That’s Why They Call It Dope

Every once in a while, a story comes along that just makes you laugh. That’s the case with a new scientific study about the effects of smoking pot. Get this. . . smoking pot makes you stupid. Really? Noooo way, dude!

The study in question was conducted by an international team under an NHS grant. They followed 1,000 teenage boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 14 for twenty years. Each test subject was given a battery of IQ tests. What the researchers found was that the test subjects who smoked marijuana in their teens fell behind their non-smoking peers by 8 points on these IQ tests by the time they turned 38. That may not sound like much, but it’s enough to take someone from average intelligence to the bottom third of the population. Moreover, these same users also showed early signs of dementia, which is a very bad thing.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone however. Anyone who has known a pot smoker knows that they are, in a word, stupid. They are slow, they have poor memory recall and their personalities are like talking to mud. And that’s when they aren’t high.

No doubt the pot legalizers will dismiss this because they dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their idea that smoking pot is healthy. But this study merely confirms what anyone with a brain should already know. So the next time some pothead tells you that smoking pot is harmless, go ahead and shove them down some stairs. . . I said Dave’s not here!

Speaking of dopeheads, the left is once again out in full force polluting the airways with their intolerance and idiocy. As some of you are no doubt aware, the Republicans are currently holding a little get-together in Tampa right now. So check out these quotes from famous celebrity haters:

● Ellen Barkin, who hasn’t had a hit in forever, tweeted this:

“C’mon #Isaac! Wash every pro-life, anti-education, anti-woman, xenophobic, gay-bashing, racist SOB right into the ocean! #RNC”

Nice! She’s wishing death on her political opponents, just like a good tolerant liberal.

● Samuel L. Jackson, who is quickly losing my respect, tweeted that he “was not understanding God’s plan” since God had "spared" Tampa. He said:

"Unfair Shit: GOP spared by Issac! NOLA prolly Fucked Again! Not understanding God's plan!"

Unlike Barkin, he at least apologized. . . sort of, a few hours later, saying “Apologies to God, Tampa, da GOP & Isaac! Who played the Race card?!”

Who indeed Samuel L? It sounds to me like you played the race card a couple weeks back and Obama and Chris Matthews have been playing it all week. Also, reading your quote as written, you seem to be implying that God, Tampa, the GOP and Isaac all played the race card. Stay off the dope Sam, it makes you stupid.

Perhaps we should return the favor and hope that Hollywood gets wiped out by a tsunami or an earthquake or a plague of rabid hamsters, but I’m not liberal, so I don’t wish death on my political opponents or on the people of cities where those political opponents happen to be meeting.


By the way, for those who didn't watch the convention last night, the speeches were excellent. This has been one of the better conventions I remember in my lifetime.

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My Advice To Social Conservatives

I said last week that social conservatives have not done a great job winning over the public on social issues. There are some minor advances here and there, but for every advance there is full retreat in some other area. I think a change of strategy is called for on all fronts.

Let me start with three broad principles:

● Principle One: It’s time to get rational about the goals social conservatives want to achieve and how to achieve them. This means putting an end to pie-in-the-sky ideas like constitutional amendments to force change. Not only is that easily lampooned in light of the conservative claim to states’ rights, but it’s pointless because there is simply no way to get any constitutional amendment through the Congress and then passed by enough states. It is impossible, and talking about it wastes time and diverts resources from better causes. Moreover, talking about changing the constitution, scares the public, who will automatically see this as extreme and dangerous. So drop the idea of trying to solve everything with one shot and learn the art of incrementalism, i.e. achieving your goal little by little. This isn’t sexy, but it’s the only effective way to achieve controversial goals under our system.

● Principle Two: Drop the harsh rhetoric. The fiery pulpit speeches may work well in church, but the public sees them differently. To the public, they are evidence that social conservatives are hateful people who can’t deal with the modern world and who want to judge everyone else. This is a self-inflicted wound.

● Principle Three: You can’t win with religion-based arguments. Those simply don’t work with the modern public because the vast majority of the public doesn’t see the Bible as the thing which runs their day-to-day lives. Indeed, while 90% of the public claims to believe in God, only 40% claim to go to church “regularly” (there is reason to believe the real number is closer to 20%). And even of those who go, there is a disconnect between what the churches teach and how people live their lives -- the classic example of this are Catholics, who love the Pope, but ignore his rules. And even then, different denominations and different religions have different views about what their religion tells them, e.g. some accept gay marriage, some don’t. So premising arguments on religion is a bad start because you lose most of your audience. Moreover, in making these arguments, social conservatives end up bypassing the stronger arguments they should be making.

Ok, now let’s look at specific policies.

