may become the 15th to do so. California, which pioneered medical marijuana use in 1996, is moving even faster, setting a November vote on whether to legalize personal marijuana possession and allow regulated sales of marijuana to those over age 21. If approved, the move would be the first of its kind in the U.S.

A Mexican historian and commentator, Lorenzo Meyer Cossio, said the government of President Felipe Calderon "feels offended" by the growing trend of U.S. states to allow medical marijuana, or perhaps go further as California may do. Mexican laws against marijuana and narcotics remain tough, the result of U.S. pressure dating back more than half a century, he said.

....Calderon, the head of a center-right party, deployed 50,000 soldiers to the border days after coming to office in late 2006 to combat the cartels, which derive huge profits from marijuana as well as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.

....Mexican marijuana production is soaring, according to a report issued Thursday by the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

.....Even advocates of the decriminalization of marijuana in the U.S. said they empathize with Mexican leaders, who are deploying troops in a fierce battle with well-armed drug cartels at the urging of Washington.

They are caught in the middle of realities of U.S. consumer demands and American political intransigence," said Stephen Gutwillig, the California director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group for alternatives to the drug war.

Gutwillig said he thinks the trend toward allowing medical marijuana in U.S. states, and even the outright decriminalization of marijuana, would eventually weaken the Mexican drug cartels. "Any sort of authorized regulated market for marijuana in the United States cannot be good for the bottom line of criminal cartels," Gutwillig said.

Also from the Star-Telegram:

FORT HANCOCK -- When black SUVs trail school buses around here, no one dismisses it as routine traffic. And when three tough-looking Mexican men pace around the high school gym during a basketball game, no one assumes they're just fans.

Fear has settled over this border town of 1,700, about 50 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, epicenter of that country's bloody drug war. Mexican families fleeing the violence have moved here or just sent their children, and authorities and residents say gangsters have followed them across the Rio Grande to apply terrifying, though so far subtle, intimidation.
The message: We know where you are.
At schools in Fort Hancock and nearby Texas towns, new security measures and counseling for young children of murdered parents have become a troubling part of the day.

"I have friends with fathers who've been annihilated," said Israel Morales, a junior at Fort Hancock High School. "They just hug you and start crying. It just traumatizes you."
Mexican drug gangs have not fired a single shot in Fort Hancock, and no one has disappeared. But as drug violence continues unabated in and around Ciudad Juarez, residents of Texas border towns fear it will spread their way.

"There's been incidents of school buses followed, and threats to some of the students and threats to some of the staff," Hudspeth County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Wilson said. "It's caused us to really go on high alert."

Schools have installed security cameras and hired an armed off-duty sheriff's deputy to patrol its three campuses for the first time.

Here's Alfred W. McCoy, of the Countercurrents website, on one of our biggest problems in Afghanistan:

In the late 1990s, the Taliban, which had taken power in most of the country, lost any chance for international legitimacy by protecting and profiting from opium -- and then, ironically, fell from power only months after reversing course and banning the crop. Since the US military intervened in 2001, a rising tide of opium has corrupted the government in Kabul while empowering a resurgent Taliban whose guerrillas have taken control of ever larger parts of the Afghan countryside.

This is no better than anecdotal evidence, BUT.....  Among my ex-con employees, I've had two who worked on death row (cleaning, etc.).  According to them, prison authorities couldn't keep drugs out of death row.  Think of the implications. 
We're spending billions, incarcerating millions, and creating food for the Big Government machine by insisting on prohibiting something that certain people are going to do, no matter what. 
How much worst does the situation in Afghanistan and Mexico have to get before we end the Drug Lords' production monopoly? 

President Obama - Stop The Drug Wars ! !

The Work-Free Drugplace

From StopTheDrugWar.Org.....

The Missouri House Thursday passed a bill that would require welfare recipients to undergo drug testing upon "reasonable suspicion" they used drugs. But the Senate version of that bill, SB 607, is under sustained attack by Senate Democrats, who are filibustering it this week.

Under the bills, all work-eligible adults who received cash payments through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program would be drug tested if a caseworker has "reasonable suspicion" they are using drugs. Those who test positive would become temporarily ineligible for cash assistance, but their children could continue to receive benefits through a third party.
TANF is a federal program designed to help poverty-stricken parents provide for their children. In Missouri, more than 112,000 people get cash assistance through the program. The average family on the program gets $292 a month.
A legislative staff fiscal analysis of the Senate bill put the annual cost to the state at more than $5 million next year, and more than $6 million in coming years. Those figures represent the cost of drug testing an estimated 90,000 TANF recipients or new applicants each year and the cost of providing additional drug treatment services to deal with those who test positive.

This is one of those ridiculous sideshows that allows one of our ruling factions to show that they care about your money being wasted, while forcing the other faction to defend giving money to crackheads. 

What would happen if we broadened this proposal to cover other welfare recipients who don't fit the stereotype so well? 

