Is the drugs war the death knell of federalism?

[sweetheart]

In very simple terms, the cost of the drugs war is so incredibly high,
that is is bankrupting federalism. The cost of this policy ultimately
destroys all federal power, and corrupts all goodwill in the institutions
of power. The cost of this is more than the taxpayers can afford.

By adopting nixon's war on drugs, the democratic party is complicit
with the neocons in waging a covert effort to destroy all government,
by designing a virus-like policy of prohibition to create an overbearing
police/prison state. One that erodes civil liberties and destroys the
very constitutional state that the people's goodwill intended.

It leaves the question as to if there IS a political party in america
today, or in the western world for that matter, that is not a radical
anti-government neo-con.
...
or if the consensus is
universal to destroy all of the benefits of globalism and federalism
that we have evolved over the past so many centuries
wity a cynical ploy to squander any positive outcome
and bury our children in coffins of lead.

[sweetheart]

1. It is propaganda to see the drugs war as peripheral

It IS itself the core problem sponsoring stupendous criminal enterprise
and the decay of inner cities. It is rigidly racist and any party that
supports it is supporting racism, no matter what fluffy pillows they
pack it in.

Yet, though people claim to be rational in some senses, we are anything
but, able to deny many decades of evidence-of-failure for gross
police state expenditure and the erosion of the goodwill of government
all for some cowardly opportunists who would rather kill others than
consider that they were wrong.

[starmaker]

2. Making a buck

Legalize all vises Tax em
End one unwar.

[sweetheart]

3. The cowardice of suporting the WOD

To back a rightwing policy out of *fear* that speaking the truth will
have consequences, is an omen of general cowardice. Its as if standing
for no racism, no waste of taxes, no needless destruction of lives is
too avante garde. What is left, but to dig a hole and hide in it.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[sweetheart]

5. Don't you realize there's more to it sweetheart?

Federalism is in crisis because of bad government, not just the war on
drugs, or rather that is symptomatic of a greater sickness that we can
externalize evil and conquor it with military force.

Don't you see that the answer is to give up your direct ideals and to
vote for murky corporatists in the DLC so that they can do a clinton
and sell out to the money'ed interests? Don't you realize that there
is no way to stop the miltiary industrial complex, and the police
prison complex. People are so brainwashed, they'll never respond to
truth in politics, rather only more abuse and waste.

Don't you realize, that intelligence has been banished from the
political battlefields of the USA, replaced by lesser evils and an
attempt to put down a brownshirt takeover of every aspect of decency
for a war-based theocracy of cynical thuggery? What evidence do you
see that things could be otherwise.

The problems in america are manyfold, and primary amongst them is the
failure of the media to be plural or independent; that the media itself
rots out public mind by elevating trivia without informing or educating
its reader/watcher/listener-ship. The problems start with the media
and the military controls over it, and the revolving doors in and
out of the administration to high paid corporate bribery and
corruption.

You ask the impossible sweetheart. You are not a democrat, but a
dreamer, who votes democratic because you still believe the party
could be truthful and wise... but this is silly, and you should just
start voting green and get some sense.

:-) Lets hear what you have to say to that, you drugs-war focused
person... :-)

[sweetheart]

6. So you're saying the real problem is externalizing morality?

And that the war on drugs is not it. I accept your point, but the
fact on the ground, is that the war on drugs is the single most
destructive policy of the most american lives of any of the lot.

The war in iraq pales next to the damage of millions of people and the
foolish plot to imprison and educate in these crime academies a generation
of deprived individuals, leaving us all deprived for it.

Every mother should spend a year with her baby and be paid for it
in the first year of life. This would end more drugs and prison
problems than all other measures combined in the triage level of
broken-adults.

Can the dignity of the soveriegn individual be restored during our
lifetimes? Or is that dignity only reserved for "free" peoples.?

[Pepperbelly]

7. sweetheart ... what we have here is a failure to communicate.

Here's the problem ... there are three hugely powerful interests arrayed against a common-sense policy ... i.e. legalizing all ...

1) the treatment community -- this includes the outrageous drug testing facilities as well ... These folk makes TONS of money on the WOD.

2) the law enforcement community who also gets lots of more money to hire lots of more cops and buy lots more stuff under the WOD. They also get to take shit away from people if they can link them to drugs (forfeiture laws).

3) organized crime has the biggest interest of all in keeping drugs illegal. Without the risk of arrest, it is a commodity, pot worth no more than other vegatable matter and cocaine worth no more than refined sugar. The risk is what brings the $$.

Of course, we also have the assorted assholes out there who "believe" in the WOD and those who have been duped into thinking it a big deal. But these 3 groups listed above are what's killing common sense policy.

[ProudDad]

8. You forgot

the politicians who have an easy way to sell their fear based "solutions".

I live in the inner-city of Oakland, CA and I'm pretty sure that most of the frontline cops would be happy to see an end to the drug war. It causes the inflation of drug prices that results in a great deal of their most unproductive and frustrating work; busting low-level dealers and cleaning up after the murders perpetrated as part of turf wars between dealer organizations.

As far as I know, "organized" crime doesn't have the sway they used to.

I gave my daughter a button once that said "Capitalism is organized crime". Not far from the truth, eh?