Pot, Immigration, National Security, and Spending: One Ring to Rule Them All?
On an issue that's hot at Ricochet these days, read Jane Hamsher (also notable for opposing Rahm Emanuel despite standing well to our left):
[...] everyone discussing the “immigration problem” was ignoring the elephant in the middle of the room: marijuana prohibition. It’s channeling millions in drug money into the Mexican cartels, and represents 60% of all cartel profits. That money gets used to finance violence not only at the border but in over 200 cities across the United States where they currently have a presence — up from 100 cities three years earlier.
While the Arizona situation is being called [an] “immigration problem,” it’s more accurately a drug war problem. The shooting that triggered the Arizona law was related to marijuana smuggling, not migrant workers. But rather than using it as an excuse to further erode civil liberties (as the Arizona law does), or ramp up militarization of the border with billions in taxpayer dollars that only serves to escalate the problem, the quite obvious solution seems to be to de-fund the cartels by legalizing marijuana.
I'm not angst-ridden over the Arizona law's effect on civil liberties. And, however you'd like to solve it, the illegal immigration problem exists. In Arizona. And more and more other states, too. But militarizing the border while intensifying the drug war sounds to me like a recipe for actual war, car bombs and all, right here in the United States. Surely a broad coalition of Americans opposes this development.
Yet Jane takes apart that coalition even before it comes together, reveling in the aggrandized ability to spend created by this lucrative new opportunity to tax:
The money that now goes to the cartels, with which they buy weapons and fund criminal enterprises of all sorts, could instead be paying teacher salaries and going into the coffers of states that badly need the revenue to meet their budgets. Legalization could generate $1.4 billion in revenues in California alone if it’s taxed at the same rate as alcohol. And that money would come straight out of the pockets of the cartels.
Can anyone believe that huge new pot tax revenues will be spent wisely, by the California legislature or by any legislature? Can any conscientious person imagine that swelling state coffers with pot money will help Americans reduce waste, roll back bloat, shutter unsustainable programs, discourage subsidies, decrease corruption, and stamp out largess? How could they, when the immediate impulse -- unconfined to Democrats -- is to pour every cent we could possibly wring from America's appreciation for weed into the mouths of America's grotesque and insatiable 'budgets'?
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Re: Pot, Immigration, National Security, and Spending: One Ring to Rule Them All?
You'll note that among the arguments I made for decriminalizing marijuana, among them was not how terrific it will be to collect all those taxes--seeing as I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. To coin a phrase.
May '10
Re: Pot, Immigration, National Security, and Spending: One Ring to Rule Them All?
Yes, the government has enough money.