Capitalism

Government Failure…

This entry was posted in Capitalism Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Radley Balko summarizes a set of statistics about the government’s efforts to suppress the market for recreational drugs:

By nearly every metric — drug use, spending, availability, purity, price — the drug war has failed. Throughly. And that’s before considering the trespasses on our civil liberties our government has undertaken to achieve that failure.
Read the rest. The magnitude of the failure is really quite astounding.
So, who is benefitting from the $60 billion being spent annually by local, state and federal governments?

Hands Off!

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Government Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Vice Squad notes today that this article suggests that the Sioux Falls, SD city council spent some time dealing with adult behavior:

This insufficient criminalization of voluntary adult activity could not be tolerated by the Sioux Falls City Council, who closed the “loophole” on Monday. I hope that they were a bit more specific than what this article reports: “An ordinance approved Monday night makes it illegal to touch someone in exchange for money.”
Apparently they were a bit more specific as they amended:
…the Revised Ordinances of the City by adding a section prohibiting sexual touching for compensation,…
What’s not clear is exactly what they mean by the words sexual and compensation.1
There is a clue to the first in the news article linked above. At the state level South Dakota plans to clarify their law:
…by characterizing prostitution as any sexual contact that involves touching of female breasts or the genitals of either sex for the purpose of sexual arousal or gratification.
While this seems to limit the definition of sexual touching to a subset of possible erogenous zones this sentence like the first one above begs for additonal clarification as it appears to label all sexual activity of these types as prostitution. I suspect that they really are not planning to target those high schoolers in the backseat of their cars or husbands and wives. But, then again, this is South Dakota…
Oh yes, the above use of the word compensation is unbounded so it could reach a myriad of forms of compenstion, e.g., a job, a dinner, a marriage, mmmm, even, pleasure. Let your imagination run wild, well, not too wild…
1The site that appeared to have their City Code online did not respond.

A Few Questions for the Candidates

This entry was posted in bush Capitalism Constitution Democracy Election 2004 Federal Government kerry Libertarianism on by

Here is Roxanne’s opening:

Dear John Kerry and George “W standing for Women is a lot like Putin standing for Democracy” Bush:
I no longer give a shit about your Vietnam-era exploits. It doesn’t matter to me if you were once a drunk-driving, cocaine-tooting mama’s boy or if you were an effete BMOC.
More importantly, though, go read her questions for the candidates.
You may not agree 100% with the positions implied by the questions but this is the level at which any meaningful campaign should be occurring. That it isn’t confirms more firmly my belief that the whole mess needs to be redone.

A Stitch of Protection

This entry was posted in Capitalism Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Adrian doesn’t tell us where he found this:

“Many Chechens have sewn their pockets up in order to prevent anything being planted on them if stopped by police. One young Chechen exclaimed: “This is how we live, thanks to the Department on Fighting Organized Crime. First we were bandits, then became terrorists, and now we are becoming seamstresses.”
This would be good advice for many victems of the drug thugs (many, many more examples available).
Via Pharyngula and Bitch. PH.D.