Well the good news is that the Democrats are saying they don’t have the votes. Probably one of the reasons why they don’t have the votes is because people are finding all about what’s in HR 3962.

They’re objecting to:

• Higher taxes on individuals and businesses which will drive up unemployment
• Government dictating what’s in their healthcare plan
• Government unconstitutionally requiring consumers purchase health insurance or face fines and/or jailtime
• The creation of a government run healthcare plan which will eventually take over the entire healthcare system
• The creation of over 110 new bureaucracies
• The outlawing of any health insurance policy not purchased through the government’s new “exchange”
• The new unfunded liabilities for state and local governments which will result in higher taxes on the local and state levels

So lets get out the sharpest stake we can find and drive it through the heart of the vampire known as Obamacare and kill it until 2011 at the earliest. Get on the phone and call your Congressman or e-mail them if you have not done so and tell them to vote NO on HR 3962. If you don’t know who your Congressman is, follow the link and type in your zip code.

Also, please call everyone you know, post on your Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages; and post on your personal blogs, Live Journals, whatever and tell your friends and readers to also call their Congressmen and tell them vote NO on HR 3962. The Obama Administration and the Democratic House leadership will be calling your Congressman to vote for their government run health care scheme, will you call and tell your Congressman to stand for freedom?

The next 24 hours are critical in defeating government run health care and together we can and will defeat it.

This is a good sign:

WASHINGTON – A House leader says Democrats haven’t yet lined up enough votes to pass their health care overhaul bill.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland says the vote that House Democrats had scheduled for Saturday could slip to Sunday or early next week.

Hoyer acknowledged to reporters Friday that Democratic leaders don’t yet have the 218 votes needed to pass President Barack Obama’s historic health overhaul initiative.

Let’s make sure they never get those votes.

I’m actually surprised that it hasn’t occurred to me to post “Land of Confusion” for Liberty Rock sooner. This is a great song with a great message that seems perhaps even more appropriate now than its original 1986 release.

The song raises questions in my mind such as:

Who is ultimately responsible for this land (world) of confusion?

Is this confusion intentionally orchestrated by people in high positions of power or is this confusion the result of unintended consequences of government policies which passed with the best of intentions? (I tend to think it is a little of both).

Is this confusion inevitable due to our very humanity? (As long as there are individuals who wish to control the lives of others and wish to take from others by force and fraud, I can only conclude that the answer is “yes.”)

How can we, as in the words of the song, make this world “a place worth fighting for” ? (Do we really have any other choice?)

Below the fold, I also included both the Genesis music video and Disturbed’s cover version.

Genesis
“Land of Confusion”
Invisible Touch (1986)

Written by: Phil Collins, Tony Banks, and Michael Rutherford

I mustve dreamed a thousand dreams
Been haunted by a million screams
But I can hear the marching feet
They’re moving into the street.

Now did you read the news today
They say the dangers gone away
But I can see the fires still alight
There burning into the night.

There’s too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Cant you see
This is a land of confusion.

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands were given
Use them and lets start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

Ooh superman where are you now
When everythings gone wrong somehow
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour.

This is the time
This is the place
So we look for the future
But there’s not much love to go round
Tell me why, this is a land of confusion.

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands were given
Use them and lets start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

I remember long ago -
Ooh when the sun was shining
Yes and the stars were bright
All through the night
And the sound of your laughter
As I held you tight
So long ago -

I wont be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
Were not just making promises
That we know, well never keep.

Too many men
There’s too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Cant you see
This is a land of confusion.

Now this is the world we live in
And these are the hands were given
Use them and lets start trying
To make it a place worth fighting for.

This is the world we live in
And these are the names were given
Stand up and lets start showing
Just where our lives are going to.

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On Saturday at 6PM, the Democrats plan to bring Obamacare for a vote on the House floor. Obamacare contains:

• A government run public option which will eventually take over our healthcare
• Higher taxes on individuals
• A mandate that businesses and individuals and families buy health insurance
• Increase the cost of health insurance by requiring insurance companies to cover unneeded services
• Higher taxes on certain healthcare service and equipment providers
• Creates a government run “exchange” that all new policies must conform to
• Creates more unfunded liabilities for state and local governments
• Takes healthcare decision making out of your hands and puts it in the hands of government bureaucrats
• Creates 110 new bureaucracies

The only way we can stop is to make our voices heard over the next two days and call our Congressmen. If you don’t know who they are or how to contact them, follow this link and put in your zip code.

