I am starting to doubt the wisdom of going out on a river all day tomorrow. It is freakin' ridiculous out there. But it's Doug's last weekend before his family comes up here, so I will invariably end up doing whatever it is he wants to do. And related to that, Adrian and Lauren, I think you're going to like what I got for your going away present :)
So at work, we have this budget that will never end. I swear as each day goes by, we make more changes than can be done in a day, getting farther behind as we go. If only I was still being paid by the hour...
This seems like a good random time to throw out that it is frustrating being a Royals fan.
4 comments:
Float trip tomorrow, you have to be kidding me. We're going to be getting the hottest temperatures we've had in a few years in KC. I don't know about St. Louis, but I imagine it can't be too much different.
Nate--Moving up a space here. First, bag the float thing unless you like flirting with heat-induced stroke and possible death.
I shot a gator last weekend while canoeing on the Coosawhatchie River. Not to eat it, but to make sure it didn't turn my canoe over. I didn't kill it--I just provided some cost/benefit planning items for it to consider before it slapped my canoe again with it's tail.
Question for you: Have you ever used a prostitute? Known one? Talked to one? What about a heroin addict?
Don't know the agency you are working for--but it sounds like you are in accounting. Do you mix much with the people who are stealing your license plates? The drug guys hanging on the corner? Seems like the St. Louis area would have plenty to see--especially East St. Louis?
You know the old saying--a liberal is just a conservative that hasn't been mugged yet. In your case, maybe its the libertarian who hasn't sifted through the wreckage of other people's lives created by "victimless" crimes?
Crime is not a very big problem? I guess that is relative. You might be using recent government stats, etc. to base your opinion on. What about how you feel? Do you feel that crime isn't a very big problem? Do you feel that secure? You were just a victim of crime. Amp that experience up to a weekly maybe even a daily possibility and let me know how you would feel then.
I take it you are single. Cradle your baby girl or boy in your arms and tell me again the sweet fairy tales you will tell them about how felons should be allowed to vote on candidates and policies that would effect them for the rest of their lives. Let them know that when they are at impressionable ages, older adults can take advantage of them with impunity--free from the stigma of criminality.
Felons. Those guilty of committing felonies. The worst category of crimes in America. And you want them to have a say? They made a choice to exclude themselves from society's rules and mores. They should stay excluded. Seems to me that there is plenty of work around for illegal aliens. I don't see why felons can't cut grass and lay bricks just as easily.
Ordinary, productive people in jail? Not in my experience. They are typically EXTRAORDINARY. At least in comparison to my peer group. They have taken the road less traveled and gotten lost. And lot of that mismanagement of the moral compass comes from seemingly NON-CONSEQUENTIAL actions taken earlier in life that you would say shouldn't be criminalized.
Things build, Nate. One experience leads to another, then another. Principles get drained of life, then finally are discarded. A $50 blow job here, some coke there, maybe I won't report my income tax, maybe I can get in on the ground floor of holding these stolen items in a rented storage facility until their "owner" comes to pick them up, maybe I'll cheat on my wife because everyone else is doing it.
Where does it stop in your utopian, everyone is free world, Nate?
I'll gladly pay taxes to keep the folks who've lost their moral compass or never had one separated from me and my family.
Is use the right verb for prostitution? I guess it's as good as any other. The answer, by the way, is no. I don't know any, although it wouldn't surprise me if at some point in my life I'd talked to one. Also, I think the law makes a somewhat oversimplified definition of paying for sex. At the risk of angering some of the more, uh, forceful feminists out there, there's a lot of activity that's not technically prostitution that's pretty darn close to trading sexual favors for compensation. Or to put it in the words of Good Charlotte, girls don't like boys girls like cars and money.
But I digress. I don't know any heroin addicts either, but again, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point in my life I've encountered people who happen to use heroin. I do know people who have divorced and people who have committed adultery, and none of them are in prison. And I know people who should certainly drink less. And smoke less. And eat fewer cheeseburgers. And get more exercise. And read more. And watch less TV. And I could go on and on; I think you can already guess that I don't think the government should force people to do these things.
I assume that the people who commit the crimes in my neighborhood live somewhere close. I know cars have been stolen, people mugged, and obviously tags stolen and cars hit. There was a big drug bust down the street a couple years ago. You couldn't get out of the neighborhood there were so many cops. I don't know how familiar you are with the Saint Louis area, but East St. Louis is the butt of many jokes related to crime and prostitution and general unsafeness and unpleasantness.
