Monthly Archives: April 2009

Friday Ark #237

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Pets Vertebrate Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

Visit all the boarders, Link to the Ark and check back for updates through Sunday afternoon!

You can board the Friday Ark by submitting your post here, leaving a comment or a trackback to this post or emailing fridayark AT themodulator.org.

You can find previous editions at the not quite up to date Arkives page.

ALERT- 11:30 MDT 2009-04-03 We will be offline until tonight and will get everyone else boarded then.

ALERT- 10:00 MDT 2009-04-04 We will be offline until tonight and will get the rest of our Saturday friends boarded then.

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Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to:

Birders: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles.

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to:

  • The Canine Carnival hosted by Pamibe last year is on hiatus an looking for a new sponsor
  • The Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings

    • has been out of operation since July 2007

For other current carnivals check out The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

A Lesson obama Could Learn From roosevelt

This entry was posted in Anarchism Drug Laws Government Law on by

As they continue enforcing failed policies of their predecessors the obama administration continues to look in a dark hole for answers:

The Obama administration’s top cops and their Mexican counterparts are looking for ways to stop arms smuggling across the border as well as new strategies for fighting the drug cartels that have fueled violence in both countries.

There may not be anything roosevelt can teach obama about dealing with an economic crisis but obama and his administration should be able to learn from the great failure that was righted during the roosevelt administration:

Ending the drug war may not create as many jobs as the above video suggests would be created by ending prohibition but it may certainly end a bunch of useless jobs:

As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most “criminal” country in the world, with 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all arrests are marijuana-related.

As Klein says in this article:

That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public

Heck, perhaps the police could even do something about protecting the public from real crimes with the extra time they would have on their hands; perhaps the judicial system could take steps toward becoming affordable and responsive to the public it is supposed to serve, you know, resolving cases in weeks or months instead of months and years.
Klein’s argument of potential massive tax windfalls is probably wildly overstated:

It is estimated that pot is the largest cash crop in California, with annual revenues approaching $14 billion. A 10% pot tax would yield $1.4 billion in California alone.

Take away law enforcement’s inflated estimates and take away the risk premium and watch that cash crop value drop 50% or more.
The US can end the carnage in Mexico easily. End the drug war and as the last phrase in this History Channel video says: the gangster era of the twenties is over.

In this case it will be the gangster era the past 50 years.