Evil Governments
Prohibitions always favor crooks. Take gun prohibition for starters. Then look at drug prohibition. And now the Republicans have voted in internet gambling prohibitions.
Crime (violence and fraud) is government business. Vice is a personal responsibility issue. Or else we are going to wind up with food police.
Unfortunately Republicans no longer discriminate between vice and crime.
There are estimates that libertarian voters make up 15% of the electorate (range 10 to 20%). Suppose 1/2 that number favor Republicans over Dems. That is 7.5% of the voters. Piss off even 2/3s of that number and you have lost a 5% chunk. That is enough if they stay home or vote D to lose a lot of elections.
So how do you get those voters on your side? Fiscal responsibility (not a prescription drug benefit) and less government intrusion. The Rs have not been very fiscally responsible and they have been sticking their noses where they have no business.
What ever happened to the party of smaller less intrusive government? Something theocons and libertarians used to agree on. Evil governments always start with the premise "there is no limit to the good we can do if we put (government) guns to people's heads".
Which seems to be the ruling philosophy of Rs and Ds these days.
You want a big tent in order to win elections? Go back to core principles.
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True true, now contrast that to the fast morphing of Putin and the gang.
Don*t look now, but Russia is fast morphing into a North Korea No. 2.
Things are so damn fast moving. Listening to a Russia expert this morning one realizes how uninformed about recent Russian changes we can be.
The recent contract killing of a feisty journalist in her home apartment building elevator is supposed to be about number twelve on the recently executed list.
Well, excuse me. That*s the short list. There have been over 200 journalists snuffed contract style and it seems Putin is getting his message of, * just don*t write anything critical* across to journalists anyway.
Said well traveled in Russia, commentor, with heavy accent, also mentioned that citizens have less and less access to unbiased news. [Hello CBC, what*s new, except for the odd free-flow interview, like this one]. Guess you notice how the first half of every CBC and CTV news cast is taken up with soldiers lost in Afghanistan. An hourly anti-Harper harping. I*m tired of it!
As ex-Navy, I have every sympathy for the families losses, however it is an embarrassment that the CBC does so much weeping on our behalf. Anti-Harper Crocodile tears.
Our man from Russia mentioned that he and millions of retired like him get pensions of about $80 a month. He wonders how his countrymen manage to keep from starving.
Yet, paradoxically, he says there is hope for truth through the internet. Says there are 20 million on the net in Russia. Now I have serious reservations about that number. Maybe more like 20 thousand.
The important point is that 7000 people attended the funeral of our latest journalist of truth. The vast majority of Russians do want freedom and democracy, but like North Korea, they are being confined and made prisoner with the old reliable whip, the government bullet.
First the Mafia made real strides in Russia in the early nineties and without limitation the rot spread to bureaucrats galore. The estimated budget of organized crime was about 340 Billion$ and that is approximately double the Russian economy.
Today the population is held captive much as they are in North Korea. The marketplace is extreme capitalism in a black-market trading sense as everyone must scramble to make ends meet. Because most people are so pressed, they tend to have little time to become better informed about how things are changing for the worse in their own country.
Hotel complexes are hi-jacked and in our case, a deposessed Canadian developer has a lawsuit to regain his 14 million$ but Russian authority is doing nothing to help render any justice.
Billion$ are being siphoned to Russian servers through internet crime and there is no Russian will to cooperate with any free-world authority at all.
Usually upbeat, I am unable to see much silver lining in Russia these days. = TG
Still some hope with Georgia though.
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