● Abortion: Abortion is an area where social conservatives are largely doing it right because they’ve adopted incrementalism. In the 1980s and early 1990s, abortion opponents kept looking for the home run, and it never came. It wasn’t until they learned to take the issue step by step that they began to make progress. The goal right now should be to entirely eliminate public funding, which is what keeps the abortion lobby alive, and to impose restrictions which the public will find reasonable.

One thing that needs to be dropped is this ridiculous idea of extending 14th Amendment rights to fetuses. Not only does this scare people, and thus is counterproductive, but it cannot pass, and it is almost the classic example of unintended consequences. Give fetuses rights and they can sue pregnant women if they don’t stop smoking or drinking or otherwise fail to follow doctor’s orders. This is a Pandora’s box of legal insanity which liberal interest groups will gleefully use to invade families. Think twice people.

● Gays: The gay marriage battle is lost. Yes, it won’t gain any more support in conservative states for the moment, but this issue is inevitable because the younger public really doesn’t see gays as a threat. Indeed, gays have pretty much proven there is nothing to fear from gay marriage. So so-cons better find proof fast to refute this.

A better strategy would be to switch over to a religious freedom argument. Right now, social conservatives have let themselves by placed on the wrong side of the gay marriage debate because gays have argued they are the ones seeking “freedom.” The reality is they have freedom and they are really seeking to use government power to impose their beliefs on others. But so-cons aren’t arguing that. Instead, they talk about “morality,” which is a loser. What they need to do is argue the religious freedom aspect, i.e. that gays are seeking to take away freedom by forcing others to accept them. Americans always vote for whoever is offering the greater freedom, so-cons need to learn to explain this better.

I also recommend giving serious thought to getting the government out of the marriage business entirely, as I discussed HERE.

● Drugs: Social conservatives are losing the drug war, particularly marijuana, because they’ve adopted the wrong argument. They’re arguing that drugs are bad for you/society. But that’s a nanny state argument. And indeed, the pro-pot people have merely had to argue that pot isn’t that bad to slowly win over a near-majority. The better argument involves civil freedoms. If we allow people to take drugs, then we either need to change negligence laws dramatically (in ways people really won’t like), or we will end up imposing huge costs on employers, employees and the economy because of the need for widespread drug testing. Why? Because any company that makes any product or provides any service which can injury someone (i.e. any company) will need to take steps to ensure that their workers are not high when they are working. That means widespread drug testing of everyone with a job. Right now the argument is “should the government be allowed to stop Person X from smoking pot at home.” But the argument should be, “are YOU willing to undergo constant drug testing to protect your employer from lawsuits just because the government decides to legalize drugs for the few who want it?” That’s a very different matter. I’ve discussed this HERE.

● Religious Freedom: This one’s a can of worms. A lot of social conservatives are going down a very dangerous path with the idea of religious freedom laws. Specifically, they are pushing bills which prohibit employers from stopping employees from engaging in religious practices or wearing religious items, e.g. crucifixes. This should send up huge red flags for conservatives. For one thing, conservatives have opposed employment-discrimination-based lawsuits almost across the board when it comes to gays, blacks, women and disability. Why make an exception for religion? Shouldn’t a private employer be entitled to impose whatever restrictions they want on the people they pay to be their employees? Can’t the employees just go elsewhere if they don’t like it?

Further, there is an obvious flaw here which social conservatives are overlooking because they tend to equate the word “religion” with their brand of Christianity: our Constitution doesn’t allow discrimination amongst religions. Thus, if you give people absolute power to act out their religious beliefs at work, that would include things like the wearing of the Islamic veil or separation of men and women, the handling of snakes, the smoking of peyote and whatever other crazy ideas these fringe religions can dream up.

This also applies to things like prayer in schools. If you seek legislation to allow that nice Protestant Principal to say a prayer each morning, except that your kids may also find themselves forced to sit through an Islamic prayer or Buddhist ritual or even an atheist’s speech. Unless you want other religions forced upon you and your children, it is best to always keep in mind that any new power you give yourself can be used by others as well.

Frankly, the best bet here is to vote with your feet and your wallets. Don’t support businesses which are hostile to your religious beliefs. Do support friendly ones. Stop seeing movies, watching television shows, or buy videogames with bad messages in them. Use the power of boycott. Send your kids to religious schools and volunteer to make sure those schools are the best (a shining example). In this regard, support legislation which lets federal money follow the students to whatever schools they choose -- trust people to make the right choices rather than trying to use the government to force the right choices upon them. Remember, you have to win people over, you can’t force them to believe what you want them to believe.

The big takeaway here is that social conservatives need to learn to speak to people who don’t share their religious beliefs -- framing things in religious terms simply will not work for anyone who doesn’t agree with your religious beliefs. They need to learn that a thousand small victories are better than the false hopes of complete victory in fell swoop. And they need to think more about the unintended consequences of the policies they propose and they need to realize that others will get to use the same powers they create in the law.