I have heard that saying before, but it's obviously made by a conservative because it assumes crime is a primary concern. For liberals, economic justice, racial equality, environmental protection, voter rights, foreign policy, the criminal justice system and a number of other issues are more important than crime per se, although many liberal issues impact crime indirectly since most criminals aren't rapists and murderers and other such extremely violent offenders. Part of supporting an independent criminal justice system is not expecting it to treat you differently when you are all of a sudden on the victim side of a crime.
When I say crime isn't a very big problem, I'm speaking from a risk analysis perspective. Of the things Americans should worry about during the day, crime actually ranks pretty low. That's not to say people don't worry about crime; it just means that the probability of the fear has been artificially increased for a variety of reasons. People get shot in Forest Park, and I have no problem going jogging alone. Perhaps I'm too comfortable for my own good, but most people are too worried relative to their actual chances of becoming a crime victim.
Yes indeed I'm single. I have no interest in having kids any time in the near future. The world's overpopulated, and I like my sleep; take your pick on which reason is stronger. But I don't take my position due to apathy for children; I do it out of great love and affection. I have worked or volunteered at a public school district for about 8 years. I love high school kids. They are old enough to be responsible but still young enough to question everything. People can always be taken advantage of, emotionally, economically, and physically; age doesn't actually have that much to do with it. I think one of the real disservices we do to children is to baby them, giving them no rights or responsibilities, even through middle school and high school. Young minds are impressionable; that's why deception is even worse with them. When you tell a 12 year old that drugs will ruin their lives, that they will kill them; and then it turns out they don't, you shatter trust in the police and government and educational institutions to guide them on issues even when they are being truthful. Through programs like DARE and others, drugs are made out to be so bad that their inability to live up to the hype in real life undermines the very serious message that drugs are bad. It seems like some people wish that a single joint or gram would kill somebody, give 'em what they deserve, even though the science is clear that they're simply not as bad as the ONDCP and others make them out to be. Alcoholism isn't just a problem for adults; the average age at which Missouri kids start drinking is around 13. Illicit drugs are even more available than alcohol in the nation's secondary schools. Criminalization simply doesn't protect kids; it actually endangers them by forcing them to seek out more dangerous criminals and by providing incentives for large criminal organizations to employ minors. Not to mention things like having to hide drug usage from teachers and parents as well as unregulated drugs which have to be made under makeshift, often unsafe conditions. Meth is a big drug in Missouri. It's dangerous and people shouldn't use it. But the reason that meth houses blow up every week is because it's illegal, not because it's meth. Also, the arbitrary nature of which substances are illicit gives kids an incorrect notion that legal substances might be somehow safer. The single biggest drug-related problem facing high school kids is drunk driving (and that's more of a problem than it should be because for some reason our laws think that 21 is a magic age of responsibility). While many liberals today might be happy to declare alcohol abusers unfit for the White House, that kind of declaration would not please me. And many (legal) inhalants commonly found in the home are more dangerous than the major illicit drugs. There are other ways our drug laws harm kids, but these are the ones that came to mind readily enough this evening.
Felons should vote. Old people should vote. Women should vote. Business owners should vote. Veterans should vote. Young people should vote. In fact, I would lower the voting age to 16 or so. On this I feel pretty strongly; if you're an American citizen who has achieved an agreed upon age (setting aside whether that should be 16 or 18 or 21 or whatever for the moment), then you should have the legally protected right to vote with minimal intrusiveness. There is simply no other way to get everybody to buy into society. And once you have a system which systematically disenfranchises huge numbers of people, you have a system that isn't sustainable. We are creating a system with only two alternatives: either figure out a way to get ex-offenders reintegrated into society as full members thereof, or be ready to imprison a whole generation of millions of Americans for their entire lives. Do you want to pass that kind of debt burden onto your kids?
I'm curious what your experience is with all these unproductive criminals. Most people who commit crimes are your average employed neighbor next door. Now, in terms of actual convictions, since money has such a huge correlation with conviction rates, there would naturally tend to be a higher percentage of convicted felons you would deam as less productive than the population as a whole. But if you're arguing that people who commit crimes should go to jail, you've got to support getting convictions on the people who break the law but just haven't been arrested and convicted yet. Would it surprise you to know that cocaine is actually an upscale drug? Doctors and lawyers and accountants make six figure, taxable salaries while simultaneously raising families and snorting cocaine. Literally tens of millions of Americans have used marijuana illegally. Not even the most jaded liberal would argue near that number of Americans are unemployed. The simple fact is that the vast majority of Americans who have committed a victimless crime are employed, pro-family, productive citizens.
