Speaking of Sipsey Street, Mike Vanderboegh reminds us of what we’re talking about when we talk about taking our country back by force of arms:
Pictures from the War on Drugs, by the way, over in Mexico. This is what an open border policy invites in.
Via Curmudgeonly and Skeptical:
Like most folks in this country, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck in my case, I am required to pass a random urine test (with which I have no problem) What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test.
So, here is my Question: Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them?
[I'll note that I personally hate pervasive drug tests. But, yeah, if earners have to pass them, so do the sucks.]
Finally, a war for which Obama may possibly be a competent leader by simply surrendering: The Drug War. So far, he’s only saying he’s going to stop pursuing marijuana clinics in states where they are legal. And we really do have to wait and see whether or not the bust rate declines.
But if this is for real, and if it’s the start of a trend, I will have to give Obama a very great deal of credit. I have believed for a long time that the War on Drugs, and particularly the Battle of Ganja, damages far more lives than it saves, and has done incalculable damage to our rights.
However, even I have to admit to the uneasy feeling that this is only the circuses part of a bread&circuses public policy.
I am particularly sensitive to this today because I have, once again, had to put myself on the National Runny Nose Registry for wanting to buy pseudophedrine.
The rule is, “innocent until proven guilty”. Having to register for pseudophedrine purchases essentially demands that I prove my innocence, on the assumption that if I were a drug cooker, I wouldn’t bother to register.
From Reason:
Last month a federal judge sentenced Rosa Martinez, a physician in Yakima, Washington, to a year’s probation and a $1,000 fine for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. The fraud occurred when a physician’s assistant in Martinez’s practice mistakenly charged the government for her services at the physician’s rate, which is allowed only when the supervising physician is present, which Martinez wasn’t. She said she was unaware of the rule but accepted responsibility for the errors because they occurred on her watch. The overcharges totaled $22.
This isn’t just a nationalized medicine case, although it is that. It’s primarily a Drug War case:
This pathetic outcome is all that is left of a federal prosecution that threatened Martinez with up to 20 years in federal prison, portraying her as a taxpayer-bilking drug pusher.
The article explains how the government’s entire case was “gutted”, but although Martinez “wanted to keep fighting, but she ‘had run out of money’ and assets, having ‘lost her home in the process of defending herself against the charges.’”
This is the kind of extremely useful advice you rarely get because it’s illegal. Stupid drug laws. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
[T]he key to amphetamines and Ritalin is to stop thinking of them as stimulants, and to think of them as reinforcers.Let’s conceptualize how these drugs work. Imagine getting a brain scan while you are performing a task. The parts of your brain you are using for the task will light up, brighter than those you aren’t using.
Now you drink coffee. The whole brain lights up brighter, proportionally.
Now you take amphetamines. The parts of your brain that you are using light up brighter, but the parts you aren’t using go darker. Get it? Caffeine is a global brain stimulant, while amphetamines focus your attention, reducing distraction.
This is entirely selective and controlled by you. You have to decide what you want to focus your attention on. If it’s reading, the reading parts of your brain will be brighter. But if you stop reading and decide to talk to your friend on the phone, you know, the hot one with the hotter roommate, then you’ll be more focused on that (obviously). Attention is always decreased when it is split among several tasks. In other words, you can only concentrate on one thing at a time, even though it may feel like you are doing two things at once.
While amphetamines and Ritalin do stimulate you and keep you awake, using them to pull an all nighter completely subverts their awesome power. If you want a stimulant, drink coffee or Red Bull. Amphetamines should be saved for reinforcement.
You want to set up a study situation that as closely as possible resembles your testing context. Do you take tests in the middle of the night? Using multicolored highlighters? With The Daily Show on in the background and eating Doritos? Then you’re a pig, and you deserve to fail. You’re dead to me.
You should study in the morning, at a desk, under the same “fed” conditions as on test day. (So you would have eaten before taking the test, not snacking at the test.) Quiet room, no distractions. Remember, attention is decreased with multiple stimuli in normal conditions, but on amphetamines, this will be be greatly magnified. Studying while talking to your friend means your “talking to friend” parts of the brain are brighter while your “”studying” parts of the brain are darker. Same thing with listening to music and studying.
Take the amphetamine (takes about 30 minutes to “kick in.”) Study, straight, with no distractions or interruptions, for about four hours. Quit. You’re done. Amphetamines give you about 4 hours tops of great concentration. Go to lunch, the gym, watch a movie, etc.
This is Leary’s “set and setting” understanding harnessed and put to work.
It should be noted that all this probably works without amphetamines almost as well. I’m beginning to understand that brains are all about reinforcement and habit.
Drugs are tools, just like guns, or computers, or shovels, or pencils. Drugs cause enormous damage because the drug war forces us to treat them like an enemy, and they reflect that back at us. The only people “studying” drugs are hedonists, losers, and violent criminals.
Incidentally, many of the comments are useful and informative, but then, many are not. You will have to step carefully to avoid the mines and cowpats, but they’re worth reading.
Stevey tries to compare computer programming with writing laws. He starts by describing the policies and programs necessary to implement a seemingly easy change in credit card accounting; it turns out to be a great deal more complicated than you’d think.