Thoughts?


P.S. Don't forget, it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site.
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Is It Time To End The War On Drugs?

America is now involved in three or four undeclared foreign wars (depending on how you count). But America's longest war still goes on. In 1971, President Richard Nixon went on national television to declare that if we didn't destroy the drug menace, it would surely destroy us.

Since then, the number of dead, dying and injured, along with armed clashes on both sides of the Mexican border may not be a war, but it certainly looks a lot like one. If we take the favorite expression of the left regarding war--"quagmire"--this makes our other wars, including the current ones, look like a brief walk in the park. Every once in awhile, a conservative writer will argue that the war has been lost. Most recently from my perspective is an article from an old occasional ally, occasional nemesis Debra Saunders at the San Francisco Chronicle. Her June 12 article was entitled "At Least 4 Good Reasons To End the War on Drugs."

As one observer of war said: "Every war plan is perfect, until the shooting starts." That seems to apply to the war on drugs. Nixon's original proposal was for $155 million federal dollars in anti-drug funding, but set aside $115 million of that sum "solely for the treatment and rehabilitation of drug-addicted individuals." Saunders used some of the standard arguments for ending the war on drugs, but to start with, she does point out that drug use is up, 118 million Americans have used illegal drugs, and the cost of prosecuting the drug war and offenders continues to mount.

I am most definitely not an advocate for drug legalization. But Saunders's article got me thinking that the states seem to be much better at handling their drug problems than the federal government. Drug use and abuse is neither monolithic nor the same from state to state. Federal assistance in preventing drug importation may be a great deal more useful in the border states than in the interior states. We now have at least three Presidents who have hinted at or admitted to drug use themselves, though naturally they wouldn't touch the stuff now. Leaving the drug war to the federal government alone is an exercise in unthinking silliness.

Since its inception at the federal level, the war on drugs has produced 900,000 criminally-active gang members representing more than 20,000 gangs devoted exclusively to mid-level and retail drug distribution. The federal government is best at handling the top-level wholesalers, importers and cartels, but usage and abuse of drugs happens locally, a matter best handled by the states. The drug-related crime rate in DC itself is a pretty good indication of how bereft of good ideas the federal authorities actually are. And the federal government dictates terms to the states which result in some very odd results.

Most recently, the US Supreme Court ordered the release of a huge number of California prison inmates because of overcrowding. Yet a sizable percentage of those "overcrowded" prisoners are in prison in the first place for possession and/or use of illegal drugs. But if California wants those federal funds for its law enforcement divisions, it has to adhere to the draconian drug laws set out in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, including mandatory minimum sentences. Very little wiggle room is left for the states to use alternate means of dealing with drug abusers. Legalization is not the answer, but look at California to see what happens if you send them all "up the river" for lengthy periods of time.

One of the arguments in favor of legalizing recreational drug use is that it will produce a net gain in government revenue received. That is hard to prove, but if all states are required to adhere to the same rules, we'll never know. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron says that in 2008 legalizing drugs would have saved federal, state and local authorities $44 billion per year while bringing in $33 billion if the drugs were taxed. Sounds good, but how can that be proven as long as the federal government holds a tight rein on the states' ability to "get creative" with mixed prosecution, diversion, treatment and alternate forms of detention? As it currently stands, those figures are simply pulled out of a hat.

Worst of all, those advocating legalization use facts and figures almost entirely related to marijuana in order to avoid discussing the far more serious societal problems caused by use of hard drugs. They also bring up individual rights, as if use of cocaine or heroin is a "right" comparable to having a few too many beers on a hot Sunday afternoon. But as long as the federal government determines which drugs could be safely decriminalized in order to alleviate enforcement and incarceration problems, we'll never be able to test what works and what doesn't. It's also important to note that decriminalization and legalization are not the same thing.

California and thirteen other states have made simple possession of small amounts of marijuana an "infraction" (not a crime) which does not allow the user to go scot-free. Eventually, a youthful infraction can be expunged from the public record, and there's no public criminal record to follow the youthful mistake into responsible adulthood. Former Baltimore narcotics cop Neill Franklin says: "President Obama needs to think about where he would be right now had he been caught with drugs as a young black man. It's probably not in the Oval Office, so why does he insist on ramping up a drug war that needlessly churns other young black men through the criminal justice system?" I am the last person to use the word "racism" loosely, but there has traditionally been a strong racial element in prosecution of drug sales and use, particularly in the matter of crack cocaine versus powder cocaine.

