Hey Romney: If Corporations Are People, the War on Drugs Is a War on People, Too
Econlog's David Henderson follows up on Romney's accurate observation that corporations, like soylent green, are made of people:
Romney's passion and clarity on this are admirable. And until now, I've found little to admire in Romney. Now, the next step for him—which a patient in a wheel chair tried to help him see but he couldn't see—is to see that just as taxes on corporations are taxes on people, the war on drugs is not really a war on drugs: it's a war on people.
Bonus: As one of Henderson commenters notes, Milton Friedman said it better:
(At 3:09, Friedman says of the fiction that the corporation pays half of the Social Security tax, "that's nonsense, that's bookkeeping, that's not economics." Despite the fact that I should should have known better, I genuinely thought Friedman was going to say "bullshit" instead of "bookkeeping." He'd be right either way, I suppose.)
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"No junkie ever donated to my campaign."
-Mitt Romney -
Then who DOES donate to his campaign? What sober person could not see through his plastic campaign?
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Team RED tards?
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I see right through his plastic act.
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What about Ray Davies?
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Sorry. I was at a Village Green Preservation Society meeting.
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"And no Mormon girl ever sucked me off."
-Me -
Tell her you want 13 children. Then pull your pants down.
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Don't you still need magic underwear or something?
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As a former denizen of Northern Utah, Mormon girls are really good at oral sex. Teenage mormons operate on the clintonian definition that oral sex isn't really Sex-Sex (Moroni-bless them). The "Church" wants babies, babies, and more babies. So, unlike the Baptists, it holds monthly dances in its Stakes and turns a blind eye to sexual experimentation - just don't drink any coffee.
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Catholic girls used to operate under the same definitions during my youth.
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That actually explains why Mormons seem so calm.
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Speaking of Friedmans, Patri says he's only seven years away from a seasteading colony according to this.
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Do not read the comments.
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See, you can't say something like that. It's like "Don't look at the train wreck!"
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Was this one of you? I cannot tell what is real anymore:
"...no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."
So, they're gonna move to Somalia?"
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We're fucking building a new Somalia!
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"...no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."
Ha! More like "loser building codes"!
...sorry.
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Noted, BP. Sorry.
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Just giving you a hard time, Kool. Yahoo was linking to it, so I probably would have wound up seeing it anyway.
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Do you know how much drain drug users put on Romneycare? I don't know either, but that money is better spent on drug enforcement.
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I would expect the vast majority of drug users pay more into RomneyCare than they take out. Seeing as most drug users are casual users, not hardcore junkies.
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YOU LIE!!
Everyone who has ever tried drugs is a hopeless case, mired with problems. They all steal from their families and lie on a constant basis. None have a job and are nothing but a drain on society.
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I'm not a drug! I'm socially acceptable.
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I'm not a drug! I'm socially acceptable.
We're working on that.
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This is what millions of people actually believe.
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Great vid.
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Why is Captain Picard wearing glasses? Is it a disguise?
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What? Are you insane? That's clearly Ben Kingsley.
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It's about as good as his Romulan disguise if so.
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I swear to God that he looks exactly like Leonard Nimoy in that picture.
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Well, then I guess his disguise was good.
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It's amazing.
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Holodeck mishap.
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Does the holodeck have anything other than mishaps? In fact, shouldn't in be referred to as the Mishapdeck?
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Well, since it was used for moronic shit like Dixon Hill, maybe call it the StupidDeck, or, more simply, the OopsDeck.
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At least the use of the holodeck for its stated purpose is believable. The idea that "safety protocols" never worked is not. I mean, they'd not allow the holodeck on starships if it couldn't be unplugged manually or otherwise be prevented from injuring users, taking over the ship, or endangering the galaxy.
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Real holographic simulated evil Lincoln is back!
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if it couldn't be unplugged manually or otherwise be prevented from injuring users, taking over the ship, or endangering the galaxy.
It's designed that way, but there's always some outside influence that interferes with the system (a problem with all starship systems it seems, not just the holodeck.)
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Fucking Holodeck. "I'm on a spaceship, hurtling through space, every food imaginable is available for free, there are dozens of aliens around, some of whom are DTF, millions of books to read, movies to see, cultures to learn about, and myriad alien races might attack us at any minute... but I'm bored. Let's go pretend we are ersatz Sam Spade."
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"This is a science fiction show, but we want to battle Professor Moriarty this week! Because...well, because our producers are dipshits."
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They should have just called the stupid thing The VELDT.
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They should have just called the stupid thing The VELDT.
I guess calling it "a narrative crutch for lazy writers" would have been too on the nose.
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"I guess calling it 'a narrative crutch for lazy writers' would have been too on the nose."
And "The Ultimate Contrived Plot Device" just wasn't catchy enough.
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To be fair, it's possible that some uses of the holodeck were budget related. I'd rather they did a stupid holodeck episode than a stupid time-travel episode.
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Priorities, ProL: Captain Janeway's uninterrupted access to a simulated Irish hamlet is significantly more important than any potential risk to ship and crew.
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Check out my hot Borg ass!
