The whole point of free speech is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

More from Charles Bowden

From the March 1, 2010, edition of High Country News...

Excerpts:

If the press reports this sort of thing, it is framed as part of a War on Drugs that must be won. These stories are fables at best. There is no serious War on Drugs. Rather, there is violence, nourished by the money to be made from drugs. And there are U.S. industries whose primary lifeblood comes from fighting a war on drugs. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, has 225,000 employees and a budget of $42 billion, part of which is aimed at making America safe from Mexico and Mexicans. Narcotics officers in the U.S. cost at least $40 billion a year. The world's largest prison industry would collapse without the intake of drug convicts, and, in recent years, of illegal Mexican migrants. And around the republic there are big new federal courthouses rising that would be cobwebbed without the steady flow from drug busts and the Mexican poor coming north.

and

On the border, Adam Smith meets magical realism. Here the market tenets of supply and demand, the basic engine of both the migration and the drug industry, are supposed to be overturned magically by a police state. Consider one simple number: The border is 1,900 miles long. If two people slipped through each mile in a 24-hour period, that would amount to 3,800 people a day. That adds up to 1,387,000 people a year. Or consider this: One bridge from Juarez to El Paso handles 600,000 semi-trucks a year. One semi with a freight load of 24 tons could probably tote enough heroin to satisfy the U.S. market for a year. Add to the mix the inevitable corruption of the police agencies: A few months ago, a Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona was busted for running dope in his official car for 500 bucks a load.

and

Almost certainly, the drug industry and illegal migration are the two most successful anti-poverty initiatives in the history of the world. The drug industry has poured tens of billions of dollars annually into the hands of ill-educated and largely poor people. Illegal migration has taken people who were lucky to earn $5 a day and instantly given them jobs that pay 10 or 20 times that much. It has also financed the remittances, over $20 billion dollars shipped from immigrants in the U.S. back into the homes of Mexico's poor each year. No government can match these achievements. And tens of thousands of people in the U.S. agencies are earning far better salaries fighting drugs and the Mexican poor than they could ever make in the private sector. After, say, five years, the average Border Patrol agent is knocking down 75 grand a year, plus generous benefits and serious job security. DEA is infested with agents earning six figures. And these industries are literally failure-proof -- the more Mexicans that migrate, and the more drugs that arrive, the more agents that are hired.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't they tax MJ enough to cover the losses they would incur if organized governmental theft wasn't an option anymore? (confiscation of property, money, etc.)
California's largest cash crop in MJ, Think BIG bucks...

If the school bully beats you up and takes your money, wouldn't you give up the money if you didn't have to get beat up?

Bill Fleming said...

I never looked at it that way before, anon. Interesting point. I would get beat up, of course, but that's just me.

Bob Newland said...

No, Bill, that's not you. You pay the extortion. At least I assume you pay income tax.

Bill Fleming said...

Well, that's extending the metaphor in the other direction, isn't it.

Bill Fleming said...

To be clear, Bob, I pay my taxes voluntarily, and half of my employees taxes too, plus their health insurance. If that's not volunteering to get beat up, tell me what is.

larry kurtz said...

This from missoulian.com: HAMILTON - "The Hamilton city council on Tuesday unanimously approved an interim zoning ordinance for the location of medical marijuana dispensaries. The ordinance for now relegates the stores to the business strip along U.S. Highway 93, business areas along Main Street and adjacent to Highway 93 outside the central business district, and commercial and industrial areas primarily on the northeast side of town. The ordinance goes into effect immediately and is good for six months. That period will give officials time to make a permanent decision on where the businesses are appropriate. The ordinance reads, in part, "it is not appropriate to allow establishments that grow, sell or distribute medical marijuana or paraphernalia to be located in every zone district in the City of Hamilton" and that "the City intends to provide an opportunity to further study this issue and an opportunity to adopt appropriate ordinances, zoning or otherwise, to appropriately regulate medical marijuana establishments." Places that grow, sell or distribute medical marijuana, the ordinance notes, "could have a detrimental effect on the health, safety or welfare of neighborhoods or on nearby churches, schools or recreational facilities and can, through such an effect, create a public nuisance." The ordinance does not apply to an eligible patient who is growing no more than six marijuana plants and has up to 1 ounce of marijuana for private use."

That makes sense.

The revenue stream starts with the $25 application fee at dphhs.

So, how DOES the State of South Dakota benefit from having a law enforcement/prison industry that is so obscenely expensive?

Is living in this state (I'm East River, right now) safer because cannabis is illegal?

larry kurtz said...

Btw, I'd like to nominate missoulian.com publicradiofan.com hcn.org to the media list. If I started naming public radio stations I couldn't stop; so minnesota public radio news is my fave.

Flying Tomato Farms is cool. More women and native stuff.

Anonymous said...

Bill, volunteering to pay the tax is in place of getting beat up (going to jail).
Organized theft by the government... I'm talking mafia like mentality with the forced confiscation of property and cash, etc. It's like double jeopardy and cruel & unusual punishment combined. (unusual because other crimes are not treated in such a way that allows them to steal your property PLUS sentence you to jail)
That's what makes this a cash cow business for the feds.
Jail is not profitable for them unless they also strip of person of their financial value. And stripping a person of their lives like that is not justifiable unless there is jail time to show how bad this person really must have been to deserve such a sentence to start with.

Bill Fleming said...

"Bill, volunteering to pay the tax is in place of getting beat up (going to jail)."

Nonsense. No one goes to jail for not paying their taxes. They may for not reporting income, or for not paying their withheld employee taxes, but not for not paying their own.

Bill Fleming said...

For Anon:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Taxes/PreparationTips/WhatIfYouCantPayTheIRS.aspx

Bob Newland said...

The IRS will take everything you own if its agents decide you have not paid your taxes.

Bill Fleming said...
This comment has been removed by the author.