I come away from Saunders's recitation of facts and figures with a different conclusion from hers. She appears to be ready to surrender and declare a victory. But that doesn't seem like the right conclusion to be drawn. Perhaps it is simply that the war is being micromanaged from Washington DC instead of leaving the daily decisions on how, when and where to fight to the field commanders (the states). Policy wonks and elected politicians far from the battlefield are not the best people to be deciding how to handle the daily logistics of fighting a war with numerous fronts.

Perhaps the federal government could stick to enforcing interstate and intercontinental drug manufacturing and transport law, and loosen up the rules restricting the states from considering, writing and enforcing their own drug laws, including which drugs remain forbidden and which are decriminalized or even legalized. It wouldn't be an easy transition, and there would be many problems. Some states would opt to retain rigid drug laws exactly as they are today. Others would likely modify the rules, decriminalize certain drugs and regulate their use, while others would go off the deep end and legalize pretty much everything. But those decisions would be back in the hands of the people instead of distant federal legislators, "experts," czars and bureaucrats. It would finally transform theory into practice, allowing us to see if any theory other than rigid prohibition and enforcement would lower the human and financial toll of the war.

Before the federal leviathan swallowed up the prerogatives and rights guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, the states were known as the crucibles of experimentation and inventiveness. It could turn out that the federal war on drugs is the right one, but we will never be able to be sure if there is another way so long as the states are forbidden to do that experimentation.

We have touched on this subject in the past, directly and indirectly. To review those articles, go to our Index, and click on "drugs."
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When Is A Coyote Not A Coyote?

When it's a scumbag who exploits Mexican nationals by gouging them monetarily and abusing them physically as they bring them illegally across the southern American border. But that's not really the point of this article. I just read an Associated Press dispatch about euphemisms being used in Mexico for all the violence resulting from the drug wars.

It seems there are two lines of thought about why euphemisms and verbal shorthand are commonplace among all classes of Mexican citizens. Either (or both) may be correct. The first line is that jargon anesthetizes people by making extreme behavior seem mundane, and may be an intentional plan formed by the drug cartels. The second is that it is a psychological defense mechanism that the average person uses to deal with the horrific. I don't come down on either side, at least for now.

This list is not even close to being exhaustive, but hits the most common euphemisms surrounding the drug violence that is slowly spilling across the border. "Narco" has become the common usage for those involved in the violent drug trade, and it also serves as a prefix for other expressions deriving from the violence. "Narco fosas" are pits where the drug gangs dispose of their victims. "Narco mantas" are the threatening banners that the gangs use over highway overpasses to terrorize those who might interfere with their activities. "Narco tiendas" are compact areas for drug-dealing.

Cartel fellow-travelers who inform the gangs of possible police activity are called "posts" or "stakes" in Spanish because they hang around in one place trying to get information. "Ventanas" (windows) are informers who walk around and occasionally mark intended targets with special graffiti or advertising fliers. Contract killings are "jobs," kidnap-murders are "pickups," and "settling accounts" means killing rivals. "Necklacing" (originally used in South Africa, but adapted by the cartels) means placing gasoline-soaked tires over a bound enemy's body and setting them on fire.

We have done much the same thing over the years in America, and probably for the same reasons--some good, some bad, some situational, some intentional. And motives are often hard to discern. "Whack" for kill. "Taken for a ride" meaning grabbed and taken away to be killed. "Snitch" for police informer. "Tragedy" for an intentional act of violence which results in multiple deaths or injuries. "Hit" (in both countries) to mean "murder." The list could go on and on. I'm sure you can think of plenty.

That got me thinking about the euphemisms revolving around the mass murder of 3000 innocent civilians by religious/political terrorists on American soil nearly ten years ago. The appellation "9/11" had been adopted by nearly everyone who discusses the attack. It tends to demean the deaths, but I believe that is largely unintentional, and it is good shorthand for a single horrendous event. It eliminates the need to revisit the horror by having to describe it.

However, I think the left owns the intentional downgrading of the horror with its carefully-crafted euphemisms. "Man-caused disaster" for mass murder of civilians. "Extremists" for Islamic terrorists who are not far from mainstream Islam. "Angry youths" for mad dogs who are clearly identifiable as mid-twenties Muslims. "Kinetic military action" when talking about which Islamic group we will attack while defending a different Islamic group. "Fundamentalist Muslim" for those who simply take the Koran at its word without quibble.

And then there's the old tried and true euphemism "racist" for those who are willing to name the enemy and the crime. "Islamophobe" describes anyone who thinks that Islam is not the religion of peace and can point out multiple examples of recent mass murders and attempted mass murders committed by those same Islamists. "Allahu Akbar" as simply meaning "God/Allah is great" when in fact it is the Muslim version of "Geronimo" as an attack is being carried out. Let's not forget "Muslim Cultural Center" as a substitute for "Ground Zero Mosque." "Personal struggle" for jihad, neglecting to notice that Mein Kampf means pretty much the same thing.