Simply call or e-mail them and tell them to vote no on HR 3962.

Profile photo of Twitter user SpicyHam

My nephew and his wife (who recently got out of the Army) live in the Fort Hood area.  After calling to see if they are all okay, I hit Facebook and Twitter to see if I could obtain some additional information.  That’s when I found this tweet:

“Fort Hood = Mission Accomplished.”

Here are some others from the same user:

Another: “Fort Hood, you deserved it. Next time, learn to dodge bullets, nubs.”

Another: “I’d nuke Fort Hood to clean that mess up.”

Another: “We were aiming for 9 to 11, apparantly our dear hero Scott has execded our expetations at Fort Hood and certainly over-performed! haha!”

Finally: “I say they went easy on them. I woulda burned their corpses and cut their head off at Fort Hood.”

The user name is Glenn Yu, he calls himself SpicyHam, and he indicates that he’s from Canada.

As soon as I found this, I notified the FBI. Shortly thereafter, television news indicated that one of the shooters was an Army major, so it’s unlikely this Twitter user was involved.  Whether he was or wasn’t, he’s certainly a sick s.o.b.

I think many libertarians are a bit like myself, and tend to like a good dystopian novel. 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, Anthem, etc. It’s typically a book detailing a future utopian society, where government controls the lives of their citizens for their own good (1984 being the exception there), but the world the book portrays has unintended anti-freedom consequences that show the utopia to be rotten and empty.

Huxley’s Brave New World is a classic example. You have a government that controls every aspect of life, down even to selecting (and disabling if necessary) people into a caste system of people based upon their intelligence, educating (conditioning may be a better word) them from birth to accept their caste placement. They ply the populace with consumption, drugs, and sex to keep them happy and docile, and the result is a country largely free of crime and misery. This is all upset when a “savage” from the outside, educated and English-speaking, is introduced to the society. Being an individual and a freethinker, he quickly tires of the life devoid of emotion and value and starts (after the death of his mother) lashing out. The novel ends when John the Savage finds the only escape from the rot that he has left, and hangs himself.

Island is sort of an anti-BNW, in some rather (I would think) deliberate ways. It tells the story of a remote island, Pala, which had closed itself off to the world — an island which correspondingly had little reason for the world to take note. This is rapidly changing, though, as the island is sitting on quite a bit of oil. One journalist shipwrecks on the island (partly tasked by his boss, newspaperman AND oilman, with trying to find a way to exploit that oil) and starts exploring. He finds a populace where everyone seems to be very happy and well adjusted, a society that is well-run but still lightly-governed. The island is heavily informed by buddhist teachings, and uses early childhood conditioning, community families, sex (tantric buddhist variety) and drugs (of the magic mushroom variety) to expand the Understanding of, rather than pacify, the populace. It is not a society built for consumption, but rather a society built for happiness and self-actualization. The journalist (perhaps best described as a “savage” from civilization) grows enamored with this society, sees what he now understands as rot within his own, and wants to join. *(see below the fold for spoiler)

Island is widely described as Huxley’s counterpoint to Brave New World. It is clear that he sees the same demons (consumerism, a lack of individuality, and a value-less society) and the same fetishes (drugs and sex) in both books, but in Island he sees the impression of positive ethics and values as the difference. He changes the game, using sex and drugs as a way of furthering Understanding, using community family raising not as a way to blunt individuality but a way for children to avoid the parental roullette that often cause them to inherit their parents flaws, and using biological/behavioral understanding to inform educators in the proper ways to help each individual student learn and become self-actualized. I’m not well-steeped in Buddhism, but it appears to be heavily influenced by Buddhist rather than Western thought. The result is a society that, while not perfect, appears to meet the magical middle ground between planning a good outcome without really destroying individuality.

Island paints the picture of a beautiful society, and one that I suspect is a guideline, in the mold of Plato’s Republic**, for his ideal state. From a philosophical perspective I think is definitely something that should be read (although not a plank for any cohesive philosophy), as it contains some practical personal lessons about thought and emotion that many folks might benefit from.

