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Sunday, February 17, 2008


ELIOTT SPITZER IS A FUCKING FOOL AND WHY AMERICA IS CONSTANTLY WRONG

The United States undoubetly has the most psychotic and hypocritical drug policy on the face of the earth. Because of the deluded and failed War on Drugs, two million Americans currently find themselves in the criminal justice system. To give you a clearer picture of American priorities, sex offenders are being given lighter prison sentences to make space for the country's seemingly endless supply of drug offenders.

Indeed, the reach of the Drug War's folly extends well beyond America's own borders. Some of the world's poorest countries are being blackmailed with trade and foreign aid into enforcing American drug laws. That the United States has only 5% of the world's population, but consumes 50% of the world's illegal drugs is often left unsaid. Administration after administration undermines countries like Columbia and Peru because it cannot or will not control the demand of it's own citizens.

Of course, this didn't get in the way of the U.S establishing a narco-state in Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban, opium production has rocketed to 93% of the world's supply. Even President Karzai's brother is thought to be a part of the heroin trade. Since the United States is the world's largest market for heroin, its Afghan policy puts America in the unique position of now creating both the supply and the demand for the drug. Because of its Afghan policy, the Bush administration may be considered the world's largest heroin cartel. Worse still, because of its unbelievable incompentence, it doesn't even turn a profit on the enterprise.

I can't think of a rational reason - liberal or conservative - to continue the criminalization of recreational drugs. When half of all Americans, including at least one president and innumerable candidates for that office, admit to having used them at some point in their lives, all criminalization accomplishes is diminishing respect for the law. Internationally, American drug policies serves only to undermine respect for the United States in that it punishes sovereign nations for the habits of American citizens.

Furthermore, the Drug War has steadily undermined the Bill of Rights and corrupted law enforcement. Asset forfeiture, an increasingly common enforcement measure, has essentially gutted the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. And because local police departments are allowed to keep the proceeds of asset forfeitures, they resort to it as a means of revenue enchancement. American citizens are being deprived of their property without due process of law and private property is being taken from them for public use without just compensation.

Just as the USA Patriot Act has becoming a tool in the purely local issue of where antihystimines are placed in your neighborhood pharmacy, the NSA warrantless wiretaps will soon be used in prosecuting drug cases. After all, the chances that your average American will be killed in a drug-related drive-by shooting are far greater than the chances that he or she will be murdered by al-Qaeda. And at that point, the Fourth Amendment will be meaningless.

For six years, President Bush was unchallenged as America's dumbest chief executive. However, New York governor Eliott Spitzer wants you to know that he's closing in fast. It's rare that you see someone win an election with 70% of the vote only to throw it under the bus of their own stellar incompetence. Spitzer went from winning with 69% of the vote - the second largest electoral victory in New York history - to an approval rating of 33% in less than a year. Governor Spitzer has literally crumbled under the weight of his own overwhelming stupidity.

Now, with all the grace of an autistic child, Spitzer is dancing his way into the Drug War.

If you can't beat it, tax it.

That seems to be the axiom in New York these days, where Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer (D), struggling to close a $4.4 billion budget gap, has proposed making drug dealers pay tax on their stashes of illegal drugs. The new tax would apply to cocaine, heroin and marijuana, and could be paid with pre-bought "tax stamps" affixed to the bags of dope.

Some critics in the legislature are asking what the governor has been smoking.
That might be the most priceless fucking thing I've ever read. Not only do drug users now face the prospect of draconian prison sentences, they're expected to bail the state government out of the cesspool of its own irresponsible spending. The governor of New York seemingly wants to be in a position not only to incarcerate you, but to tax you for the privlidge.

If you're anything like me, you're wondering what in the fuck Spitzer's thinking. For the state to tax an item is to give that item a measure of legitimacy. After all, you don't hear much about a murder tax.

Or is it just another tool for lazy and stupid prosecutors who don't have the time or energy to prove the underlying crime of trafficking?



Taxing illegal drugs is more widespread than is generally known. At least 21 states have some form of tax for illicit drugs, although some of those laws have been challenged in courts, and others have fallen into disuse. Almost all the remaining drug-tax laws are used mainly by local law enforcement agencies as a way to seize drug money and fund counter-narcotics operations.

The controversial idea grew out of the efforts to fight bootleggers such as Al Capone during Prohibition -- going after the bootleggers for unpaid taxes often required a lighter burden of proof than a criminal prosecution. Taxing illicit drugs gained popularity during the 1980s and early 1990s, when prosecutors and law enforcement authorities were pushing for mandatory sentences and other measures to signal a crackdown on drugs and drug use.
As you may have noticed, most street-level drug dealers aren't exactly Al Capone. Furthermore, the Capone example is deliberately misleading. Scarface was taking down on evading income taxes, not sales taxes on his bootlegged liquor.

This proposal doesn't seem to be targeted at the wholesale distribution level. Those guys are too smart to be pinched or outside the jurisdiction of the state or local governments.

What the idea does do is pose more questions that it answers. How would a street dealer get the stamp? How would the state know that the dealer is telling the truth about the quantity of drugs he or she posseses? Would they have to take their stash into a tax office to weighed and assessed? Would the tax apply to weight or purity? How do you make a distinction between sale weight, which would be taxed, and personal use, which wouldn't?

Once you answer those questions, you quickly come to the conclusion that Eliot Spitzer is de-criminalizing drugs. Except that he isn't. More likely, this is nothing more than another evil enforcement measure, wherein you find yourself fucked no matter what you do.

