Joe Biden may think he really rattled some cages by calling House Pubs "neanderthals," but the reason they held up passage of the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act is that it expanded the act's scop to include men and prisoners, was going to spend money redundantly and grant authority to tribal courts.
Domestic violence is one of those societal issues that is far more effectively addressed at the local level, but Freedom-Haters never pass up a chance to extend the reach of the federal leviathan.
President Richard Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration through an Executive Order in July 1973. DEA was created in order to establish a single unified command to combat "an all-out global war on the drug menace."
ReplyDeleteDEA started with 1,470 Special Agents and a budget of less than $75 million. In 1974, the DEA had 43 foreign offices in 31 countries. In 2009, the DEA had 5,233 Special Agents, a budget of more than $2.6 billion, and 87 foreign offices in 63 countries.
Perfect example of a quasi-executive-branch federal agency metastasizing way beyond what was originally envisioned. Another would be the EPA.
ReplyDeleteAmong drug reformers, no matter their position on the ideological spectrum, there is little debate about it: Reagan's drug policy legacy is a disaster. For all the people contacted by DRCNet for this article which included both critics and admirers of the Reagan presidency overall the question was not whether Reagan's drug policies were bad, but how bad and how much of the blame he shares with others. To drug reformers, the Reagan-era represented a traumatic disappointment, a time when the nation hurtled down a path of massive suffering, waste and injustice.
ReplyDeleteread more at http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/341/reagan.shtml
But the main point is that it was a minor aspect of his legacy
ReplyDeleteMillions have been jailed and millions of dollars worth of property seized because Reagan had to prove we hadn't seen nothin' yet!
ReplyDelete•1980 Drug warrior Ronald Reagan assumed office and brought the military industrial comples into the battlefield. The CIA went to Central America and cocaine began to flow back to our cities.
•1984 Reagan announced: "You ain't seen nothin' yet!" and promptly militarized the Drug War. Zero tolerance became the stepping stone to widespread implementation of urine testing. His 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act went farther, adding property forfeiture law under Nancy's rallying cry: "Just say no."
Because it would be so much better if everyone were loaded all the time. Tell me, just who were the outspoken champions of an outspoken policy circa the early 80s?
ReplyDeleteAlthough it is definitely not your call nor anyone else's call whether anyone else is loaded or not, including when what where with whom and how they get loaded unless it infringes upon your rights. Look no further than WFB as an opponent of the policy, at least eventually. Everytime I have to cringe to pee in a cup I curse your beloved Ronnie. What Ronnie wanted, Ronnie got back then, and, since he did not have any real wars to fight vs. real enemies, aside from threatening a few times, he had to create a war including a large swath of his own citizenry. Do you know how many deaths marijuana caused last year? As for some other compounds, particularly hallucinogens, research and practice continue to yield quite favorable results for their therapeutic use with a whole host of psychic ailments.
ReplyDeleteOh, please. He wasn't "creating a war." Most Americans from 1985 backwards to 1885 felt like it was inadvisable for society to permit people to get as intoxicated as they wished on whatever substance they got their hands on.
ReplyDeletePlus, he had a very real war - the Cold War - and he won it.
Here's the thing: You can gauge a society's overall health by the nobility of its priorities. A nation that is preoccupied with whether people can take various substances, and which one, at the expense of looking out for its security in the face of threats from enemies like Communists and jihadists abroad, or redistributionists at home, is a nation mired in triviality and on its way to losing its greatness.
ReplyDeleteThere are even myriad cultural issues that are far more important than whether drug laws need to be loosened. The basic concept of the family is imperiled, and that trend has been gaining momentum for 50 years. Christianity is persecuted and radical Islam given a pass in societal sectors ranging from education to the military. Entire cities are dying. Black youth unemployment is in the double digits. Junior high school students are being indoctrinated to disparage oil as an energy source.
ReplyDeleteTo cite a few.
Prohibition was a big deal in this country and an even bigger deal upon its repeal. We had other stuff on our plate then too. When you talk about Freedom Haters, you got to include Reagan for his Drug War legacy, that's all.
ReplyDelete