But in another sense, it doesn’t work as a novel. It is a philosophical dialectic much like that of The Republic, and my thought reading throughout the whole aspect was Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged. Very long, and pretty important, but certainly not a page-turning thriller. The novel seems to have very little in the way of plot, the “conflict” takes a far back seat to the philosophy, and the scenes become nothing more than an excuse for philosophical pontificating, not advancing a story. I said after reading it on twitter that from a literary standpoint it was weak and grandstanding, and that it seemed far more like a writer’s first novel than his last, which Island was for Huxley.

As with many books I read, I see there to be value for many readers. But if you go into the book expecting an experience like Brave New World, you’re not going to get it. This is a treatise on humanity and the ideal state, informed by Huxley’s own spiritual and ethical beliefs. As such, it contains useful information on a personal level, to better understand yourself, the society immediately around you, and how you might improve both. It’s not much of a novel, and not something I’d pass off to a friend unless I absolutely knew them to be receptive to this type of book, but it’s worth it for what it is.

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Tomorrow on the Fifth of November, Americans for Prosperity will be coordinating with Congresswoman Michele Bachmann a Meetup at the United States Capital. The purpose of this meetup is to kill Obamacare.

This blog, along with many bloggers and activists were invited to a conference call tonight with Congresswoman Bachmann and Redstate.com’s Erick Erickson. The conference call was generally just a planning session that was not newsworthy in itself. However, in the conference call, activists from all over the country including Virginia and New Jersey in particular were reporting great success in arranging for buses for activists to head toward the capital to take part.

The purpose of this meetup is confront Congressmen, with video cameras preferably, and demand they take a stand opposing Obamacare. In addition to confronting Congressmen at the Capital, other activists will be going to district offices all over the country and making their opposition to Obamacare known.

Here’s the information for the event at the capital directly from AFP’s website:

WHAT: Health Care “House Call” on Capitol Hill
WHO: Americans concerned about our health care future
WHEN: Thursday, November 5, 2009 from 12:00-1:00pm
WHERE: West Front Steps of the U.S. Capitol (House Side)

Congresswoman Bachmann wanted us on the conference call to make sure to tell everyone to get there before noon.

In addition, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to increase security at the Capital to prevent the buses from parking close to the Capital.

If you want to demonstrate your opposition to Obamacare, AFP has made it easy to find your Congressman’s district office. Just follow the link.

Finally if nothing else, follow the link to find your Congressman and call their DC or even district office and tell to simply vote no to any government run health care.

Now is the time to remind our Congressman that we do not support the government take over of our health care. If we make our voices heard tomorrow and this week, we can kill Obamacare until 2011 at least.

Get on those phones or better yet, get to the Capital or your Congressman’s district office and make your voice heard.

Referring back to my post I wrote last week about the “perfect storm” the Obama Administration has created regarding medical marijuana, Colorado in many ways seems to be in the eye of this storm. It seems that more and more people are starting to understand the insanity of declaring war on a substance which has never resulted in an overdose of any kind (much less a deadly overdose). In yesterday’s election, voters in Breckenridge, CO passed a measure by 71% which decriminalizes marijuana in amounts of an ounce or less for individuals 21 and over.

The Denver Post is having guest columnists who are staunchly pro-legalization write persuasive and articulate articles which could be mistaken for something you might read here at The Liberty Papers. Here’s an excerpt from an article written by Robert Cory Jr.

Today, not much about Colorado’s economy moves. The state is broke and releases prisoners because it cannot afford to keep them. The governor slashes the higher education budget 40 percent. People lose jobs, homes and financial security. Our leaders face serious issues.

And what keeps some politicians up at night? That sneaking suspicion that some suffering cancer patient may gain limited pain relief through medical marijuana, coupled with that gnawing certainty that someone, somewhere, actually grew the plant for that patient.

But government cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand, and cannot extinguish the spark of freedom in peoples’ hearts. Now, the marijuana distribution chain becomes legal. Responsible entrepreneurs open shops to supply a skyrocketing demand for medicine. These small businesses serve needy patients. They pay taxes. They hire employees. They lease space. They advertise. And the drug war industrial complex can’t stand it.

The article only gets better from there. I find it very encouraging that Colorado’s newspaper of record would print this and that citizens are pushing back against big government, if only on this issue.