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The woman who got Obama elected. I cannot decide if the hot Borg ass makes up for it.
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SplatteredInLayersOfRikerSemenDeck.
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No, that's the DS9 holosuite.
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The PG world of Star Trek, where Risa, The Pleasure Planet, mostly consists of people shuffling around like they are in Boca Rotan in 1958.
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It's Boca Raton--"Rat's Mouth"--and that comment gives me an idea. When Star Trek eventually comes back to TV (not the reboot abortion), it should come back as a gritty HBO series. Like Rome, only in space.
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No, that's NutraSweet's living room.
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Premature First Contact?
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Great. Thanks for ruining the ending.
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It's not a war on people, it's a war for people. In the we will kill you to save you kinda way. Sort of like our current wars for freedom in other countries.
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Better your life be definately destroyed by us by putting you in prison than allowing you to potentially destroy your life with vices.
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MAN, I wish he were still with us.
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Wow, I hadn't seen this video of Mittens dissing this guy before.
He doesn't answer the question either-would you arrest him and his doctor?
At least Obama lied to everyone about what he was going to do with Medical MJ. Romney can't even bullshit this guy a little?
What a tool.
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In Bob Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress the rebels' slogan is, "There Aint No Such Thing as a Free Lunch", or TANSTAFL. Basically what Friedman is doing is agreeing with Heinlein, There aint no such thing as a free lunch.
BTW, Bob learned English during the early part of the 20th century, when he used improper grammar he did it for a reason.
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Argh, that should be, "There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, or TANSTAAFL".
Apologies for the mix up.
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For the record, I think the phrase predates Heinlein. Though he definitely popularized it for later generations.
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Seems like I read that he got it from Milton Friedman, but I can't remember. TMIAHM is certainly late enough for that to be true.
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I think Friedman used it later. Neither coined the phrase, from what I can tell.
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Who is this Heinlein guy? Does he have a newsletter to which I can subscribe?
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But drug users are icky, and there was something in the 60s that involved drugs and radicals, and I really just don't want my kids mixed up in that stuff. Those are hard, concrete facts that liberdopians just can't wish away.
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Would this include people who take Metformin for their type two diabeties? Nice to know you think I'm icky.
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All drug users are icky leftist radicals, no exceptions. That's just a fact, son.
(Just in case it wasn't clear, that was sarcasm.)
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I'm an icky leftist radical. Who knew? Mom would be so proud of me. :)
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Agreed, and that's to say nothing of the level of involvement the coloreds have in the drugs business. Just say no to smoking the drugs!
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Threadjack:
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I think another bureaucrat said something similar about unemployment benefits.
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Pelosi said that unemployment benefits create two dollars for every dollar spent!
MULTIPLIER!
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Carney said the same thing about Unemployment insurance last week.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c....._jobs.html
So clearly the answer to our problems is for all of us to quit our jobs and start collecting food stamps and unemployment. That way we'll have created jobs and stimulated the economy!!
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Who said, in essence, that the best and most direct way to stimulate the economy is to give money to unemployed people. Think about that for a while.
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From the Carney video-
"It is one of the most direct ways to infuse money directly into the economy because people who are unemployed and obviously aren't running a paycheck are going to spend the money that they get. They're not going to save it, they're going to spend it. And with unemployment insurance, that way, the money goes directly back into the economy, dollar for dollar virtually."
"Every place that, that money is spent has added business and that creates growth and income for businesses that leads them to decisions about jobs, more hiring. So, there are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance," Carney said.
Yep, these are the guys running our country.
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To be fair, its a better use than TARP.
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Actually, the boost to UE and Foodstamps was part of Stimulus II Electric Boogaloo.
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If one accepts the legitimacy of government stimulus, giving money to indigents and other unemployables is probably one of the least bad ideas out there. It's certainly better than bailing out billionaires or overpaid union workers. It's certainly better than cash for clunkers or refundable tax credits for buying houses.
When an unemployable person gets free money, he has more money to spend on dope. This increases demand for dope to the benefit of dope dealers. Increased dope margins and volumes increase the demand for bling and hos. Etc, etc.
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Threadjack the second: We have to spend it in order to find out what's in it!
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Wheelchair dude: "I am completely against legalizing it for everyone, but there [are] medical purposes for it."
*sigh*
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The way you threw Ron Paul under the boss today on Fox Business was despicable. You should be ashamed of yourself.
For those who haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....ture=feedu
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Wow. She (Ward) is really kind of a witless twit, isn't she?
Well, I guess that's what happens when a magazine transitions from something producing well written opinion pieces to a mealy-mouthed video enterprise that manufactures sound bites.
Carry on.
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Katherine is an idiot! If Ron Paul can't win then why was he polling in the top 3 all this time? Even now he is still in the top 4. Maybe she needs to get an education before she starts talking out her ass.
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It's time for us all to stop being ignorant hypocrites and start being TRUE conservatives!
Pragmatic libertarians (minimal-statists) and "true" Conservatives agree that many, if not most, of society's problems are caused by government usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. Where libertarianism normally parts company with "fake" conservatism is over moral issues. But a true conservative would have no problem with agreeing, that what people do with their own bodies, and especially in the privacy of their own home, should be supremely their business, and that anything else would entail ignoring the basic tenet of limited government.
