Thanks to drug war incentives, both statistics and anecdotes show US police agencies spend most of their time going after (harmless) drug users and ignore violent crime. Only massive law enforcement reform will fix this clusterfuck.
The Dutch have legal drugs, legal prostitution, and a very permissive view on teen sex. Yet their rates of drug abuse, STDs and teen pregnancy are many times lower than in the US. Bad laws and religious hangups cause more problems than they solve. A new book called “Not Under My Roof” explains how and why this is true.
Everybody agrees that US public schools are completely fucked, but nobody seems to know what to do about it. Here’s an idea - copy everything about Finland’s system. Their kids rank miles above ours in every metric, and they spend less money per student to accomplish it.
One of the primary rallying cries of the anti-immigration movement is “Them illeegalz is takin’ our jobs!”. Of course the rational (and accurate) response to this is the fact that most illegal immigrants do work that legals don’t want to do, for wages that US citizens wouldn’t accept. Throwing logic to the wind, Georgia recently passed House Bill 87, which made it pretty much impossible to hire illegal migrant workers.
The predictable result? Millions of dollars worth of crops rotting in the field. Without cheap labor, farmers can’t afford to harvest blueberries, melons, and other hand-picked produce. US citizens - even prisoners out on parole - aren’t willing to do the work for the miserable wages (and no health insurance) that the farmers are offering.
And people get all bent out of shape when I make fun of the south for being dumb. Sometimes stereotypes are well deserved.
Forty fabulous years of wasting billions of dollars, filling the jails with non-violent non-criminals, and getting innocent people killed. Of all our pointless and expensive wars, you’re the most pointless. Congratulations, War on Drugs!
Hedge Fund Gamblers Earn the Same In One Hour As a Middle-Class Household Makes In Over 47 Years
It’s a longish read, but there are some legitimately good suggestions in this article on how to solve the problem of wall street super-greed.
Without going into too much detail, let me just assure you that this is a Big Deal. I think I’ll just let Nelson express how I really feel about it. (via Engadget)
This is why it’s not OK to simply let people believe dumb things. Sooner or later, they’re going to act on their dumb beliefs, and the outcome is never good. Superstition is never “harmless”.
We’ve spent almost 300 billion dollars waging a war on (at most) 100 terrorists in Afghanistan. We’ve spent more than double that fighting terrorists in Iraq that didn’t even exist until we created them. That’s over a trillion dollars pissed away on practically nothing. And don’t get me started on the absurd cost of security theater right here in the US. Fuck it already. Just fuck it. Some planes crashed into some buildings a decade ago. A few common-sense improvements to airline security have long since insured that it can never happen again. Eerybody involved is either dead, captured, or vanished. Get over it. Stop sending good money after bad and move the fuck on.
