drug laws and sanity.

Missoula District Court: Jury pool in marijuana case stages ‘mutiny’
billingsgazette.com
A funny thing happened on the way to a trial in Missoula County District Court last week.
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Jennifer Montz likes this.
We want Ron Shock back on Television!!! Please. ‎"In fact, one juror wondered why the county was wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all, said a flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul.

Ron Shock ah, sanity rears its lovely head. of course it is a waste of time and money. all of you who have followed me over the years know my position on this: we should legalize marijuana and tax it. i will even go another step...we should legalize all drugs and instead of locking people up help people break any addictions they may have. i came to this conclusion based on the a certain reality and that is: YOU CAN GET ANY KIND OF DRUG THAT YOU WANT RIGHT NOW. i can go into a strange city and within three hours score, if i so desire, any drug known to man. and you know that is true.

the war on drugs is a miserable failure and they knew it would be one when they started. what it does is give the police untold powers over the populace. drug testing, for instance, is a direct violation of the 4th and 5th admendments to the constitution. it is an illegal search of one's person without a warrent and it is making someone testify against themselves. what ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? a drug test assumes you are guilty until you prove you are innocent.

i have read that the so-called war on drugs has cost us over one trillion dollars so far and i think that figure is grossly understated. we have tens of thousands of people in prison on drug related charges. what does that cost? their families are left, in many cases, destitute and therefore on some kind of assistance from state or federal governments. what does that cost? legalize them and spend only a tiny proportion of money already being spent on treatment instead of incarceration and you save billions upon billions upon billions.

the same goes for prostitution...legalize it and tax it. it is already everywhere (you know and i know and the police know that on certain corners in every city there are hookers standing waiting for customers) if we legalize it, put in red light districts, have brothels then you eliminate pimps and disease. the girls are safe, the customers are safe, the city and state and federal governments get tax revenues. and that would be a lot of fucking money....so to speak.

i was asked about wilileaks and this is what i said

et me preface this with i know a writer who is very progressive and he thinks that the wikileaks release of these memos, emails etc is the greatest thing since the pentagon papers. you must remember that the p.p. broke the truth about the "tonkin gulf episode" and proved that the government flat out lied to us and because of THAT LIE the majority of the 58,000 deaths in vietnam HAPPENED! a lie that cost tens of thousands of young american men their lives and also caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of vietnamnese. remember that.

when i looked at it from that prespective ...

now, what these new leaks show is that the government of afghanistan is corrupt to its very core and WE KNOW IT. hmmm does this start to have an erie feel to it? we also know that the so-called afghan army is a sham and probably won't fight (just like the south vietnamnese army was unreliable and we knew it) we plan on staying until the afghanistan army can control the countryside and the government is stable. right? yet we know that the afgan army is more a figment of our imagination and we also know the the current government, which we installed, is horribly corrupt and not trusted by the people of afghanistan. BUT WE ARE STILL STAYING. based on what we know IS BASICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO HAPPEN AND THEN WHEN IT DOESNT HAPPEN WE WILL HAVE TO STAY EVEN LONGER and longer and longer and longer and longer and longer.......

when the pentagon papers were leaked to the press, oh the horror cried the politicians and commentators not of the government lies mind you but the release of the papers. hmm just as we are seeing now. and the beat goes on.

the detractors are using the same arguments....it jepordizes people who sympathize with us. here is a clue, jack, they were in jepordy anyway...they sympathized with the invaded army and the people knew it. hmmmm. what would put them in real danger is when we finally leave.....ask some of the south vietnamnese who co-operated with us and then we abandoned them.

so, fuck a bunch of secrets. the government and the military industrial comples doesn't want us to know the truth about afghanistan and iraq. we are there to stay. that is the plan. and they are pissed that we, the people, might just actually figure that out.

health care and you..vegas voice article

The national health care system was ruled unconstitutional by a republican-appointed federal judge the other day because it required everyone to buy into the system but previously two other federal judges, both appointed by Clinton, ruled that it was constitutional so the eventually the decision will be made by the Supreme Court. We, the people, though need to really think this through and in this column today I am going to ask you to drop any preconceived ideas about it and read this with an open mind. Because it is such an important subject, this little screed may take two issues to complete but here is my main thrust and my reasoning behind it.

If we let the national health care program go down the costs to the country will be horrendous! Right now Americans pay more for health care than any other industrialized country and, by all measures such as obesity, child deaths, age expectancy etc, we get less. Not only that when the national inflation rate is practically nil, health care costs have gone up over 9% per year over the last four years and is expected to top 10% in 2010 when all the figures are in. Many people are covered by group health plans through their work but when the insurance companies raise the rates employers shift most, if not all, of the increase down to the workers. However since wages have been flat since George Bush took office in 2000 and continues so under Obama this increase to the workers is not balanced out by raises in wages so consequently these workers, instead of getting raises, are getting real money reductions in their pay checks so, logically speaking, they have less money to spend which hurts ALL other business and thus keeps the national economy from expanding at the rate we need. Not only that but the cost of health care for employees is factored into the cost of whatever product or service the company provides so that it becomes inflationary for the nation as a whole. Whenever you buy literally anything in America you are paying for some one else's health care plan and when you buy something big such as a car you are paying a dozen companies health care costs; the tire company provides health care, all of the suppliers such as batteries, cables, spark plugs, door handles, seats, dashboards etc etc etc all provide health care and each and EVERY one of them passes that cost onto the car company who then adds X percent to that and then includes their own health care outlay so the cost of the car goes up by hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Put in a NATIONAL health care plan and the cost of all things made in America goes down. Even the companies that outsource their manufacturing have to pay health care costs for the American companies that ship it, truck it, package it, stock it etc. And here, once again, you and I pay for it.

Under a NATIONAL health care plan we would be able to control costs much more efficiently at the doctor and hospital level. You must always remember this axiom: INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF PAYING CLAIMS, THEY ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF COLLECTING PREMIUMS! Every one of you reading this knows a horror story about an insurance company denying obvious legitimate claims or lowering what they will pay leaving the private person in deep financial straits. And here is a dirty little secret that most do not know, hospitals will not negotiate with private people over costs but have to negotiate these same costs if they are being paid by the insurance company so the hospitals and doctors don't get their full pay so what do they do? Why, guess what?, they pass those costs onto everybody else. Under a national health care plan costs would be negotiated and put into place for all people at all times. And if we put in some kind of tort reform, doctors would be freed from the ungodly costs of insurance against frivolous lawsuits thus being able to lower their costs to all of us. Not only that but hospitals are required by law to treat all people who come through their doors and this includes not only poor citizens but illegals as well and these people do NOT pay but payment is made by you and I. Having a requirement that ALL people have a national insurance card means that the hospitals will always be reimbursed for their costs and not have to pass them on to the general public.

Next month we will cover the tremendous cost of insurance fraud and how a national health care system will put a huge dent in that and we will cover how all the other industrialized countries handle their national health plans.

I leave you with this quote: "Let us put an end to the teachings and preaching of hate and evil and violence. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far let and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law and those who pour venom into our nation's bloodstream." Lyndon Johnson.