BALANCE THE BUDGET

Somehow, we are all going to have to pay for the bank rescue which saved our economy. It is, unfortunately, not legal to tax just banks. Neither can we tax just those Republicans who believed that no regulations would allow business to boom.

This is because usually you can not tax people for being wrong. We did not get a boom. Instead we almost got a bust. Con artists and stock market gamblers almost took out the entire world wide economy.

So how do we save money so we can repay the deficit? I think firing janitors and putting the cleaning out to a sub-contractor is a REALLY STUPID way to save money. You lose control of who is in your office at night, so theft of data and electronics increases.

Personally, I think we should stop spending money on the War On Drugs. Study, after study, after study, show that prohibition of drugs does not work. Studies show that drugs are MORE available to children when they are prohibited. Alcohol, which is regulated, is less available to teenagers than cannabis.

Real life results in countries like Portugal show that offering treatment instead of threatening imprisonment actually lowers drug use. Treatment is also MUCH less expensive than sending someone to prison.

Please read the LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) website. Be sure to go to their arrest clock.

25% of the world's prison population is in prison in the US. (We have less than 5% of the world's population.) The states and the federal government are spending billions of dollars on arresting and prosecuting possession of drug crimes. Our crime labs are so jammed with drug tests that the labs have little time to catch the person that robbed your house. Our court are so jammed with drug cases that the courts have little time to evaluate abuse and/or custody of children, or to prosecute the guy who robbed your house. Our prisons are full to bursting, and no politician will agree to parole anyone in case one out of 10,000 released kills someone after they are paroled.

If another country was doing all of this, we would be screaming human rights abuse.

What we should be screaming about is the waste of money spent on the War on Drugs.

Haven't you noticed that the more money we spend on drug prohibition, the more violence is generated?

Worse, we are strong arming our allies into helping us enforce our draconian drug prohibitions. We all watched Columbia turn into a violent country. Now we are watching Mexico turn into a violent country.

When will we ever learn?