I'm not going to agonize over this trend, but I couldn't help giving it some thought. I imagine more than a few of you have had the same thoughts. Once in a rare while, even the AP provokes some genuine musing.

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Why Drug Legalization Does Not Equate To Freedom

Drug legalization is all the rage these days. Advocates of drug legalization say it would stop crime, give us smaller government, increase personal freedom, and increase tax revenues. But these arguments are seriously flawed. Moreover, the focus on the drug users’ personal freedom misses the point. Here’s why drug legalization is a bad thing.

The Case For Regulation

The case for regulating drugs (i.e. criminalizing their use outside of a controlled environment) is quite simple: societal harm.

When it comes to regulation, the government should not be in the business of protecting us from ourselves, nor should we accept semantic arguments that make self-destruction into a societal issue. But the government should be concerned about dangers that are posed to others. Indeed, when a person engages in activities that can hurt other members of the public, then some form of regulation is usually proper. For example, we regulate who can drive because a many-thousand pound vehicle can kill if it’s driven wrong. We regulate poisonous emissions from factories, so the plant won’t drop a poison gas cloud on a town. We regulate explosives, we regulate hazardous chemicals, and we regulate alcohol, all because these are dangerous to other members of the public, and there is little or no way for the public to protect themselves from those dangers if they are misused.

The same is true with drugs. When people take drugs, their mental state becomes impaired and they lack the restraint/ability to take the kinds of cautions that human beings normal undertake in their actions, and they lack the hand-eye coordination needed to safely engage in certain dangerous activities. This turns even ordinary activities into dangerous ones. Indeed, consider the bus driver who gets high and hits pedestrians, or the gas plant operator who gets high and explodes the plant.... there is simply no way for the public at large to be aware of these dangers or to protect themselves. Thus, regulation of some form is proper to prevent these people from injuring others.

So maybe you just criminalize the injury rather than the usage, right? Well, there are two problems with that. First, it’s small comfort for the victims when their injury could have been prevented. But more importantly, this will lead to massive economic waste. . . the other instance where regulation is proper.

Think again, about our discussion of privatizing all roads and the problems that would create. A similar problem exists with regard to drugs. If the government did not prohibit recreational drug use, the public would be forced to spend an inordinate amount of time and money protecting itself from the negative effects of drug use. Employers, for example, would face liability if their employees got high and crashed a train or a company car or erroneously prepared someone’s taxes. Thus, not prohibiting drug use would result in widespread drug testing of employees. Insurers would surely follow as no car insurer will want to insure a drug user. As will doctors, police, heavy equipment operators, anyone in a position of trust, and so on. Therefore, to allow a few people the freedom of getting high, the rest of society will have their privacy invaded by constant drug testing.

Moreover, the link between drugs and crime has been proven (DOJ estimates that 80% of crime is drug related, and around 40% of criminals report being high at the time of the crime). Combating the vandalism, the theft, the assaults, and other crimes that accompany drug use will require a massive increase in police forces and prisons, or the employment of private security, which means your taxes go up and your safety goes down.

Thus, regulation is proper in this instance.

The Problems With The Legalization Arguments

Now lets look at the arguments for legalization. The legalization arguments are essentially that legalizing drugs will reduce crime, will shrink the government, will increase tax revenues, and will increase personal freedom. None of these are true.

As an aside, to make these arguments more palatable, legalization advocates have focused solely on marijuana, which is not as dangerous on a personal level as “hard” drugs -- though a large number of legalization advocates will eventually admit under questioning that they believe all drugs should be legalized. Admittedly, there are obvious differences in the negative effects of marijuana and something like methamphetamines on the users, e.g. meth tends to destroy the body and the mind in short order, whereas the negative effects of marijuana are long term and not as severe. But in any event, this argument is a red herring because both drugs cause the mind-altering effects that I’ve identified as the basis for allowing regulation. In other words, marijuana may not be as bad as other drugs for the user, but the risks to third parties are the same, and it is only the effects on third parties that should matter when it comes to regulation.

1. Reduction In Crime: Advocates of legalization argue that legalization will decrease crime in two ways. Neither argument has merit.

First, they point to prohibition as an analogy, and they claim that we created the cartels by making drugs illegal (just as we arguably created the mafia by making alcohol illegal) and we could make them powerless again by making drugs legal. But the end of prohibition did not end the power of the mafia. Nor would legalization end the market for illegal drugs. Indeed, unless you accept total legalization, including allowing children to buy drugs, then there will continue to be a market for illegal drugs as there will continue to be people who cannot obtain them legally. Even then, high taxes encourage smuggling, as is the case with cigarettes today. Thus, just like the end of prohibition did not end the mafia, there is no reason to believe that legalization will end these cartels, especially as the drug market would become significantly larger (and therefore more profitable) if drugs became legal.

