Just Like Milton Friedman Predicted..

Libertarian economist Milton Friedman was a noted critic of America’s Drug War, pointing out all of the reasons why prohibition doesn’t work. One such reason: When a substance is illegal, the price will rise to accommodate the risk; the higher price and promise of greater profit encourages more lawbreakers.

Too bad Friedman didn’t live long enough to see his argument confirmed.

In a recent Washington Post story about drugs and Mexico, I came across the following interesting tidbit:

 Farmers in the storied “Golden Triangle” region of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, which has produced the country’s most notorious gangsters and biggest marijuana harvests, say they are no longer planting the crop. Its wholesale price has collapsed in the past five years, from $100 per kilogram to less than $25.

“It’s not worth it anymore,” said Rodrigo Silla, 50, a lifelong cannabis farmer who said he couldn’t remember the last time his family and others in their tiny hamlet gave up growing mota. “I wish the Americans would stop with this legalization.”

 ‘Nuff said.

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My Excitement Was Short-Lived

I was thrilled when I learned that crazy Georgia Congressman Paul Broun–who had quit his seat to run for Senate–didn’t make the runoff for that office, and would henceforth be known as “former Congressman Broun.”

Broun was the member of the House Science and Technology Committee who–among many other things– rejected the theory of evolution and described biology, cosmology and geology  as “lies straight from the pit of hell.” To call him nutty as a fruitcake is an insult to fruitcakes.

Then I found that one of the two candidates vying for Broun’s vacated seat–worse, the one favored to win–is more of the same.

In a 2012 book, that candidate — pastor and talk radio host Jody Hice — alleges the gay community has a secret plot to recruit and sodomize children, In It’s Now or Never: A Call to Reclaim America, Hice also asserts that supporters of abortion rights are worse than Hitler and compares gay relationships to bestiality and incest. He proposes that Muslims be stripped of their First Amendment rights. […]

Hice claims homosexuality causes shorter life spans and depression, and he insists same-sex couples cannot raise healthy children…. Hice also offers an extreme interpretation of the Constitution, claiming states can nullify federal laws and take up arms against the federal government if they consider a federal law unjust…. In Hice’s view, the United States took a turn for the worse after the Civil War…. Hice argues that Muslim immigrants constitute an existential challenge to the United States…. Hice also compares reproductive rights advocates to Nazis.

 Hice also believes, among other things, that secularism causes sexually transmitted diseases.

Evidently, everyone in the Georgia GOP is bat-shit insane. (My apologies to bats for the comparison.)
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Take the Sin Survey

Mississippi has passed one of those “religious freedom” bills, protecting the right of merchants who are “people of faith” to refuse service to members of the public whose identities/behaviors offend their tender religious sensibilities. (Translation: gay people.)

In response, a guy named Mitchell Moore, who owns Campbell’s Bakery, started an anti-discrimination campaign, and from the looks of it, he and many other business owners are having some fun with it.

Initially, the campaign created a large window decal proclaiming “We don’t discriminate: If you’re buying, we’re selling.” The decal proved popular with Mississippi businesspeople who remembered that they were in business. Now, Moore has produced a tongue-in-cheek “potential Campbell’s customer survey,” an online list of yes-or-no questions, complete with Biblical references:

Unbelievable as it may seem, some people took the survey literally–prompting Mr. Moore to post the following message to the Bakery’s Facebook page:

The “Potential Customer Questionnaire” is just a spoof folks. There are some people saying that my bakery shouldn’t serve certain people. I think that is RIDICULOUS. We are a business open to the public. The Public includes a TON of people I disagree with. If I only limited selling to people who aren’t sinners I couldn’t even eat my own food. We will sell our product to the public, to sinners, to people we disagree with, to anyone who loves Made From Scratch goods and wants to buy them. That is what we are in business to do.

Wow. Someone who knows the difference between a business and and a church, and actually wants to encourage people to buy his goods! Who’d have thought?

If they aren’t careful, Mr. Moore and his fellow campaigners will give Mississippi a good name.

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Because If We Ignore It, It Won’t Happen

It’s magic.

Hear no science, see no science, acknowledge no science…

“The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission has found a solution to the political impasse posed by the conflict between science, which predicts the acceleration of sea level rise as the glaciers of western Antarctica collapse into the Southern Ocean, and Republican, money-driven politics tied to coastal development. The Coastal Commission voted to ignore long-term sea level rise.

The Commission voted, with one lone dissent, to limit the period of consideration of sea level rise to 30 years. Keeping the period to 30 years allowed the Commission to avoid considering the consequences of the collapse of west Antarctic glaciers, the speed up of the melting of Greenland’s ice cap and the slowing of the Gulf Stream. This vote will end the conflict between the Republican dominated state legislature and the Commission that happened in 2010 when the Commission’s panel of experts predicted as much as 5 feet of sea level rise by 2100. The legislature rejected that report and prohibited state and local government offices from considering the possibility that sea level rise would accelerate.”

See–wasn’t that easy?

I know Pat Sajak would approve.

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Politics 101

Governor Mike Pence has unveiled a proposal to expand Medicaid using Healthy Indiana, prompting blogger Steve Benen to suggest that Indiana’s Governor might be “evolving.”

Although I’m sure Pence would reject terminology that even slightly referenced evolution, his plan to expand Medicaid through Healthy Indiana is a good thing. That it is also a brave thing is a sad commentary on the current GOP, which is where most criticism of the proposal has come from.

It seems to be slowly dawning on Pence that there is a considerable difference between pontificating in DC and actually running a state. In Washington, the man who has been described as “a Tea Partier before there was a Tea Party” could–and did– sermonize ad nauseum without paying a political price. He could–and did–ignore the nitty-gritty of actual lawmaking (he served 11+ years without passing any legislation). A chief executive doesn’t have that luxury; he’s expected to actually do something.

And a chief executive with ambitions/delusions of higher office will be evaluated on the “somethings” that he did.

The problem is, when you are a Republican Governor, you have to satisfy a base that demands ideological purity and ever-more-red meat, at the same time that you have to deal with real budgets, real challenges and the real consequences of bad decisions.

Pence–and several other GOP officeholders–think they’ve figured a way to thread that needle.

We saw it earlier with Common Core. When the GOP suddenly turned on a dime and decided that Common Core was evil (right after the scary black dude in the White House embraced it), Republicans who’d previously been very supportive of Common Core faced a dilemma. They solved the problem by passing  “Indiana” standards that looked a lot like Common Core, but were called something else.

Now we have Medicaid expansion by a different name.

Mind you, these strategies are A-OK with me. There really is no “Hoosier” version of math (unless you count the time our legislature passed a measure changing the value of pi…); and 350,000 Indiana citizens desperately need access to affordable health care. If the current Administration has to engage in a bit of misrepresentation to get it done, I won’t complain.

It’s just a shame that these gyrations are necessary in order to avoid being eaten alive by the angry, uninformed people who now control the party.

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