Where did you get that pretty picture? The reason I ask is: read any history around the leadup to WW2 (I've done my share) and you'll see that the purge alone in 1937 killed anywhere between 250k and a million people. Your chart doesn't show that. Additionally, it seems to show "new enrollees", not total population. I'm relatively certain that we didn't add 2.3M new enrollees last year. Unfortunately, you ran into a buzzsaw on this one. It happens.
Oh, the injustice! People getting put in prison for doing illegal shit! I thought I could show you that your "we're worse than the gulag" bullshit was hyperbole, knowing that an intelligent drug user would play the victim, but I thought I'd give it a shot.
like i said before, my point still stands, we can go back and forth all day with contradicting statistics if we must i know youve never smoked weed before, but your last few presidents have, and snorted coke too must feel pretty strange taking your orders from an evil drug user
I'm disciplined enough to take lawful orders from whoever is legally appointed to give them to me. If Bush/Clinton/Obama had been sent to prison for drug use, would he have been elected?
Getty, Rittersporn, Zemskov. Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence. The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 1017-1049
noooo, like do you think it is good policy? i know you have been trained not to question your superiors, but step outside the box for a second
You're probably right. I don't like the cost, I don't like the punishment (and honestly, I don't care if it's stiffer or more lenient) and I hate that it's even an "issue" when we have things like the economy, defense, etc. to worry about. But it's the law. I won't deny your right to push for it to be legalized. My gut feel is that it's "bad" (I know, that's a copout) and that it's a gateway, though I'm sure you or someone else has plenty of reports that that's BS. I can point to anecdotal stuff in other places who've tried lenient drug policies (like my Amsterdam example) and show that while individuals users can say "nothing wrong with it/people commit more crimes on painkillers and alcohol/whatever", Amsterdam and the like show that there's a significant element of "bad people doing bad things to hurt people" involved. And that's what I really don't like.
and no, they absolutely would not have been elected, which makes the system that much more laughable and hypocritical. for obama and bush and clinton to still send millions of nonviolent drug offenders to jail is a slap in the face to justice
No, he didn't. http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock And, wow! Look at that money we're pissing away every second. Enough to fix the healthcare problem today.
If it was that easy, you'd have a better point. I'll assume for a second that every dollar shown in the clock is correct: if you multiplied it by 20 it wouldn't take care of just the overrun of Medicare and Medicaid. That doesn't count for anything for the 260M people who aren't medicare recipients. Again, assuming those numbers are true, our system of gulag incarcerated 8,000 people this year. Out of 2.3M in the system. That's 0.034%, or roughly the same amount that PBS contributes to the federal deficit.
$40 billion dollars a year. Could probably save some people who are currently dying for lack of healthcare. Maybe 10,000 lives a year? Maybe 50,000 lives a year? Murderers and child molesters are being ignored to allow police time to catch someone smoking marijuana. The U.S. federal government spent over $15 billion dollars in 2010 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $500 per second. Source: Office of National Drug Control Policy State and local governments spent at least another 25 billion dollars. Since December 31, 1995, the U.S. prison population has grown an average of 43,266 inmates per year. About 25 per cent are sentenced for drug law violations. Arrests for drug law violations this year are expected to exceed the 1,663,582 arrests of 2009. Law enforcement made more arrests for drug abuse violations (an estimated 1.6 million arrests, or 13.0 percent of the total number of arrests) than for any other offense in 2009. Someone is arrested for violating a drug law every 19 seconds. Police arrested an estimated 858,408 persons for cannabis violations in 2009. Of those charged with cannabis violations, approximately 89 percent were charged with possession only. An American is arrested for violating cannabis laws every 30 seconds. The bottom line is drug use has not decreased at all after 3 decades of ronnie's war on drugs. It's a futile effort and a complete waste of money, resources, and people's lives, all designed to protect a few businesses owned by a few 1%ers.
That is completely within your power. All it takes is a little self control since Realtors are personally selected by their clients and are never paid more than their clients agree to pay them. I fail to see the connection between healthcare costs and real estate, but we've already established you don't really have a clue at all about Realtors or real estate.
