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.

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.

During my day to day work, occasionally I’ll get an escalated call from our Indian call center.

“This customer only wants to speak to an American”

I take the call and I’ll always start off by saying “Thank you for your patience, your call has been transferred to me for further assistance. I am located in the U.S. but I am, in fact, English. I hope this is not a problem”

So far, it hasn’t been. And the caller will often say “I’m not racist, but I have a very hard time understanding those people” or “I’m not prejudiced, I just don’t trust those people with my personal information”

Newsflash: You are being racist. But is it justifiable?

I like a large number of my Indian Customer service reps. A good 10 or so have very good accents (One, Rachel, has a deliciously exotic accent that makes my toes curl), are extremely sharp and customer-focused people, almost to a fault. Yes, it’s true, some of the others make me want to stab myself in the face with an icepick. It’s not that they’re dumb… most have college degrees, but the cultural divide is SO vast that it sometimes feels like I’m trying to teach a dog about quantum mechanics.

That’s on the “front end” i.e. the customer service representatives who talk directly to the customers, but what about the “back end” - those outsourced employees who handle account research, mail handling and payments? Well - from the company’s perspective, the bottom line looks healthy. But in my unbiased and reasoned opinion, they’re a bunch of F&^#tards who could barely find their own a$$ with two hands and a flashlight.

How I know this is partly because of my role as escalated customer service. Our customers aren’t calling in to say “Hey! I just wanted to say that I’ve had my card for 6 months with no problems. Thanks! <click>” no… our customers are calling in to know why we F&&^ed up their account. Guess who? Bing.

But the straw that broke the camels back for me was when our own escalated research team were approached to clean up thousands of accounts the Indian team had chronically hosed. The real plum - they had to work “on project” - i.e. no credit for doing the work would be traced back to them, it would be like India miraculously woke up one evening morning and all of their f&c#-ups had vanished!

The real kicker - They allowed the research team to do it during time-and-a-half overtime. Yeah. That’s really saving money. Dumbasses. Once again, Classic Corporate Mentality: Penny Smart, Dollar DUMB

Skep

Probably not safe for work. Depending on your work that is.

Being the perv I am, I don’t normal miss any references to things spawned by the great god Eros. But I swear if it’s always been there, I need to get new glasses.

Craigslist has always had some dubious posts on, but trolling through all of these new posts of women selling themselves, is proving very entertaining - this girl knows how to dirty talk!

Interesting statistics from Jun 20th: Las Vegas has too many to count, New York has an equally impressive number(I didn’t say “good” statistics). Kansas City - 87 (I guess the Midwest really does heat up in summer), Salt Lake City, Utard Utah, 3. So very sad, if anyone needs quality professional “service” providers, it’s the denizens of SLC.

I wonder if while the economy continues to be a suck fest, we’ll see more people working the oldest profession, pun… not… intentional.

Slate.com have a well thought out article on an experiment where someone tries to become an early bird.

Personally I can do either, but it takes drugs and alcohol my body time to adjust to the new schedule, and until then I’m one moody S.O.B.

So, like Michael from the Office says: “I’m an early bird and a night owl, I’m wise… and I have worms”