Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The Day After Halloween

It seems like year after year we get fewer and fewer trick-or-treaters coming to the door. It might be the "Trespassers Will be Violated" signs, it might be the moat filled with piranhas, it might even be the lightly-tethered pit bull next to the porch.

But this year I had absolutely NO Halloween visitors. As a result, I was late to work this morning because I had to swing by the nursing home to drop off that basket of apples with razor blades...

1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

Its the terror thing all over again... People are losing trust in their neighbors!

Winning the war on Terror

First we need to eliminate the black market economies that exist in our society. These economies exist because things are illegal. Drugs as an example creates a huge portion of our black market economy, prostitution adds to it as do many minor things the government and citizens do not realize. Redirect forces to fighting terrorism: instead of fighting drugs, prostitution, illegal labor, we should be figuring out how to resolve these issues in our society so they do not have to be illegal. As soon as something becomes totally illegal it’s part of the black market. Cigarettes are rapidly moving in that direction in the US and it will give more sympathy to the black market and more access for more people. Citizens need to find non restricting ways to enforce their important morale issues on the rest of the country. I, a non smoker find it very confusing that cigarettes are more dangerous to us than the exhaust of 1 car. How many packs of cigarettes equal idling a car for 1 minute? Should we not remove gas burning cars from the roads before we worry about second hand smoke from cigarettes? If cigarettes are so dangerous how come you only have to be 18 to buy them and 21 to buy beer? Does spilling beer on someone kill more people than second hand smoke?

The point is making things illegal because of the belief of some aids terrorism. Terrorist are pissed off people, black market shoppers are also pissed off people because they can’t get legally things they feel they should be able to buy in a store. The more fractions of people you have to watch in the underground economy the harder it will be to watch the terrorist. Participants in the underground economy will not help you find terrorist because their interaction with a terrorist would be in an “illegal” setting and they do not want to go to jail. They also have the potential to purchase stolen goods in the black-market setting adding to supply and demand of the more normal crime. If somebody has to go to the black market to buy marijuana and in the same place they get marijuana they can get stolen TV for a fraction of the price, they are more likely to purchase a stolen TV. They will also have more drugs available to them than just the marijuana the original reason they were part of the black market. Buy pulling things out of the black market it will shrink, it will be easier to see and terrorist will have a harder time surviving in the United States of America.

Some for of legalization of immoral activities must happen soon. An example would be to restructure the drug laws according to age. Make the less dangerous ones available to younger adults and the more dangerous ones available to the older adults. Drinking is ok at 21, smoking should be 24 and marijuana should be included at 25, heroin however would not be legal until you are 60. Maybe prostitution would be legal at 18? Maybe gambling at 19? Which drug is worse? Cocaine or Meth? Because Cocaine was illegal some sick person created Meth and now we have a huge Meth epidemic we did not have just 20 years ago. Schools are the single easiest place to get drugs because minors face relaxed penalties for the crimes. Once drugs laws are restructured we need to remove the drugs from the schools by placing enormously harsh penalties on adults who contribute to minors.

By reducing what we have to enforce we can channel our resources to watching terrorism. DEA and Border patrol could be merged into a border terrorist surveillance Agency. All illegal immigrants must be deported and given a way to legally enter the United States. Instead of letting the rich people benefit from illegal labor everyone should benefit from cheaper foreign labor in a limited way so it does not destroy the US labor economy. Illegal immigrants chose to break the law and do not deserve amnesty, they like everyone else, does deserve a chance to come work in the US legally.

Until we can reduce the amount of resources spent on internal crime the US will have to worry more about terrorist. We need to move forward by restructuring our laws and regrouping our police and task forces. Punishment for breaking the laws might need to increase but should include leniency for first time offences.