He then talks about making marijuana legal. Again, that seems simple, but when you look closely at the problem, all sorts of hidden complexities arise.
I believe, however, that he has missed an essential difference between computers and people:
There is a fundamental difference between writing laws and writing programs:
Computers need programs to function, at all. The bucket example is a good one: without both administrative policies, and the programming code to implement them, the idea can never be put into practice. If there are any errors or gaps in the code, the idea will fail.
People, however, will for the most part function just fine without laws. In the absence of laws, people do whatever they damn well please. Some choose their behaviors wisely and thrive. Others choose poorly, and fail, in which case they either learn, or die.
This process is called “evolution”, and it is known to work very well in terms of generating diverse solutions to a large set of complex and otherwise intractable problems.
There’s a economic analog, called “capitalism”.
In any event, it is absolutely possible to simply…delete a law. It is not necessary, or in many cases, even desirable, to write a replacement.
Example: The Supreme Court recently struck down part of the Washington, D.C., gun control regulations. They did not propose alternatives. They simply deleted the old law. Poof! Gone! (Of course, D.C. promptly wrote a new set of equally offensive and counterproductive regulations, but that’s not the fault of the Court.)
This happens regularly (although not often enough, in my opinion) at all levels of jurisdiction. Courts void laws, legislatures repeal laws, laws simply fall into disuse and are forgotten.
The more laws you write, the more you will run into exactly the problem you describe. The solution is to simply not write laws that are not absolutely necessary. People will seek and find their own solutions to problems, and successful solutions will, on average, persist and spread.
There will be failures. That’s a necessary part of the system, the negative feedback loop.
There will be parasites. Excellent! Both biological and computer systems become more robust when routinely challenged by parasites, which tend to exploit flaws in the system. Either the system adapts (by, for instance, checking for buffer overflows) or it dies, clearing the way for a more robust offspring.
In any event, however, there is no reason why bad laws cannot simply be deleted.
Via the very fruitful Hacker News which is simply a list of interesting links, along with comments from readers. Very interesting stuff, mostly computer and programming related.
The Supreme Court will decide if Savana Redding’s school acted properly when they strip-searched her for prescription-strength ibuprofen, each tablet of which is roughly equal to two over-the-counter Motrins.
The search was done on the accusation of another student trying to explain how she came into possession of ibuprofen pills.
Redding turned out not to have any pills in her possession, but frankly, even if she had a gram of coke on her, it would not have justified this.
Michael Daly Hawkins, a thug masquerading as a lower court Judge, said, “I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students.”
What threat, exactly, “Judge”, was severe enough to justify this trauma?
Richard Arum, who teaches sociology and education at New York University, asks, “Do we really want to encourage cases where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?”
Hey, professor, do we really want to encourage cases where school administers can rip the clothes off innocent students for little or no reason?
Or are you just pulling your rotting liitle pud in excitement about the prospect of school teachers getting official permission to rip the clothes off their students for no good reason?
Prove there was a threat, you assholes. Prove there was a threat that justifies this being done to your daughters. Or yourselves.
Pervert thugs, the both of you, and everyone involved in this.
I hope the Supreme Court cuts your balls off and makes you eat them. In public.
And if they don’t, what use is it? How can this possibly be seen as Constitutional, or remotely moral?
Finally: this happened in a school. What do you think Savanna Redding and her friends learned from this little lesson in Respecting the Authority of the Law?
[Via Slashdot, where I responded to the particularly ignorant comment that "The practical reason for the Second Amendment is that private ownership of guns was necessary to perpetuate slavery."]
For reference: Entry at SCOTUSWiki for Safford v. Redding (docket 08-479), which includes the cert Petition from the Safford United School District (that would be the Bad Guys) and the Brief in Opposition, as well as all other significant documents in the case so far (not many, as the case is just now established at the SC.)
This is so intelligent, and gives up such a huge lever with which to control The People, I’m having a hard time believing it’s Obama doing it.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama – who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana – will end raids on pot dispensaries in California.
Asked at a Washington news conference Wednesday about Drug Enforcement Administration raids in California since Obama took office last month, Holder said the administration has changed its policy.
“What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we’ll be doing here in law enforcement,” he said. “What he said during the campaign is now American policy.”
“Will end raids,” of course, suggests that raids haven’t yet stopped, but I think this is for real, and very encouraging.
All I can think of is “opiate of the people”. Obama will have so many other means of controlling our lives — gun control, education control, health control, finance control, porn control, child control — drug control would be redundant, and letting the proles get high is a good way to convince them you’re on their side.
The War on Drugs has served its purpose; the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are almost entirely erased, and policies established to fight the Drug Scourge can now be expanded into every other field of liberty, and we will be too stoned to care.
Via The Agitator, Radley Balko.
The White House said it expects [raids on medical marijuana shops] to end once Mr. Obama nominates someone to take charge of DEA, which is still run by Bush administration holdovers.
“The president believes that federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws, and as he continues to appoint senior leadership to fill out the ranks of the federal government, he expects them to review their policies with that in mind,”
[Via DrugWarRant.]I expect very little of any good out of the Obama White House, but if he actually follows through on this, he will at least get a rather stiff-necked nod of approval from these quarters.
Now, if only he’d do the same over at the BATFX — excuse me, I just peed my pants laughing.
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