Part One in Reason.tv’s new series about Ayn Rand:

Few authors have ever achieved the popularity that the novelist and essayist Ayn Rand (1905-1982) did. With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943 and Atlas Shrugged in 1958, Rand became a full-blown cultural phenomenon, selling millions of books and inspiring countless readers—ranging from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to actress Angelina Jolie—with her moral defense of capitalism. A refugee from Soviet Russia, Rand argued that capitalism was the best way of organizing society not simply because it was more efficient than communism but because it allowed the individual to fill his or her potential. A self-declared “radical for capitalism,” Rand emphatically rejected collectivism of all stripes and embraced “man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Decades after her death, Rand’s work is hotter than ever. In an age of massive government intervention into every aspect of the economy and personal lives, sales of her books are way up and a movie version of Atlas Shrugged is in the works. References to Rand are everywhere from Mad Men to The Colbert Report to The Simpsons and there’s even a new critical appreciation, as evidenced by two new biographies, Ayn Rand And The World She Made and Goddess of The Right.

Recently, Cato Institute Vice-President Gene Healy, author of , which I recently reviewed, spoke on Freedom & Prosperity Radio about his book and the rise of Executive Branch power in the United States.

The whole interview is worth listening to.

On Wednesday evening, I was fortunate to attend a forum at The Cato Institute featuring the authors of two new biographies of Ayn Rand — Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Anne C. Heller, author of Ayn Rand and the World She Made.

It was a very interesting presentation and I’m looking forward to reading both books in the near future with reviews forthcoming.

Until then, here’s a video of the full presentation so you can watch for yourself:

I’ve been looking for a reason to share this video for a long time.

Why?

Because its one of the funniest videos I’ve seen on YouTube for awhile.

Yeah, I realize that this video has little to nothing to do with the theme or purpose* of The Liberty Papers but sometimes a little humor can go a long way.

This video was made from a group of friends who call themselves Jake2Matt. This was the winning video that was entered in a home video contest that the band Avenged Sevenfold (a.k.a. A7X) held for their song “Scream.”

Warning: The video contains crude humor and likely NSFW.

Enjoy!

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Over the past 30 years, America has seen Presidential scandals ranging from Watergate to Iran-Contra to Travel-gate, Whitewater, the Lewinsky scandal, and the Valerie Plame affair. We’ve learned the truth about some of the truly nefarious actions undertaken by some of most beloved Presidents of the 20th Century, including the iconic FDR, JFK, and LBJ. And, yet, despite all of that, Americans still have a reverential view of the President of the United States that borders on the way Englishmen feel about the Queen or Catholic’s feel about the Pope.

How did that happen and what does it mean for America ?

Gene Healy does an excellent job of answering those question in The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, making it a book that anyone concerned with the direction of the American Republic should read.

As Healy points out, the Presidency that we know today bears almost no resemblance to the institution that the Founding Fathers created when they drafted Article II of the Constitution. In fact, to them, the President’s main job could be summed up in ten words set forth in Section 3 of Article II:

he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,

The President’s other powers consisted of reporting the state of the union to Congress (a far less formal occasion than what we’re used to every January), receiving Ambassadors, and acting as Commander in Chief should Congress declare war. That’s it.

For roughly the first 100 years of the Republic, Healy notes, President’s kept to the limited role that the Constitution gave them. There were exceptions, of course; most notably Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War but also such Presidents as James Polk who clearly manipulated the United States into an unnecessary war with Mexico simply to satisfy his ambitions for territorial expansion. For the most part, though, America’s 19th Century Presidents held to the limited role that is set forth in Article II, which is probably why they aren’t remembered very well by history.

As Healy notes, it wasn’t until the early 20th Century and the dawn of the Progressive Era that the idea of the President as something beyond what the Constitution said he was took forth. Healy documents quite nicely the ways in which Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson to FDR went far beyond anything resembling Constitutional boundaries to achieve their goals, and how they were aided and abetted in that effort by a compliant Supreme Court and a Congress that lacked the courage to stand up for it’s own Constitutional prerogatives. Then with the Cold War and the rise of National Security State, the powers of the Presidency became even more enhanced.

One of the best parts of the book, though, is when Healy attacks head-on the “unitary Executive” theory of Presidential power that was advanced by former DOJ official John Yoo in the wake of the September 11th attacks and the War on Terror. As Healy shows, there is no support for Yoo’s argument that the Founders intended for the President to have powers akin to, or even greater than, those of the British Monarch that they had just spent seven years fighting a war to liberate themselves from. The dangers of Yoo’s theories to American liberty and the separation of powers cannot be understated.