Your things build paragraph proves my point about the arbitrary nature of many laws. Your last breakdown of principle is something that's perfectly legal, and you jump back and forth between crimes that have victims (such as income tax fraud and theft) and crimes that don't (prostitution and drug use). Are you prepared to imprison every person who has ever cheated on a spouse? I would also take issue directly with the gateway argument. The statistics simply don't bear it out, whether we are talking drugs, prostitution, or other victimless crimes. Drug use has the most readily available statistics. The vast majority of casual users never become addicts, and the vast majority of users of "soft drugs" (such as marijuana) never use hard drugs (such as LSD or methamphetamines).
Where does it stop? Well, either when friends or family say you have a problem, or when you do something that harms somebody else and the criminal justice system intervenes.
Otherwise, you are responsible for yourself.
Nate--Won't argue with you on the sexual/social proclivities of women today--except there is a distinct difference between women in the 20-35 demographic and those who are older. The latter are closer to my teenaged daughter in thoughts and deeds than they are to women over 35.
I think you might know if you had been with a prostitute or smack addict. I'm not talking about recreational users here. I'm talking about lives which have been ruined. I know folks that have ruined lives aren't all that fun to go shopping in Target with, so you might not have poked around too much inside their lives. At what point does recreational, it's my body, it's my choice, criminal behavior that you urge to be decriminalized become a situation where entire families are destroyed? What's the crossover time? And why shouldn't the government have an interest in trying to push that tipping point back?
What is an independent criminal justice system? Independent of what? I'm stumped there.
Also, what is economic justice? I'm alive, therefore I deserve an equal slice of the pie? Do you mean that people who didn't work as hard as you did at school (getting up and going when you didn't want to) and didn't graduate college with a degree (yeah, its a hurdle, one that tests endurance more than anything else)deserve something equal to what you have worked for?
Are you a socialist? Just curious.
I think one of the major differences between us and our thinking is our connection to our believes. You seem to be very policy driven--which seems very abstract to me. I'm sure you've heard of the term "wonk" before. I don't mean that derogatorily either--you just seem to have ideas and beliefs that don't have a solid connection with how families actually feel about things--at least from my perspective. For example, your whole argument about drugs being legal and being a better safeguard for kids than criminalizing it is just downright--immoral. I don't know of another word to tag it with. Legalizing meth labs? You back up your statements with possible outcomes as if you were describing the daily rituals of squirrels or the mating habits of groundhogs. I don't see any connection at all with real people. If I asked 100 people if they thought meth labs should be legal and all drug laws repealed, because you know, its just stupid to lock people up for selling cocaine and weed when you can go and get blasted at Daiquiri Island (a local watering hole) legally, I wouldn't be left standing after about the third person I asked.
At what age do you believe a child should be allowed to experiment with drugs? Sex? Should the government have an interest in that?
I completely disagree with you on the voting thing. I think voting should be even MORE restrictive. Why do you need everyone to buy into society? That is some sort of utopian pipe dream that I hear a lot from the liberals. Give peace a chance and all of that. Societies are fluid. They evolve or devolve based on all manner of variables. Giving every single person who reaches the age of 16 the right to vote (and I'm not even addressing the felons, I already shared that I think once you elect to step outside of society's laws, you have excluded yourself), gives up any semblance of self-sustainability. What does a 16 yr. old know about anything?
My kids will certainy appreciate being able to live their lives in a way that is conducive to sustaining our society. If that means bad guys go to jail--I fail to see the problem. I'd rather my money go to that than the National Endowment of the Arts (just to name one thing).
I like your last statement--you are responsible for yourself. I like that you seem that you are. I think your policy wonkism is related to only having to be responsible for yourself right now. I know you would want your future family or families of your close friends to have the same opportunities that you've had. I know you wouldn't want them to be engaged in drug use, distribution, or prostitution, right?
Finally, I'm not sure you are operating from a foundation of faith here. A foundation that suffuses your beliefs with a morality that is not based on a policy or a stats package from a think-tank.
Maybe I'm wrong?
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