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America never fails to be interesting, and she tends to kick it into high gear around Election Day. Take Pennsylvania, for example. The Keystone state has shaped into one that is a much watch around this time – and on this go around, we’re watch Dr. Oz and John Fetterman… This is why we’re lucky to have our new friend Charles McElwee of RealClearPennsylvania to take us into the trenches of this fractious purple state.
Next we get a chance to catch up again with Larry Kudlow. (If you haven’t already, be sure to check out his show on Fox.) Larry goes through the regulatory wet blanket that’s suffocating our ambitions. He has many thoughts on the green crusade and the auxiliary burdens on the economy. Plus, he’s got big predictions for the midterms!
Lastly, the guys chat on Biden’s big pot pardon and the crazy people walking the streets.
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Are you sure? You seem to be arguing that the drugs being illegal is what gives the cartels money to do evil things, which costs money for law enforcement to fight. Not having the cartels being so rich and powerful, means less need for law enforcement, which is saving money. Legal drugs doesn’t seem like it would reduce human misery from people taking drugs, if anything it would likely increase. So what else is there besides saving money on the “Drug War?”
You are endorsing the compounding power of the cartels over the decades. I am proposing an alternative to compounding the power of the cartels.
If you guys want to say that the current law enforcement structure nets out, then so be it. I just don’t see it.
The less-law-enforcement/cost solution strikes me as similar to abolishing fire departments. Less cost to “taxpayers” but much higher costs to individuals/families, in lives/injuries as well as money. And decisions/choices/votes have been made for a long time that the costs in taxes are better for society overall, and actually better for individuals too.
The enthusiasm for increasing the power of the Mexican cartels strikes me as really ignorant. Have fun managing that.
You guys all act like hard drug enforcement is efficacious like ordinary law enforcement on ordinary crime. It’s not. It’s never going to be like that. You can’t even describe a way to increase the potential of it.
If you want to say your view nets out, that’s fair but I don’t see it.
I think most people are just saying that legalization is not The, or even A, good “solution.”
You can say “most” all you want, but you are not persuasive to me here at all. I mean zero.
Just say you think it all nets out. That’s fair.
I’m not going to look it up, but you guys should really watch all of those Discovery Channel videos about the vertical organization from the Mexican cartels to the urban ghettos.
I think Lisa Ling did a bunch of good documentaries as well.
People like drugs and organized crime is a menace.
I hope so. My tongue was firmly in my cheek. Just using the goto excuse in vogue for those who aren’t 100% in agreement with Ukraine.
Brilliantly said! Mandating new products on one hand, and forbidding supply with the other hand.
California pushing more and more demand on to their electrical grid. Banning gas powered cars in 2035, gas heating in new construction. What new projects is California building to meet the expanded electrical demand? I havent heard of anything. (I’ve been looking)
And it seems they will still shut down that nuclear plant before 2035.
Yes, It was already meant to be closed but they extended the life because of the supply constraints they already feel.
The sad thing is that closing this plant would increase californium’s carbon emissions.
Moderator Note:
Please do not tell everyone that particular members are supporters of criminal gangs when they are not.Attention: [redacted]
John explains how these illegal organizations have turned drug and human smuggling into a multi-billion dollar industry, the methods that they use to traffic immigrants into the United States, and how these criminal consortiums are destabilizing the Mexican government.
https://radio.foxnews.com/2022/10/05/drug-cartels-adding-to-the-destabilization-of-mexican-border/
@RobLong has not learned that ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ was political fiction based on fraudulent studies. I don’t suggest that asylum inmates had the best of lives, by nature there will be bad situations ( see Washington State’s remaining mental institution ). But that movie, like ‘The China Syndrome’ were political propaganda more than a reliable narrative of the facts. Important studies on psychology which were acclaimed in the 70s and we just took for granted since were, in fact, frauds.
https://nypost.com/2019/11/02/stanford-professor-who-changed-america-with-just-one-study-was-also-a-liar/
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication
We absolutely should not let homeless addicts roam our streets because we were frightened of institutionalization by people who made a mockery of scientific research.
It should also be noted that Reagan’s ‘opening the insane asylums’ was only for CA, not nationwide, and his contribution was signing a bill the legislature sent him. I wish people would keep in mind the other 49 governors who signed similar bills in the seventies.
This is very good analysis about the state of the Mexican cartels and the implications. It’s about 10 minutes. We should have legalized hard drugs a million years ago. Everybody, including the Mexicans, would be better off. Now we have a geopolitical problem that continually is a local problem in the United States. NARCAN vending machines in big cities. You can’t make it up.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6313626543112
Are you claiming that if drugs were legal, there would be no NARCAN vending machines? I suspect they would have existed much earlier.
I’m talking about the model in the William F Buckley video. The marketing systems would be far more limited if the government was doing it.
I have eight more hours for this.
Anything limited by the government is an incentive to be gone around, whether by cartels or something else.
They have to undercut the price.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, but look at that video I posted.
Part of the argument as I’ve heard it is to make it less expensive to the general public. Undercutting the price would require subsidies, and I don’t think people would support that.
Oh please. It would be a drop in the bucket. It would be more than a drop in the bucket compared to what geopolitical hell the cartels are unleashing. Watch the video.
But it wouldn’t just be subsidizing the production and distribution. There would still be the costs associated with subsidized treatment centers, and damage caused by addicts, and so much of the rest that exists now too.
Unless your plan is to lock up the addicts so they can’t do anything but take their drugs in secured facilities which they can never leave. But that’s expensive too, and I don’t think you’d get public support for that either.
It’s obvious to me that it’s the better alternative than what is going on now. I’m just making a pitch for better public policy. It’s all academic anyway because it’s too late.
@kedavis — Drug addicts would become more like winos, if their drug of choice was very cheap; thus, the “damage caused by addicts” would be small. I recall somebody once cited, for comparison, a price of $1.50 for a legal dose of morphine.
Illegal drugs are expensive only because of the risk premium, that the people who provide them are often imprisoned for long terms or, because it is an illegal market, are killed by competitors.
A policy of legal for adults but severe penalties for selling or giving to children might be workable.
Even at that level, I don’t see it being reasonable to compare a legal dose of morphine – or heroin, or crack, or meth, etc – to a bottle of wine.
You aren’t refuting his point about the economics and the probable social situation that would result.
Actually, I think I am. For one thing, drinking wine tends to make people sleepy and stuff. Crack, heroin, meth, etc, don’t.
You should watch the discovery channel documentaries on the vertical drug trade. All of these areas are just bombed out wastelands. You would have to limit it to that.