If the book has one weakness, it’s in the final chapter where Healy addresses only in passing reforms that could be implemented to restrain the Cult Of the Presidency. I don’t blame Healy for only giving this part of the book passing attention, though, because what this book really shows us is that no matter of written law can stop power from being aggregated in a single person if that’s what the people want and, to a large extent, we’ve gotten the Presidency we deserve.

Healy’s closing paragraph bears reproducing:

“Perhaps, with wisdom born of experience, we can come once again to value a government that promises less, but delivers far more of what it promises. Perhaps we can learn to look elsewhere for heroes. But if we must look to the Presidency for heroism, we ought to learn once again to appreciate a quieter sort of valor. True political heroism rarely pounds its chest or pounds the pulpit, preaching rainbows and uplift, and promising to redeem the world through military force. A truly heroic president is one who appreciates the virtues of restraint — who is bold enough to act when action is necessary yet wise enough, humble enough to refuse powers he ought not have. That is the sort of presidency we need, now more than ever.

And we won’t get that kind of presidency until we demand it.”

And, if we don’t demand it we will find ourselves living in a country where the only difference between President and King is merely the title.

This promises to be very interesting:

Coming November 2, Reason.tv will debut “Radicals for Capitalism: Celebrating the Enduring Power of Ayn Rand’s Ideas,” a new video series featuring segments on the novelist’s continuing presence in American culture and exlcusive interviews with Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Reason Foundation founder Robert W. Poole, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), and many others.

For more details and an archive of recent Reason-related stories on Rand, including reviews by Brian Doherty and Nick Gillespie of two new biographies of Rand, go to http://reason.org/rand

I hate excerpting entire blog posts, but this one at Radley Balko’s place is short and can’t be done justice without the full text:

If you follow with any regularity the police misconduct stories I post on this site, you’re no doubt familiar with the phrase “paid administrative leave.” No matter how serious the alleged misconduct, cops nearly always get paid while they’re being investigated, a period that typically takes months.

But last week Stockton, Utah police officer Johsua Rowell was actually put on unpaid administrative leave.

His transgression? He issued a traffic citation to the son of Stockton Mayor Dan Rydalch.

Go ahead and read the news account linked… It’s as bad as (or worse than) Radley makes it sound.

Uh-oh:

Last week the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that bong water is an illegal drug. Under state law, a controlled substance includes any “mixture” containing that substance, “regardless of purity.” The consequences of reading that definition literally can be severe. In the case before the court, a woman whose bong contained 37 grams of water with traces of methamphetamine will now be treated as if she possessed 37 grams of speed, which converts possession of drug paraphernalia, a petty misdemeanor punishable by a $300 fine, into a a first-degree drug offense, punishable by seven or more years in prison.

Wow… According to such a ruling, and since the old wives’ tale is true, I must be carrying cocaine with a street value of $35 around with me (one Jackson, two Lincolns and five Washingtons). Good thing I’m not carrying any c-notes today! A Benji would certainly push up the mandatory minimum!

In January 2008 I wrote a post calling for the repeal of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. As I mentioned in the post, many thousands of lives are being sacrificed because of the moral hang-ups of certain individuals who think its icky to sell organs to people who need them. How dare they.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, bone marrow is included as part of the ban. The act of paying an individual for his or her bone marrow is a felony which is punishable for up to five years in prison for everyone involved in the illegal transaction.

The Institute for Justice has decided to challenge this most absurd provision of this absurd bill. Below is a video from the organization explaining their lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General’s Office:

For the sake of the Flynn family, here’s hoping that the Institute for Justice wins the day.

Hat Tip: The Agitator

The governator sent a letter to the California State Assembly where he, er, told them he would “strike” them. Carnally.

To the Members of the California State Assembly:

I am returning Assembly Bill 1176 without my signature.

For some time now I have lamented the fact that major issues are overlooked while many
unnecessary bills come to me for consideration. Water reform, prison reform, and health
care are major issues my Administration has brought to the table, but the Legislature just
kicks the can down the alley.

Yet another legislative year has come and gone without the major reforms Californians
overwhelmingly deserve. In light of this, and after careful consideration, I believe it is
unnecessary to sign this measure at this time.

Sincerely,

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Now that you’ve read the whole letter, read the first column of letters.

H/T The widely read libertarian culture site Urkobold.