Further, just legalizing marijuana, as legalizers currently suggest, would achieve nothing. California legalizers argued that this alone would end the grip of the Mexican cartels. But a study by the Rand Corporation found that only 3% of Mexican drug cartel profits came from importing marijuana to California and that legalizing marijuana would have little effect on their profits. Indeed, if one examines this issue, you will find rather quickly that drugs are only one part of the cartels’ business -- the rest involves protection rackets, extortion, kidnapping, theft, counterfeiting legal drugs, and even exporting stolen oil to the United States. Legalizing drugs affects none of that.

Legalizers also claim that if drugs were cheaper, drug users would be less inclined to steal to support their habits. But as anyone involved with criminal law can tell you, these people do not steal to supplement their income, they steal because they have no income. . . they don’t work.

2. Shrink The Government: Legalization advocates say that legalization will lead to smaller government because there will be no need for drug interdiction. However, this argument is one-sided and simplistic. First, the end of prohibition didn’t result in an end to the FBI or the ATF. Secondly, to the extent you only legalize marijuana, nothing will change as interdiction will still be needed to stop other drugs. Third, unless the plan is total legalization (i.e. anyone can buy), other government agencies will need to be created to monitor the sale and distribution of drugs. There will also be increased policing required to deal with the increased crime. And there will be drug tests for all accidents and crimes to see if there should be a “while high” charge added -- unless you intend to simply ignore the drugs entirely. . . which would increase the risks to the public by letting drug users claim the accident was beyond their control.

Basically, legalization will not eliminate a single government agency or agent, while simultaneously increasing the scope and reach and intrusiveness of government into other areas of our lives.

3. Increased Tax Revenues: This argument too looks only at one side of the equation. Yes, if you tax drugs, you will get more revenues from that source. But at the same time, you will incur the costs of dealing with the increased drug use. That means lost worker productivity, increased crimes, increased hospitalization, long term health problems, etc. Moreover, this argument is intellectually dubious as this argument could just as easily justify legalizing murder, because we could tax each killing.

4. Increased Personal Freedom: Finally, many argue that legalization will increase personal freedom. But as explained above, it depends on whose freedom you are looking at. Yes, it increases the freedom of drug users, but it hurts everyone else’s freedom. It’s highly likely that the entire public will face invasive and expensive drug testing at every turn. It’s likely that we will be less safe as more addicts commit more crimes. It’s likely that we will be surrounded by more cops and more prisons to deal with those crimes. It’s likely that to regulate the distribution of these drugs, we will find ourselves facing more regimes like we have today, where you can’t even buy cold medicine without being put into a computer. That’s not an increase in personal freedom, that’s an increase in some people’s personal freedom while destroying the freedom of everyone else. It is akin to letting me build a radioactive sludge pit in the center of town. Yes, it increases my freedom, but it hurts everyone else around me.

Conclusion

The problem with the legalization arguments are that they look only at one side of the equation, i.e. what are the benefits to the drug user and what could happen if drugs weren’t a problem. But they are a problem, and there is another side of that equation.

This is a debate that gets lost in feelings. I feel drugs are bad. I feel drugs are not bad. You shouldn’t be able to tell me what I can do with my body. We shouldn’t let people hurt themselves. All of those arguments miss the point. The real issue here is that innocent people will be hurt and their freedoms destroyed if we go for legalization.

And that’s why Californians did the right thing.

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Badges. . . We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges. . .

Do you remember the big fuss made by Team Obama and Mexico’s incompetent government a couple months back? Remember how all the carnage in Mexico was the result of automatic weapons being sold in the United States and then smuggled across the border to kill policemen? Wanna know the truth? It’s actually kind of scary. Read on. . .

Now at the outset, you know this story is bunk. Indeed, as you will recall from our article on guns, you can no longer buy new automatic weapons in the United States, and getting the older ones is extremely difficult. It’s also very difficult under the law to manufacture semi-automatic weapons that can be converted to full automatic. Not to mention that you can’t buy rockets and other real military hardware at all.

So where is this equipment coming from? Meet Los Zetas.

Who Is Los Zetas?

Mexico, like much of South-Central America, is beset by corruption. Local police are often for sale to the highest bidder. This has allowed various criminal enterprises (drug cartels, crime syndicates, smugglers) to all but turn Mexico in a series of small criminal kingdoms, with any attempt to combat these groups being frustrated by the complicity of local law enforcement.

To solve this problem, Mexico turned to their army. With the help of the United States, Mexico set up an elite anti-crime/counter-insurgency unit that it could send into any part of the country to impose order where the local authorities failed or refused, and to fight these criminal enterprises. This group, called the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), was trained in the full range of special forces tactics at Fort Bragg and is equipped with the latest in US special forces hardware. So far so good.