Fake-Conservatism on the other hand has much in common with socialism; Both Leftists and Fake-Conservatives appear to harbor the belief that nature does not exist and that any human can be anything he wants to be, or can for the "greater good", be "re-educated" into being. Leftists therefore think little boys can be conditioned into preferring dolls over toy soldiers, and similarly Fake-conservatives believe that adults can be coerced into choosing alcohol over marijuana. A true conservative, just like a pragmatic libertarian, would immediately reject both ideas as nonsense.
If you support prohibition then you are NOT a conservative.
Conservative principles, quite clearly, ARE:1) Limited, locally controlled government.
2) Individual liberty coupled with personal responsibility.
3) Free enterprise.
4) A strong national defense.
5) Fiscal responsibility.Prohibition is actually an authoritarian War on the Constitution and all civic institutions of our great nation.
It's all about the market and cost/benefit analysis. Whether any particular drug is good, bad, or otherwise is irrelevant! As long as there is demand for any mind altering substance, there will be supply; the end! The only affect prohibiting it has is to drive the price up, increase the costs and profits, and where there is illegal profit to be made criminals and terrorists thrive.
The cost of criminalizing citizens who are using substances no more harmful than similar things that are perfectly legal like alcohol and tobacco, is not only hypocritical and futile, but also simply not worth the incredible damage it does.
Afghani farmers produce approx. 93% of the world's opium which is then, mostly, refined into street heroin then smuggled throughout Eastern and Western Europe.
Both the Taliban and the terrorists of al Qaeda derive their main income from the prohibition-inflated value of this very easily grown crop, which means that Prohibition is the "Goose that laid the golden egg" and the lifeblood of terrorists as well as drug cartels. Only those opposed, or willing to ignore this fact, want things the way they are.
Kindly Google: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF NARCOTICS-FUNDED TERRORIST GROUPS
According to data gathered by privacy expert Christopher Soghoian (PhD candidate at Indiana University), 85-90% of real-time surveillance of your Internet communication is wasted on prohibition enforcement. Simply put "Christopher Soghoian government surveillance" in a 'YouTube search' -- he discusses drug related Internet wiretaps at 5min 42sec
Prohibition provides America's sworn enemies with financial "aid" and tactical "comforts". The Constitution of the United States of America defines treason as:
"Article III / Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."Support for prohibition is therefor an act of treason against the Constitution, and a dire threat to the nation's civic institutions.
The Founding Fathers were not social conservatives who believed that citizens should be subordinate to any particular narrow religious moral order. That is what the whole concept of unalienable individual rights means, and sumptuary laws, especially in the form of prohibition, were something they continually warned about.
It’s time for us all to wise up and help curtail the dangerous expansions of federal police powers, the encroachments on individual liberties, and the increasing government expenditure devoted to enforcing the unworkable and dangerous policy of drug prohibition.
To support prohibition you have to be either ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.
* The US national debt has increased at an average rate of $3,000,000000 per day since 2006
* The unemployment rate has increased by 7300 per day since 2008.
* The loss of manufacturing jobs has been 1400 per day since 2006.
* Without the legalized regulation of opium products Afghanistan will continue to be a bottomless pit in which to throw countless billions of tax dollars and wasted American lives.
* The hopeless situation in Afghanistan is helping to destabilize it's neighbor, Pakistan, which is a country with nuclear weapons.
* The mayhem in Mexico has deteriorated so badly that it’s bordering on farcical.There is nothing conservative about prohibition, which enlists the most centralized state power in displacement of domestic and community roles. There is everything authoritarian and subversive about this policy which has incinerated American traditions such as Freedom and Federalism with its puritanical flames. Any person seeking to insure and not further compromise the safety of their family and of their neighbors must not only repudiate prohibition but help spearhead its abolition.
Narcotics police are an enormous, corrupt international bureaucracy … and now fund a coterie of researchers who provide them with ‘scientific support’ … fanatics who distort the legitimate research of others. … The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents. – William F. Buckley, Commentary in The National Review, April 29, 1983, p. 495
We will always have adults who are too immature to responsibly deal with tobacco, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, meth, various prescription drugs, gambling and even food. Our answer to them should always be: "Get a Nanny, and stop turning the government into one for the rest of us!"
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the ugly cunt should stick to writing as not to torment the non-blind among us with her unsettling visage.
or, better yet, don't write either.
we get it, the fucktard cosmotarians who went to ivy league schools to get horseshit degrees before living in DC and going to establishment cocktail parties REALLY like pot, coke, and threesomes.
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did i mention that "Mangu-Ward" is like one of the top three douche-fuckiest names on the planet?
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ps - this no-moderation policy rocks!
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this no-moderation policy rocks!
Sure does! Otherwise, nobody would know that you're a stupid asshole that doesn't like pot, coke and threesomes.
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actually, i like them fine, in moderation (no pun intended); i just don't like fuckheads like you and the cunt who think that that's the essence of libertarianism. bye for now, i've hit and i'm running