Hugo (via Cato):

Every day I’m more of a revolutionary, every day I’m more socialist… I’m going to take Venezuela toward socialism, with the people and the workers…The revolution is not negotiable, socialism is not negotiable, because every day I’m more convinced that socialism is the kingdom of God on earth. That is what Christ came to announce.

My personal belief (that Christ may have been an anarcho-socialist) notwithstanding, I fail to understand how creating a system of mass oppression, malnutrition, and the rationing of electricity and water has to do with Jesus. Maybe he’s taking Jesus admonishment about the likelihood of a rich man entering heaven a bit too literally, and wants to ensure there are no rich men in Venezuela.

So I’ll leave it up to you, readers… Can you make sense of Chavez? Give it your best shot.

Last week’s announcement from the Obama Administration that the Justice Department would call off the dogs with regard to medical marijuana in states where legal has created a perfect storm regarding state and local regulations. Colorado Attorney General lamented that with this announcement, a “legal vacuum” has been created and was quoted in The New York Times: “The federal Department of Justice is saying it will only go after you if you’re in violation of state law,” Mr. Suthers said. “But in Colorado it’s not clear what state law is.”

Here’s a thought Mr. Suthers: rather than trying to interpret the law yourself, why not allow the state legislature and/or Colorado voters clarify the law. In the meantime, while the law in your opinion is vague, err on the side of freedom by no longer prosecuting medical marijuana users or dispensary operators.

Greeley (Colorado) City Council member Carrol Martin also expressed concerns with the Obama Administration’s change in federal policy: “The federal government says they’re not going to control it [medical marijuana], so the only other option we have is to control it ourselves” and “If we have no regulations at all, then we can’t control it, and our police officers have their hands tied.”

Councilman, I would argue that this is a very good thing. You are no longer responsible for enforcing federal laws but state and local laws regarding medical marijuana. Your police officers “have their hands tied”? I think it’s quite the opposite councilman. Your police department can now concentrate on violent crime rather than spend valuable resources on going after non-violent, medicinal, marijuana users and their suppliers. If anything, the Greeley police has their hands freed!

In a time when we have an administration which wants to control banking, housing, the auto industry, the healthcare industry, and everything in-between we have one instance of the same administration relinquishing control and giving it back to the states. This is the perfect opportunity for states to act as independent laboratories of government. Some will pass stricter controls on medical marijuana (or outright ban it) while others may go the other direction and outright decriminalize or leagalize marijuana altogether.

Kirk Johnson writing for The New York Times:

Some legal scholars said the federal government, by deciding not to enforce its own laws (possession and the sale of marijuana remain federal crimes), has introduced an unpredictable variable into the drug regulation system.

“The next step would be a particular state deciding to legalize marijuana entirely,” said Peter J. Cohen, a doctor and a lawyer who teaches public health law at Georgetown University. If federal prosecutors kept their distance even then, Dr. Cohen said, legalized marijuana would become a de facto reality.

Senator Morrisette in Oregon said he thought that exact situation — a state moving toward legalization, perhaps California — could play out much sooner now than might have been imagined even a few weeks ago. And the continuing recession would only help, he said, with advocates for legalization able to promise relief to an overburdened prison system and injection of tax revenues to the state budget.

This seems like a very reasonable step to take for California from a purely economic standpoint. As I reported in my post Reforming America’s Prison System: The Time Has Come, last year California spent almost $10 million on corrections, more than half of the U.S. prison population accounts for drug offenses, 75% of state drug offenders are non-violent offenders, and that nearly half of all drug arrests in the U.S. were for marijuana offenses.

By my math, that would mean that if California* released all non-violent marijuana users and stopped prosecuting new cases involving non-violent marijuana use, the state could cut its prison population by 19% and save California taxpayers about $2 million** per year just on corrections (to say nothing of other costs associated with policing marijuana use).

If California or any other state tried such a bold approach, the American public would most likely learn that legalization does not lead to the sort of mayhem drug warriors have warned us of over the decades***. We would most certainly not see the sort of mayhem that has occurred via the drug war.

Not only does this perfect storm which the Obama Administration created have possible implications for the War on (Some) Drugs, but the very concept of Federalism itself. What might state governments learn about self governing once they have been encouraged to do so? Might the states resist the next attempted power grab from Washington?

There are many exciting possibilities. Those of us who advocate for smaller government should make the most of this opportunity.

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