Patricia Woertz, Chairman, CEO and President of Archer Daniels Midland Company, is an ethanol subsidy queen of the worst possible sort.  She has made a ton of money on the public teat.   I want Ms. Woertz (and the rest of her family) to go in for a supervised piss test before she receives another dime of taxpayer money.  She has three kids, and I'm worried about their exposure to this type of behavior. 

At my company, if a driver is involved in any accident that causes damage to people or property, they have to go in for a urinalysis.  Chris Dodd, please report for your drug screen.  We are still trying to find someone willing to test Barney Frank. 

Under the phenomenally corrupt deals within the pending healthcare monstrosity, Nebraskans will receive something called "The Cornhusker Kickback".  Mary Landrieu orchestrated something called "The Louisiana Purchase" for her Louisiana constituents.  Florida gets something mockingly named "Gatoraid".  The residents of these states need to get a test tube, get in line, and give us at least three ounces.  (Note to my Cajun friends in Louisiana: Nobody is impressed if you can supply 16 ounces.  Nobody.  Don't bother.)  This should take a while, but the results will be in the mail before the November elections, which is all that matters in any of this. 

Are you a farmer?  Are you one of the ten percent of all farmers who collected 74 percent of all subsidies amounting to $130.6 billion dollars over a 12 year period?   Get your wholesome, welfare-queen-condemning, salt-of-the-earth rear ends in line to fill up a piss cup.  (Warning: Don't bother substituting livestock urine.  It's been done before, and we know what you're up to.) 

Al Gore is trying valiantly to force you to use products and technologies developed by his partners at the venture capital firm of Kleiner-Perkins.  Well, Al, you're not going to get a cent until you can prove that you're not on crack.  Plus, there are a lot of us who are just curious. 

Seriously, why stop at the "traditional" welfare recipient?  Let's test military contractors.  Let's have every recipient of the Porkulus kickbacks go in for a urinalysis.  Want an NEA grant?  Prove that you haven't smoked weed, and good luck to you.  Are you a UAW employee, and did Obama save your job with taxpayer money?  Get in line. 

Just think....if the Missouri Republicans and I get our way, we'll soon be doing nothing but test each other. 

Welcome to the Work-Free Drugplace. 

The poster came from here. 

The Weekly Radley - They Shot The Corgi

From The Columbia Daily Tribune:

A SWAT team broke into a guy's home, shot and killed one of his dogs, and then shot and injured his Corgi (here's a pic of a Corgi)....

....but they only found enough marijuana in the home to file misdemeanor charges against the homeowner. 

Here's Radley Balko on the incident:

So smoking pot = “child endangerment.”

Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.


Just so we’re clear.

Yeah, you can argue that the police were just doing their job.  And the courts, when they convict someone of marijuana possession, they're just doing their job.  So are the jailers, the social workers, the prison guards, the prison construction lobby, and the drug cartels that depend on our laws to preserve their monopoly.

When are we going to stop paying people to do this job? 

John Stossel on Pharmaceutical Regulations - Who owns you?

John Stossel's program last night was about the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, and the FDA (and DEA) witholding medications that can save lives, prolong lives, or at least ease pain. 

It will be replayed several times between now and next Thursday.  Please, please, please TIVO it.  If I ever earn enough money, I'm going to set up a college scholarship for the high school students who write the best essays about this rare hour of good television. 

There was a recent Harrison Ford/Brendan Fraser movie on the subject of the government witholding approval for medications.  It's called Extraordinary Measures.  Here's the trailer:



The movie asks this simple question: "If my children are dying, who the hell are you to tell me what meds I can and can't give them?"  The father of the kids featured in the film, John Crowley, was a guest on the program.

Stossel showed several clips of Bruce Tower, a guy with prostate cancer.  There are several promising drugs currently being tested on other cancer victims, but the FDA won't allow this dying guy access to them because they might not be safe.  Swear to God.  Tower asks the question "If I'm dying, who the hell are you to tell me what meds I can and can't take?"

Stossel told of a drug that the FDA finally released after a ridiculously long testing period.  The FDA claimed that it would save the lives of 14,000 women per year.  Stossel then asked a great question.  If women were asking for the drug prior to it's approved release, should the FDA be blamed for the murder of 14,000 women per year?

If you're dying, and are in terrible pain, who is the FDA to tell you what you may and may not ingest to ease your pain? 

If Montel Williams (a Stossel guest) and Melissa Etheridge both suffer from conditions that they claim are improved by smoking marijuana, and they smoke marijuana, does this harm you?  Does it harm the FDA?  Does it harm the DEA?  I think not.  So why do we tolerate these people who claim to own us? 

Stossel didn't ask this one, but I will.  Why do so many of the people who claim to support A Woman's Right To Choose then turn around and defend the nanny state's intervention in so many other choices? 

Who owns you? 

Go here for a transcript of a Bill O'Reilly/Stossel interview on this subject, in which John Stossel takes O'Reilly's lunch, carves it into small bites, dips it into Ranch dressing, and consumes it with gusto. 



Make a note to yourself. Set you TV to TIVO this NOW.