Sex, Drugs, And.....Lemonade

Tonight we will take a break from the drum beat of health care reform and the stimulus plan that does not stimulate. A week or so ago we showed how poorly the political class is serving America by reviewing just three USA Today news articles, all of which occurred on the front page of the same newspaper. That post was well received so we will try something similar tonight where we will review just three articles in the latest edition of Reason magazine (www.reason.com) that appear in a three page span.

Sex: In October we reviewed the efforts of a California Congresswoman who was preparing legislation that would nationally regulate the noise volume of television commercials. Forget about Iraq, Afghanistan, failing public schools, drug addiction, soaring federal deficits, high unemployment and a few other major issues, let's focus on the volume of TV ads. Not to be outdone, Virginia Congressman Jim Moran is upset that erectile dysfunction commercials are being televised. According to article author, Ronald Bailey, the good Congressman has actually introduced legislation, "Families For ED Advertising Decency Act" that would make the FCC treat such ED ads as indecent. Never mind that Dad is unemployed, junior has a drug addiction problem and has a lousy public school education, and grandma cannot afford health care, let's get the Feds involved with the burning erectile dysfunction television commercial issue. Great use of taxpayer assets.

Drugs: Jacob Sullum and his article, "Peace With Poppies," reviews how the Bush administration's drug policy in Afghanistan was such a failure. Despite eight years of trying to eradicate poppy field growth, Afghanistan now produces 40 times as much opium than it did in 2001 and it supplies 93 percent of the world's illegal opium. This drug industry accounts for one third of the nation's GDP. Guess that eight year program did not quite meet it's targets. Besides the growth in production, any eradication that did occur just alienated those Afghan farmers that were affected, driving them to the arms of the Taliban.

Now the Obama administration wants to do a better job in this area. Rather than trying to wipe out the actual field production, the Obama approach plans to focus on destroying drug laboratories and traffickers. If we could not wipe out the poppy fields that were out in the open for all to see, do we really think that this new policy will be able to find and destroy the labs and distribution channels that operate out of sight? I think not.

I doubt this new plan will be any more effective than the Bush plan. The only solution is to attack and reduce demand as proposed by Step 26 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." The War On Drugs started in the 1960s and the political class has been fighting this losing war for over four decades. The Obama strategy will not turn the tide.

Lemonade - In the Reason Brickbats section, there was a short blurb on how a Haverford, Pennsylvania policeman spent some time on his beat berating seven youngsters for selling lemonade without a license. He went so far as finding and asking the mother of one of the kids to put an end to the lemonade selling. Not only does this seem like a waste of a public servant's time, it turns out that the kids did not even need a license since the local laws do not require anyone under the age of 16 to be licensed.

I shake my head sometimes at how poorly we are served by our politicians and others entrusted with taxpayer resources to protect and enhance our lives. Term limits and the downsizing of government budgets and functions as outlined in several steps in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is the only way to save our wealth. We would still be plagued by noisy TV ED ads and illegal lemonade stands but I can live with that.