In the late 1990, Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen began recruiting GAFE members to act as protection. His top recruit, Lt. Arturo Guzmán Decena brought with him approximately 30 other GAFE members. They called themselves Los Zetas, for the radio code “Zeta” used by the Mexican military to identify leadership persons.

Upon the arrest of Guillen, Los Zetas set out on their own. Soon enough, they set up camps to train recruits, including ex-federal, state and local police. Eventually, this would increase the number of members in Los Zetas to around 4000 members.

(A rival gang, the Sinaloa Cartel, has established its own version of Los Zetas known as Los Negros.)

Not only does Los Zetas operate at a higher tactical level than local authorities, but they are also extremely well armed (body armor, Kevlar ballistic helmets, a variety of automatic weapons including 50 caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, surface-to-air missiles, helicopters and a variety of explosives), and they make extensive use of wire tapping and cell phone tapping. Apparently, they also often masquerade as federal troops or police, using both federal uniforms and vehicles.

And what does this private army do? They collect debts, secure cocaine supply and trafficking routes, kidnap individuals, perform murder-for-hire, engage in extortion and money-laundering schemes, smuggle humans, and, most importantly, execute rivals. In that regard, they are known for incredible sadism and savagery. One common tactic, for example, involves putting their victim into a barrel of oil and setting the oil on fire -- this is reminiscent of the practice of “tiring” or “necklacing” practiced in Haiti and by the African National Congress in South Africa, where a tire is placed over the victims shoulders, filled with gasoline, and then set on fire.

Los Zetas also is known for monitoring and kidnapping journalists and their families, and they have hired gangs like the Texas Syndicate and MS-13 to carry out contract killings in within the United States. They are suspected in the recent murder of a popular politician and his family, though they deny involvement.

Threat To The Mexican Government

The fight between Los Zetas and the Mexican government has been so intense that many have feared the government would fall. Indeed, in February 2009, Rick Perry called out the National Guard, including armor and air units, “as a preventive measure upon the possible collapse of the Mexican State.”

This followed a year in which:

• In September 2008, Los Zetas members killed eight people and wounded more than 100 by tossing grenades into crowds of people celebrating Mexico’s independence in the city of Morelia.

• In December, eight soldiers were found tortured and decapitated in the resort town of Acapulco. The heads were stuffed in a plastic bag, left outside a shopping center with a note saying: “For every one of us you kill, we are going to kill 10.”

• In July, a group called La Familia, with whom Los Zetas apparently works, dumped the bodies of twelve federal police intelligence agents on a highway in Michoacán.

• At the end of August, a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation clinic in Ciudad Juarez, on the Texas border, lined up the patients, and killed eighteen of them. On the same day, another 30 people were executed across Mexico.

Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon removed Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora from office because of concerns that the government is losing this war.

Threat To The United States

Right now, Los Zetas is primarily based in the border region of Nuevo Laredo, though they are believed to operate all along the border and in most parts of the country. There is also evidence that Los Zetas has spread to Texas.

Since late 2006, more than 80 United States law enforcement officers working on the U.S.-Mexico border at the local, state and federal level have been convicted of corruption-related charges, according to an Associated Press tally. They have helped Los Zetas move drugs as far as Delaware.

In August, it was revealed that Los Zetas smuggled $46 million worth of oil stolen from PEMEX into the United States, where it was sold to U.S. refineries using false import documents.

Following a joint investigation titled “Operation Black Jack” by the ATF, DEA, ICE, FBI and Homeland Security, American authorities raided two Los Zetas’s safe houses in Texas, freeing over 40 kidnapped individuals.

On October 26, 2008, the Washington Times reported that the FBI warned Texas law enforcement that Los Zetas had threatened “a full tactical response” should law enforcement interfere with their operations. In response, a leader of Los Zetas was arrested in Reynosa, Tamaulipas (a border city) on November 7, 2008. In that operation, the Mexican Army and Mexican Federal Police seized three safe houses and found 540 assault rifles, 287 grenades, 2 M72 Law rocket launchers, half a million rounds of ammunition, 67 ballistic vests and 14 sticks of dynamite.

Conclusion

So where do these guns that are plaguing Mexico come from? Where else would former military and police officers with deep connections to the Mexican police and military get modern American military hardware of the type provided by the American military to the Mexican military (but not available to average Americans)? Well, if you’re a liberal or journalist, apparently you think they’re buying this hardware from gun stores in Texas.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed before Mexico explodes. It is shameful that Team Obama would not only turn a blind eye, but would falsely try to convert the crisis they should be addressing into an opportunity to make false political points against lawful gun ownership in the United States.

