A Missouri dairy operation that makes cheese from raw milk and has been in a yearlong tussle with the state's milk board was raided by gummint agents who shut it down and seized assets.
Leviathan is making an example of Morningland, much as it did in the 1930s, in the case of the Schechter brothers, kosher poultry producers in Brooklyn. They eventually won the suit they filed, but not before burning through lots of money and time.
When I was a kid, we had a Latvian neighbor who had escaped with his wife when the Communists took over. Many is the time that he regaled his sons and their friends including me with accounts of the singularly chilling experience of getting "that knock on the door."
In post-America, people are getting that experience now.
Jumping off the deep end again I see. Untold hundreds of thousands had their doors kicked or rammed in and their assets seized as a result of laws openly promoted by your beloved Ronnie. OK, I know, he was old, soon to be senile and he thought that would cure what ailed us. Well, it hasn't and history has proven him quite wrong. Multi millions were spent and/or lost by those who were victimized by his crusade. I will never view him as any
ReplyDeletebeacon of freedom.
ReplyDeleteOther than the drug thing you always bring up, what doors were being kicked in on what premise?
ReplyDeleteI did not bring up other doors, you did.
ReplyDelete"... Reagan lit the fire, and in the years since he took office tens of millions of people have been arrested under the drug laws, millions have been sent to prison, and hundreds of billions of dollars have been incinerated in a program that epitomizes big, intrusive government in one of its most violent forms. And while Reagan did made the occasional gesture, such as allowing the tiny federal medical marijuana program to function, or said the occasional word suggesting a lighter touch might work, those good deeds pale in comparison with an enduring legacy of police and prisons, searches and seizures, and a population ever more surveilled in the name of its own well-being. It was during the presidency of Ronald Reagan that narcotics law enforcement morphed into drug war overdrive with a series of ever more draconian drug laws and an attitude of repressive "zero tolerance" emanating from the White House. Here are some of the lowlights of Reagan-era drug policy:
Erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act, the 1868 law that forbids federal troops from engaging in domestic law enforcement activities. It was the erosion of Posse Comitatus that led to the killing of US citizen Esequiel Hernandez by US Marines outside Redford, Texas, and the use of military equipment and personnel against the Branch Davidians in Waco in 1993 (under the pretext that they were cooking meth).
Zero-tolerance "Just Say No" as a public policy approach to drug use. "Not long ago in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered drugs," explained Nancy Reagan in 1986. "And I answered, 'Just Say No.' Soon after that those children in Oakland formed a Just Say No Club and now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the country."
Passage of the 1986 crime bill, notable for the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences for the first time since 1970. This act also created the federal Sentencing Commission and the current system of federal sentencing guidelines, which did away with parole in the federal system, ensuring that prisoners would serve at least 85% of their sentences. And it included asset forfeiture.
Passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which established a federal death penalty for "drug kingpins." Reagan signed that bill in his wife's honor.
The home page of the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org), a libertarian think tank in Washington, DC, features a glowing homage to Reagan, but the former president wins no drug policy kudos from Cato's Timothy Lynch. "When it comes to the drug war, there's just not much good that can be said about Reagan's policy," Lynch conceded. "It was bad, no doubt about it."
From: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/341/reagan.shtml
So, in a huge sense, Ronnie really ramped up your postulated "Post-America."
ReplyDeleteYou weren't able to bring up any "door" situations other than the drug one, per my request. Don't you think that greatly reduces the validity of your claim that there was something anti-freedom about the most vocally pro-freedom president of the last 150 years?
ReplyDeleteMillions, not just hundreds of thousands as I understated in my initial reply, of Americans' doors were rammed in and are still being rammed in by teams of DEA assault personnel and the property contained within and the dwellings to which the doors are attached seized largely due to your most vocally pro-freedom president of the past 50 years. I think that is enough said. How does that reduce the vallidity of what I am saying? Oh, freak me with tales of Latvians during a Commie take-over in some foreign land. The same thing happened over and over and over here and is still happening in your alleged post-America. And Ronnie ramped it up big time!
ReplyDeleteBecause the desire to get off is such a noble and exalted human characteristic.
ReplyDeleteWhen was your last drink?
ReplyDelete