“Calderon’s Silence on ATF Gunwalker Scandal Explained”:
Anabel Hernández has made quite the charge: the Sinaloa cartel has bought the Mexican government lock, stock and Calderon. What’s more, the DEA knows about the corruption and plays ball with Calderon to catch other cartels, giving the Sinaloas a pass. Which would account for Calderon’s lack of indignation on the whole Gunwalker deal.
The stink on this scandal continues to strain mightily to rise to the heavens. But sadly, much of our media in this country is so committed to protecting Obama and the progressive agenda that they base the force of their coverage on political calculus, and they’ve surrendered reporting for advocacy, journalism for activism.
That they continue to do so under the veneer of objectivity is as risible as the idea that we live in a free country. Such are the convenient fictions we continue to embrace in order to avoid facing our own timidity and lack of real resolve.
(thanks to geoffB; h/t IP)
The country that will be knows as the Republic of Texas will have a two-front war to fight. The northern borders will be attacked by the clamoring masses trying to get into a country in which they won’t starve, and the southern borders will be attacked by the drug cartels. There will be a lot of shooting going on is my guess.
How to bone the cartels overnight, and fight crime, while cutting the budget: End the drug war.
Hello sir, would you care to purchase this product that was created in a US labratory which meets FDA standards and is backed by the reputation of the company which assumes legal liabilities if it is misrepresented, having been fully informed of the risks?
Why no, I would rather consume the same thing, but for twice the cost that was made in an underground lab in Mexico and smuggled across the border in the asscrack of an illegal alien, who will use the money to fund violent crime.
But wait, I know, I know.
If you make it legal, why, why, people will use it.
Cuz they ain’t doing that now. Making it illegal sure does stop the living hell out of them. Got me there.
Enjoy the curly light bulbs and the no-flow toilets.
Entropy, the illegal stuff would still be SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than the legal stuff if legal drug companies need to go through FDA approval for marijuana or meth. Same reason illegal labor is cheaper than legal (even if it is also of much lower quality). It’s like the drug equivalent of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has millions more customers and billions more in revenue than Saks or Nieman, no matter how inferior its quality is.
Case in point, there was a hormonal herbal supplement that compounding pharmacies make for pregnant women. It helps with fetal development and treats or cures a couple of different conditions that can develop during pregnancy. It was $20 a month. THe FDA (and drug companies) decided to step in and force that hormone treatment to go through the FDA approval process, and the cost is going from $20 a month to $1500.
Ella, does the FDA evaluate beer & wine? They are recreational drugs, not theraputic. Why should pot or meth be any different? They can be handled by the ATF.
Alcohol, tobacco and firearms should be a corner store, not a goverment agency.
And we could do away with the FDA while we are legalizing drugs.
See how easy that was?
Just for perspective, what was Nixon nearly impeached for again?
Alcohol, tobacco and firearms should be a corner store, not a goverment agency.
I know I sure like a smoke and a drink after shooting.
Entropy, the illegal stuff would still be SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than the legal stuff if legal drug companies need to go through FDA approval
That’s not an argument against legalization. It’s an argument for decreased FDA regulation, which to the extent it is true, it remains true for everything – meaning the cartels always have a backup plan selling illegal incandescent bulbs or running El Laco Taco food trucks cheaper than we can. Or cigarettes.
And yet, it’s not so stark – sure, you see Hamas types get a bit of funding selling smokes that fell off a truck, but there isn’t a huge Mexican Tobacco Cartel.
for marijuana
The stuff is like corn. Prolly should cost less than corn. It’s literally a weed.
A regulatory regime could be identical to tobacco – even at a preposterous 1100% hidden sales tax rate or whatever it is, tobacco is still cheaper pound for pound then illicit pot, despite the fact that as a crop, pot is cheaper to produce.
or meth.
Haven’t the foggiest idea.
But when you get into lab drugs there are lots of alternatives that can substitute.
With many drugs, like LSD, a single small lab can produce individual batches that are large enough to handle the entire US supply for a year. Overhead is really very low.
And if you’re going to have a black market anyway, do you want some enterprising dude down the street to make it in his basement at the risk of getting slapped with operating a business without a license fines or some such, or zoning regulations and IRS problems, or do you want to be chucking farmers and chemists in jail so you can protect the monopoly held by a bunch of uzi-wielding gang bangers selling a product smuggled over the border at penalty of hard jail time?
Stop arresting the Kentucky bootleggers for running grandpappi’s still to augment the family income, and you won’t gift-rap the whole industry for Al Capone to run around buying cops and hitting people with baseball bats.
Stop raiding hydroponic vegetable gardens, medical dispensaries in CA, and busting gas station clerks, let them sell the shit on ebay by mail, and the Cartel’s won’t have the income left to compete and still keep funding a now-redundant standing army of mercenaries with AK’s shooting at border patrol over a product they could be hocking on ebay.
Make pharmecutical quality cocaine legal and you won’t be able to give away Meth.
Also illegal labor is cheaper than legal because government rules and regulations have driven up the price of legal labor to an absurd degree. That is what creates all black markets.
Anybody noticing a common theme here?
If you make it legal, why, why, people will use it.
Cuz they ain’t doing that now. Making it illegal sure does stop the living hell out of them. Got me there.
I’m pro legalization only recently. The argument isn’t about whether people will use it, it is about how many and to what extent. If you legalize, how much will use go up or down?
The other consideration is the impact this will have on crime against others. It is likely that certain crimes will increase if the number of users goes up.
I’m not talking about pot. For that the most likely negative income would be a hit to overall productivity and an increase in the sale of snack foods.