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San Francisco Diary--Journal Of An Exile

Up In Smoke: San Francisco has long been in the forefront of the marijuana legalization movement. Though I've long suspected that the vision for The City promoted from City Hall derives from a crack-pipe laced with LSD, the use of marijuana by the general populace is devoutly to be wished. City Father (or Mother): "We're going to ban automobiles, confiscate your meat, take your guns, mandate homosexuality, tax you at 100% of your earnings, and put your children in education camps." San Francisco Citizen: "Whffffffhh--Far out, man, cool. Ya got some Cheetos?"

NOTE: In California in general, and in San Francisco particularly, the people are waking up to the fact that the state is broke. In the spirit of good citizenship and sharing the wealth, there is a growing movement to legalize the use of marijuana. You might be foolish enough to believe that this is just a matter of a bunch of potheads wanting easy access to their drug of choice. Au contraire, mon ami. Pot advocates believe that marijuana legalization would quickly close the $26 billion budget deficit by providing happy, mellow taxpayers. The accountants haven't figured out yet exactly what amount of marijuana would need to be smoked and taxed to raise $26 billion, but they point out that it wouldn't all have to come from the marijuana tax. There would also be a rapid increase in revenue from the junk-food taxes as well.

According to the Joe Biden theory of taxation, these people are real patriots. Imagine--volunteering to pay taxes. They've even produced "tax us" ads, which began a limited run throughout the state on Wednesday. The fascist pigs at NBC in San Francisco and the ABC narcs in Los Angeles and San Francisco have so far refused to run the ads. But the CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC and CNBC cable franchises in San Francisco have all gleefully accepted the ads. The Fox News Channel is holding. Oops, I mean "holding out."

Says spokeswoman Nadene Herndon of Fair Oaks, an actual user (not a paid spokesperson): "The governor and legislators are ignoring millions of Californians who want to pay taxes. We're marijuana consumers. Instead of being treated like criminals for using a substance safer than alcohol, we want to pay our fair share." So far, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hs been unavailable for questions about how they reconcile their anti-smoking, anti-junk food views with their pro-marijuana views. But who needs consistency when there's tax money to be had, and willing taxpayers to give it?

One consumer on the SF Gate (Chronicle) website said "Marijuana is not a drug. I used to s&%# d#&k for coke. Have you ever s&%#d d#&k for marijuana?" Even in San Francisco, the votes on that comment are running about 50/50. That might merely be a function of the number of coke dealers versus the number of coke users in The City, not that there's anything wrong with that.

NOTE: The contract between the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) and its 2800 union employees expired on June 30. The trains continue to run by mutual agreement to extend the negotiations. BART is currently $250 million in the hole after already having raised fares and cut service to help close the budget gap. The unions are still demanding a 3% pay raise even in a failing state and national economy with a 9.5% unemployment rate. So far, nobody has suggested that the operators and dispatchers be allowed to smoke marijuana while on duty in order to raise tax revenues to help cut the deficit. Maybe they don't have cable TV and have missed the ads.

NOTE: San Francisco may be in the forefront of disease as well. The City has reported that it has now had its third case of drug-resistant swine flu. In its resistant form, the disease is communicable between human beings. The teenager had the symptoms of the disease before boarding a flight to Hong Kong, but did not seek treatment in San Francisco. She is currently in isolation in Hong Kong under the watch of the World Health Organization. The Board of Supervisors hasn't yet demanded her immediate return to San Francisco to spread the disease. Local health authorities say the strain can be treated with a new drug called Zanamivir of which The City has approximately twelve doses. They are also experimenting with marijuana as a cure, but nobody is quite sure why.

NOTE: Mark Morford, the Chronicle columnist who writes gentle prose about the average American has done so again. He has announced that fully 11% of those crazy non-San Franciscans believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, "Worshipping Allah or secretly kneeling to Mecca 500 times a day behind his desk in the Oval Office while wearing a kufi and a rainbow-colored disha dasha." Where Morford got his statistic, let alone his recital of Muslim ritual, is unknown. But he does report "Here is some good news for you! Something you can believe in like crispy whitebread Jesus toast, part of this complete breakfast! Something to stick into your big heart of patriotic goodness like fresh imitation strawberry-flavored cotton-candy gunfire! 89% of Americans know that President Barack Obama is not a Muslim." Since I can't tell what the hell this guy is talking about (and I'll bet you can't either), I can only assume that he is a heavy taxpayer from the movement described in the first note in this column.

NOTE: The San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office says the body found Monday morning in McLaren Park was a man, not a woman as police reported earlier. No comment.

NOTE: The CBS channel in San Francisco has accepted the marijuana ad. CBS is the network of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. That would explain a lot.
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