Excellent article, Leo.

BTW, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died August 03
which has prompted my to begin re-reading
his courageous and powerful Gulag Archipelago.
I'm only on p. 60, and am amazed all over again
and what a clear and frightening picture it gives
of the road the USA id accellerating down.
And he says over and over again
WE trusted them, WE were submissive,
WE gave away our freedoms and rights,
WE could have stopped it!

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Few thoughts on this thread.

One percent of U.S. males are serving time in U.S. prisons. The prisoner population in the U.S. exceeds that of the prison population in the rest of the world. Isn’t that curious?

Every single item in the White House gift shop was made outside the U.S., mostly in China. Isn’t that curious? Why have the doors closed for U.S. workers?

In virtually every community in this country, the government controls what you can do with your land through zoning ordinances. Residential in one area, commercial in another, etc., requiring daily commutes from residential zoned areas to commercial or office areas, etc. Zoning ordinances fragment our daily activities, requiring the construction of a vast infrastructure of highways and streets and the huge regulatory morass and taxation that goes along with it. Want to start a little business on your own property? Not zoned for it? Talk to your local regulators. I’m sure they’ll bend over backwards to accommodate you, right?

Checked the tax code lately? The number of pages of tax rules grew from 400 in 1913 to 54,846 in 2003, with a tax form for every special interest. Congress frequently holds hearings on tax simplification so members can denounce the tax code's complexity. Each time, congressional experts and outside think tanks provide useful simplification ideas. Then when the TV cameras are turned off, Congress promptly ignores them and votes for more special interest breaks.

Does anyone really believe that the fragmentation and complexity in our country is sustainable? I don’t for a minute. I don’t believe that we have a complex society so we need a big government to regulate it. I believe that government has "mandated" an overly complex society that requires dependence on big government to control it. Big difference. Government bureaucracies take something whole and split it into component parts, again and again. Which is why something that starts out simple and doable becomes complex and impossible. A Frenchman commented on the difference between the U.S. government and the French government, “In our country (France) the government is afraid of the people. In the U.S., the people are afraid of their government" I think there’s a lot of truth in that statement.

Now back to that prison statistic. Maybe there’s a relationship between the high prison population and unsustainable complexity in our society. Did I mention that the fastest growing industry in the U.S. is prison construction and management? I think Shas is right, we need to make the government irrelevant, with the benefit of simplifying our society and our lives.

About that statistic, LongTimeArloFan-

In February, I think, of 2008
the number actually became 1% of Americans, period.
Take every man, every woman, every child in the USA,
divide by 100, that's the number currently in prison.
That does NOT include persons in city, county, and state JAILS,
it does not include juveniles behind bars,
and an exclusion that struck me as very odd,
it does not include "persons who were released on probation
and who have been returned to prison."
(That's a quote from the Bureau of Justice website,
but it's from memory, a detail could be inaccurate.)

And then, of course, the group 4 to 5 TIMES that big,
another 4 to 5 percent of all Americans,
who WERE in prison and who now can't get a job,
who often have lost friends and family,
whose friends and family are rightly afraid to associate with them,
who nobody wants to rent a house to
nor even live next to (put up posters! run him out of town!)...

That's just a whole bunch of people!
And the Bureau of Justice (!) is predicting substantial increases!

And the greatest number of those prisoners
are imprisoned for simple marijuana possession.
They are POWs from another pointless, unwinnable
propaganda-fueled, profit-increasing war.
(And the crazy thing is that a huge number of the voters
know darned well from personal experience
that cannabis is not going to destroy society,
yet they applaud every time a SWAT team
squashes some mild-mannered anachronism
who has the audacity to be growing a dozen plants.)

When the popular "3-Strikes-and-You're-Out" law
became effective in California
I believe something like 85 of the first 100
(or was it simply the first 85?) people given mandatory
extra- ordinary sentences under it were, you guessed it,
for simple non-violent marijuana possession.
I felt much safer right away.

One of the wars that's gotta end is the War on Drugs,
and the POWs must be freed and their records expunged.
As Arlo warns at the end of Alice's Restaurant,
(and again, this is just from memory-
can you tell I've become gun-shy about imperfect quotes?)
"The reason I'm singing you this song
is because you may know someone in a similar situation,
or you may be in a similar situation yourself;
some of you a lot sooner than you think."

That gives me a laugh
and an unpleasant cold feeling
every time I hear him say it.

I raise marijuana for medicine
(and to exercise my right
and because it's a very beautiful and wonderful plant)
and the only reason some prison guard isn't sitting on my face
is that I have not happened to get busted.
Yet I am certain that I have never harmed a soul
and that I have helped the helpless by my gardening.
I've never accepted a penny nor even a trade
for so much as a leaf in all my life.
But that would be no protection from a "distribution" charge.
The papers would report another Drug Dealer
whose destruction was stopped by our brave boys in blue.
(I'm talking past tense here, BTW.
Now that I've finally won my Permit to Produce
I consider that I have a contract with the gov't,
that I've given my word. I have not given away
any cannabis whatsoever since obtaining that card.
I sometimes wonder if getting it was too large a compromise.
At the time it just seemed like an encouraging step forward)

These prison statistics ought to scare the hell out of all of us.
Being innocent is no longer any protection.
The police pay people money, as in $50 and way up,
to denounce their neighbours.
Anonymous people. People who need $50.
It's given names such as CrimeStoppers.
And that anonymous denunciation is considered
to provide "reasonable grounds" for a 3:00 a.m.
SWAT-style kick-your-doors-in-and-taze-you search
of your home, your children, and your most intimate person.
(remember the Bill Of Rights section
guaranteeing Americans the right to face their accusers?)
And once they've had you on their books
it's as if they now have an investment to protect,
they hate to admit they may have been mistaken.
The next time they need a suspect in a hurry
they'll note that there have been previous questions
as to your activities, your ability to parent your kids, whatever.
They'll be back.
And the jury, if you get one, will be prohibited from hearing
that your mom has terminal stomach cancer
and that your plant means the difference between her
eating and feeling strong or starving and lying unmoving.
But they will be told repeatedly and in many forms
that this is not the first time you've been busted.
They will readily believe (well, don't you, usually?)
that these bad people must not slip through the cracks a second time.

And if the denunciation has to do with you, say,
visiting a mosque for your friend's wedding,
may God help you, because the Constitution can't-
it is specifically suspended for "persons suspected
of crimes relating to terrorism."
I've always wanted to visit Cuba.

Sorry.
I didn't mean to go on a rant.
But it destroys so many families,
ruins so many marriages, lives, careers.
And it's so unnecessary.

We gotta stop locking each other up.

*panting, wiping face with hanky*

Ahem...

LongTimeArloFan, I appreciated and agreed with your thoughts
on the excessive complexity being built into our society and laws.
I really did NOT mean to get to loping down that there side trail.

With respect,

Sometimes... the side trails can lead to the most interesting venues and vistas.

Shas, I enjoy your posts (especially the side trails) and look forward to reading "Gulag Archipelago". Larry

I agree with Ceashel, for me it's a matter of knowing how to help get there.

Sorry guys, I didn't read all of your entire writings. So I may have missed what you are trying to say.

All the best to you.

cheryl

As Arlo sings in Major Blues, "Day will come when this country needs a helping hand and they want mine. I'll tell em Buddy just get in line. When my baby comes back crying cause her lover's no longer around. I'll kick that smart ass out the door."

It's not that I'm not interested in what's being said or expressed, I don't read as fast as some people. So when the writer writes a lot, some times I don't read the whole thing. I'd be here all day and night if I did.