There are three problems with this. Firstly, if it is nothing more than an enforcement measure, it will raise exactly no revenue that the state doesn't already collect under assest forfeiture. Secondly, it's a Fifth Amendment violation. You can't expect anyone to confess to one crime in attempting to comply with a second, related law. Third, assuming that you actually can get a conviction, does anyone really believe that regular tax evaders should be imprisoned with hardened, violent drug dealers? If you sentence drug tax evaders differently than the ordinary kind, you create a Fourteenth Amendment issue, and if you don't, you might be in violation of the Eighth Amendment.


Last September, a state appeals court ruled a drug law in Tennessee unconstitutional, saying that an illegal substance could not be taxed. In Massachusetts, that state's supreme court in 1998 ruled a drug tax was an unconstitutional form of "double jeopardy," so it is not used, although it remains on the books, according to the revenue department in Boston.
If nothing else, it's nice to see that the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy still means something in the United States.



In New York, Spitzer proposed the drug tax in his 2008-09 budget as a way to deal with a projected shortfall, and in a memo said taxing drug dealers would raise $13 million in the coming fiscal year. The governor's office said the bill would contain strict secrecy requirements, so drug dealers who paid their taxes would not be incriminating themselves.
That is of course absolute horseshit. Drug dealing of any kind is still a federal crime. That's how they managed to shut down medical marijuana distribution despite the fact that the voters of several western states expressed their desire to allow it. The State of New York cannot establish a secrecy requirement without becoming a co-conspirator in any federal prosecution. As you might have noticed, "strict constructionalists" aren't really big fans of federalism where the Drug War is involved.

Besides, how can Spitzer honestly say that the measure will raise $13 million when, in the 21 other states with such a levy have raised exactly no money? Normally governments are accused of being either lying or stupid. This is one of the rare cases where it gets to be both.

That says nothing of the political considerations at issue. If the New York Republican Party was even halfway smart, they'd have ads on the air right now accusing Spitzer of legalizing heroin. As currently written, Spitzer's proposal is contrary to both the United States Constitution, human nature and basic common sense unless you're talking about decriminalization.

The Liberal government of Jean Chretien seriously considered the decriminalization of marijuana and introduced legislation to that effect. The American government threatened massive tie-ups at the border if that legislation passed, overlooking the fact that American handguns smuggled into Canada have taken far more lives than Canadian pot could ever hope to. Due to American pressure combined with the cowardice of Paul Martin and the stupidity of Stephen Harper, the decriminalization measure died in the House of Commons without ever coming to a vote.

I'd like to suggest something to my American drug-zealot friends. You don't get to determine what our laws are and aren't. We elect our own government for that. If you want to tie up trade and border traffic over something as demonstrably harmless as marijuanna, fine. Just understand that that border runs two ways. We're not huge fans of your guns killing our citizens either. But you would do very well to remember who your number one supplier of things like oil and automobile production is. Given the state of your dollar, you're lucky that we don't shut the border down on you.

Since the United States was never particularly faithful to NAFTA anyway, I wouldn't be at all bothered if Canada and Mexico withdrew from it and strangled Washington with the same policies that it uses to threaten us and other countries. And that's coming from the best friend that United States probably has. Most other Canadians aren't nearly as charitable as I am.

I'm pro-gun and pro-drug. But I also believe in national soveriegnty. If I were prime minister, I'm dumb enough that I probably would have joined the United States in Iraq. But under no circumstances would I tolerate Washington dictating our drug policy to us, nor would I stand for threats on trade being made on the issue.

You'd get exactly one warning, and then each and every American crossing the border with a handgun would be prosecuted under smuggling laws, which would be roughly equal to your drug-smuggling laws. That would mean that roughly ninety Americans would be sentenced to 25 years without the possibility of parole each and every week. Currently, we merely relieve tourists of their weapons and allow them to proceed. That would change.

Canada opposes the independence of Kosovo because of its implications on Quebec independence. However, President Bush has vowed to recognize such a declaration that happened today. Maybe it's time that Canada enacted a Helms/Burton Act of our own, barring your executives from entering Canada and siezing their assets without trial. If it's good enough for you to pass such laws for no other reason to win Miami/Dade county, we have the same right to protect our independence, which most sensible people would agree is much more important.

By the way, didn't you fucking people fight a civil war over what your president is applauding Kosovo for doing?

This attitude coming from an administration whose vice-president once argued for lifting American sanctions on the terrorist government of Iran is a little too much to bear with a straight face.

I probably love the United States more than I do my own country, but that doesn't mean that I would blindly accede to my country rolling over at the whim of punks like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. You don't get to impose laws on other countries that you can't even enforce on your own citizens. Your drug problem is exactly that, yours. No other country is responsible for the fact that your citizens like to get high.

I actually agree that the United States probably shouldn't join the International Court of Criminal Justice, but I vehemently disagree that you should be permitted to essentially kidnap foreign nationals without consequence. And you don't have the right to wave flags for PFC Jessica Lynch as you turn over Canadian citizens like Maher Arar to the monsters in Damascus.

America rightly doesn't like being treated like Rodney King. And as soon as it stops drunkenly speeding through residential neighborhoods, we can all just get along.

Story Lovingly stolen from Captain's Quarters.

Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: God's Gonna Cut You Down By: Johnny Cash From: American V: A Hundred Highways




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