I’m pro legalization only recently. The argument isn’t about whether people will use it, it is about how many and to what extent. If you legalize, how much will use go up or down?
That is the eternal argument. That is the argument about guns.
BMoe, trust me, I’m not in favor of the ATF, FDA, EPA, or OSHA. I’d nuke ’em all from space. All I’m saying is that simply legalizing drugs won’t help much if we immediately start slathering on government programs (like the FDA). The problems are significantly exacerbated by OUR government. To wit: 1) using the drug war to create abusive state powers that have nothing to do with drug enforcement (e.g., no knock warrants), 2) complete lack of border enforcement, and 3) “stabilizing” Mexico by allowing the drug cartels and the illegals to skim off the dregs of their society to keep it limping along without reform. If we simply call the mary jane something like, oh, Ambien or cough syrup or even liquor, we’re still pretty well screwed because the structural problems are still in place. Bans on drugs are not the problem, they’re the excuse for the problem.
I guess I could consider not being anti-legalization. Hell, I might even be okay with people driving while high on whatever, as long as they’re not texting.
Well, you just know Queen Michelle won’t stand for that.
I don’t have much of a problem with people driving drunk or high, or whatever. We already have laws against hitting people and property with your car. Punish the guilty accordingly. The mostly law-abiding guy sneaking home at 2am, driving under the speed-limit and being extra super-careful because he doesn’t want to get busted — unlikely to be a problem.
When those studies came out saying “OMG! Talking on a cellphone is every bit as dangerous as driving while drunk”, I took that as evidence that we’re clearly overhyping the danger of drunk drivers — since it seems like every third idiot on the highway is yammering away on a phone, and yet there was no dramatic uptick in traffic deaths compared to 20 years ago when people generally didn’t have cellphones.
Threadwinnah!
[…] Mexico as Capone's Chicago? – protein wisdom […]
Then there was the time, decades ago and therefore long past the statute of limitations, when I drove from a party at a friend’s house, downtown and back again to guide in some other friends who didn’t know where the place was (it was my first time there too, IIRC). I’d had several boilermakers and joked later that if I’d been pulled over the cop would have asked for my pilot’s license.
It was by no means the only time I risked a DUI but it was the worst. Of the traffic accidents I’ve been in, I was never drunk and neither was the other driver. And maybe with one or two exceptions the drivers who put me in for for my life without causing an accident, weren’t on the phone at the time.
And of course — as someone will no doubt point out — the plural of anecdote isn’t data. Except it is, what they’re really trying to say is you can’t extrapolate the whole data set from a single datum.
…or even fear…
A guy who knows the difference between datum and data should be heeded.
Since we can’t infect all the Mex drug thugs with syphillis and bust ’em for tax evasion, my money’s on drug decriminalization. Besides tugging the rug out from under Mex gangstas, it would put a significant dent in the Taliban and Iranian treasuries. Prision facilities would gradually drain, saving the estimated 30K+ per year to house dime-bag and crack dealers, and more inner city teens will enjoy the reformative pleasures of a nine-to-five job at WalMart and paying taxes rather than cutting smack with baby laxative. But everyone would be so whacked out of their skulls the Chinese army could probably invade us over a long weekend.
Decriminalize drugs. Legalize prostitution. End the arcane distributor system with regard to alcohol. Legalize gambling everywhere. The opportunities for tax revenue are endless, which means our little government whores will inevitably get around to all of them.
I have no problem with legalizing pot to the extent alcohol is legal. Like Entropy said, it’s a fucking weed.
I do have a problem with pharmaceuticals though. I think those should remain prescription only by a doctor, with the doctor being reasonably liable for his judgment in prescribing it. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere. It’s kinda like I’m big on the second amendment, but I have no problem with restrictions on full automatic guns and howitzers. I don’t want to see them for sale at Wal-Mart.
I guess I’m not totally libertarian.
Oh, and I don’t have a problem with prostitution or gambling either. There will always be oversight though, and with vice, transaction with secrecy, corruption always follows.
If after 60 years of “battle” the problem is several orders of magnitude worse one might assume the line is drawn in the wrong place, don’t you think?
Or the line was not adequately defended.
Might want to stop distributing new needles to addicts on my dime, for instance.
I’d agree with 2 addenda:
1. Anyone taking any drug including alcohol is absolutely ineligible for any form of welfare / public assistance. Let them get stoned on their own dime.
2. Being under the influence of any impairing drug including alcohol is considered an aggravating factor in any crime. You knew it would fuck you up and you took it anyway.
+1
My worst fear of “legalization” is that I am going to have to pay for the lotus-eaters. All the brave talk of legalize-and-make-everyone-responsible-for-their-own-problems seems to fly directly into the face of the way things have been working for the past 45 years or so. The SS disability payments would break the US all by themselves.
Maybe if we made Mr. Balko the head of the DEA things would get better, heh heh.
You are paying for them now.
Put it this way, which cost more to society, dealing with tommy gun toting gangsters subsidized by illegal alcohol during prohibiiton, or the problems with alcoholism we deal with now?
I live in Costa Rica and except for the legal drugs, (and some of drugs are legal, as I can go into a drugstore, pay $5.00, see a doctor and get pretty much what I need), most of this is the norm. Take this for what it is worth; it ain’t all that and a bag of chips. I think the real problem is basic human nature. Unchangeing and unchangeable. OCB whether naturally occuring or drug induced presents a myriad of social problems not that different to what the U. S. confronts now. #33, exactly this. Google heroin and Geneva in the 1980’s and 90’s. If memory serves, they had a free drug program that was a colossal failure.
#34 “You are paying for them now.” Boy Howdy you got that right! Just in dollars, to say nothing of suffering and pain.