Tautology of the Skeptical Sinner

I came across two excellent opinion pieces.

One from the LA Times 
“The United States’ so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America.
The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition — with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.”

And One from Matt Hutchens from the MPP
“For almost forty years, America has been engaged in a war which has cost us trillions of dollars and ruined the lives of millions of our citizens. We have been fighting against drugs in a street war across the country. The definition enemy combatant has changed through the course of this conflict, first encompassing only the smugglers and distributors, then growing to include users, and now reaching beyond our borders to the farmers in the developing world who produce the source crops. Today we are told that all these parties are contributing to the forces of Terror, and that the whole chain of enemy forces is complicit in a conspiracy against us. If this were true, though, wouldn’t we disarm our enemies by taking control of the economic forces that are the source of their power?”

Prohibition fails. Prohibition puts money in the hands of those who have no disregard for law, order, decency or justice. That money isn’t taxed, or accounted for. It’s laundered and used to buy guns. It’s used to corrupt law enforcement officers. It’s used to further spread the insidious influence of the drug gangs through violence, intimidation, with reckless disregard for the innocents who are unfortunate enough to get in the way.

Yet it isn’t drugs that create these monsters. It’s policy. Just like Mob violence over liquor gambling and prostitution has drastically waned since the laws regulating them have gotten less restrictive, the same effect will occur when politicians stop trying to “BE TOUGH ON CRIME” and start “Being SMART about crime”.

Billions of dollars a year are being wasted on fighting a war that just takes fathers away to prison, and puts dollars into the hands of crooks. The crooks eventually get taken down, and like the hydra, a dozen try to take the place of the severed head. After all, this is a simple matter of risk vs reward. The Risk is prison or death, the reward is riches - and when the ability to succeed in this bloody business is measured only by how willing to take that risk you are, it’s not surprising that those with nothing to lose are throwing their lives away on the chance that those riches can be theirs.

I’m not a drug user myself, and I really have no desire to be able to purchase narcotics legally. But the simple math is this- the cost of this war is too high. In blood and Tax dollars. Legalize it, regulate it, and tax it - then just like taxes from Alcohol, educate and rehabilitate excessive abusers.

We don’t have the money to burn on this morality crusade. Lets stop spending money on protecting us from us.

Both, apparently, found this story on Rush Limbaugh’s site.

“Just yesterday — this is not anything that hasn’t happened before but it just continued to happen. Just yesterday, we learned that owners of land will not be able to develop it in Montana because of a grouse, a grouse population.  The ultimate aim is to get the grouse put on the endangered species list so the owners of that property can’t do diddly-squat with it.  There’s oil underneath that land, and there’s an opportunity for developers to make residential areas out of it or what have you.  So there are people active in this country, doing everything they can to destroy the country’s ability to grow, to remain prosperous, and to remain a superpower.”

For those of you, like me, who prefer their news without frothing, the Denver Post has a more complete story here: http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_9589531

Short summary: The departing Bush administration are trying to open up more oil drilling sites in Montana, Colorado and Utah. Many of these sites are home to dwindling populations of native species, and as such, development of this land has environmentalists deeply troubled.

What it comes down to is we either break our dependence on oil or we break a few eggs to continue sating our need for gasoline. It truly is a shame that these lands are protected by innocent animals, and not some native human population we have no problem displacing. Or invading.

Mankind has been devouring this world since the dawn of time, if environmentalists are correct, and believe that mankind needs to stop doing irreperable harm to the ecology to avoid long-term, unforseen and devastating results, then we can’t just draw circles on the map and say “ok this part’s protected”.

The population of the U.S. is growing, and will continue to grow exponentially. Short of a pandemic that only affects the human population, we’re going to continue to adversely impact nature. Species will continue to become extinct and greed, sloth and indifference will speed up that process.

In the meantime, however, expending energy time and funding on trying to save every single piece of flora and fauna is going to be a) insanely futile b) insanely expensive. Does this world really miss the Dodo? The same liberal minds who support ecologically sound policy, are also thinking people who for the most part support the theory of evolution. (If not, they can just pray for a divine solution and peacefully go about their day). Nature will adapt as it always has.

We need a compromise. We can’t go willy nilly wiping out everything that stands in our way of a quick buck, but we also can’t realistically save everything specie on the planet, unless we cut population growth to zero. Immediately. (By the way, I’m a huge supporter of zero population growth - I just don’t see it happening any time soon)

So do we really need to protect ALL of these endagered species? Or should we give them a timetable to adapt or die?

And will the earth really miss the Sage Grouse? The Tambalacoque seems to be getting by just fine without the Dodo.

Responsible. Sane. Measured.

Sadly, the only ones getting the money to make noise about one view point or the other are extremists.

Initially I found it at http://www.emaxhealth.com/24/23009.html

But it was sourced from http://jaxconservativeradical.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-way-to-fund-medicare.html

emaxhealth haven’t approved my reply yet (Shock) but I visited the Jax and shared my opinion on his epiphany.

He writes:

“I have an idea where the Congress can discover some of the money needed to keep funding the medicare program at it’s present level.
Congress spends the following amounts of your tax dollars supporting America’s own genocide, abortion!
In 2003, Planned Parenthood Federation of America extinguished the lives of 244,628 unborn babies — making the organization more deadly than leukemia, brain cancer, skin cancer, diabetes, car accidents, Alzheimer’s disease, and HIV/AIDS combined.”

He also quotes some impressive dollar amounts that the US Government have paid to planned parenthood

“2003-2004 … $ 35.2 million in tax money
2002-2003 … $ 36.6 million in tax money
2001-2002 … $ 12.2 million in tax money
2000-2001 … $ 38.9 million in tax money
1999-2000 .. $ 59.5 million in tax money
1998-1999 … $125.8 million in tax money
1997-1998 … $ 42.1 million in tax money”

Source: JaxConsertive - I haven’t attempted to verify the information, it’s moot as far as I’m concerned. Here is my reply:

“And if these operations were paid for by the government, meaning that the women undergoing the procedure were unable to, the tax payers would no doubt have carry the cost of those unwanted children over a course of 18 years.