Politics, Government & Public Policy: June 2003 Archives

Bill Hobbs and the WaPo notice that the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act is going to hurt Democrats a lot more than it's going to hurt Republicans. Just as I said two months ago.

Bill rightly mocks the Democrats for being so foolish, but let's not forget that both parties have already formed numerous groups to funnel soft money to their campaigns despite the new law. I hate useless laws. It's a huge waste of time and money to pass laws that will have no effect, and it's detrimental to society. People should respect the law, but in order for that to happen there must be laws that are worthy of respect -- above all else, laws should be enforceable.

With Glenn off on vacation for a few months (I hope he doesn't have an unfortunate accident), I humbly recommend that you all set your start pages to Master of None -- but only if you want to know the news two months in advance. If you don't want me to spoil the surprises of the future for you, then set your start page two months deep in my archives.

People need to take responsibility for themselves. I find it particularly disgusting that our nation's supposedly most mature citizens are doffing the responsibility for their lives by lobbying and cheering for ludicrously expensive government entitlements, the burden of which must be borne by their children and grandchildren. You may be "the greatest generation" to some, but this selfish foolishness highlights a widespread moral and economic failure on your part. You're supposed to be wise, you're supposed to be an example to we who are following after, but instead you wield your political power not to help or guide us, but for your own comfort and enrichment. Shame on you all. Imagine how great a boon you could have been to your families and your country; instead you're becoming a resented burden.

In 1 Corinthians 12:14 Paul writes: "After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children." In some circumstances the situation will be reversed, and I realize that it's not always due to failure on the part of the parents. Nevertheless, the general principle stands. The new $400 billion health care entitlement that Congress just passed moves me to pity -- it is a stark example of how the greatest among us have fallen short of the prize they should have obtained.

Given that we are where we are, what is the proper solution? In 1 Timothy 5:4 Paul writes further: "But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God." First note that this verse is speaking specifically about women who have lost their husbands; it was expected that older men would be able to care for themselves. We are instructed to care for our family, particularly our parents and grandparents, and the primary responsibility for that care falls on the children and grandchildren.

A few verses later, in 1 Timothy 5:8 Paul continues: "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." Once the parents themselves have failed, the responsibility does fall onto their immediate family. Only when the immediate family will not or cannot carry the load does the responsibility transfer to the community as a whole.

How does this translate into public policy? It's not a simple issue. Would it be proper (or constitutional) to force families to bear the financial burden for their older members? Probably not. But the current situation is economically and morally unsustainable. Perhaps this lack of clarity should serve as a general indication that the government should not be involved in the area at all.

Courtney wonders whether the currently paralyzed liberal mass in America will eventually move towards the radical leftists, or the libertarian hawks.

I say: neither. The greatest mass of committed liberals (those who elected Bill Clinton, for example) is made up of baby boomers who are too set in their ways to ever escape into this dimension I affectionately call "reality". They will continue to cling to whatever scraps of power they can get ahold of, but their tenure as a mainstream ideology is finished.

The future of liberalism belongs to the largely libertarian youth. They don't really identify with the Republicans (too conservative on [some] social issues) or the Democrats (too economically socialist) and they're waiting in the wings, ready to come into their own over the next couple of decades.

The baby boomers will have their last hurrah as beneficiaries of the all-powerful AARP and then die. They will not go gently into that good night, and they will struggle vainly to drag the rest of us down with them. But they won't ever change. Vietnam is their eternal yesterday, and the USSR will always be their vision of a slightly-flawed paradise.

I don't go to libraries much anymore. Ten years ago, when I was in high school, it was still necessary to make the trip for research purposes, but these days I can find everything I need on the internet. If I want to buy a rare book I don't have to search very hard: I can have it delivered right to my door by Amazon with a few clicks of my mouse.

I went to the central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library a couple weeks ago, and most of the people there were standing in line to borrow free DVD movies, not books. One of the patrons remarked to me that it was brilliant of the library to expand its services by loaning out movies, but why? Merely to perpetuate the library's own existence? There are plenty of Blockbusters around, and I really don't see why my tax dollars should support an institution that loans out movies for free.

I'm told that in the far distant past, before mega-bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, the library was the only place in town to find anything other than the currently most popular best-sellers. In such an environment, libraries have a purpose. In the modern world, however, I really don't see the point. Books are cheap and widely available to everyone, and I think the era of the public library should come to a close.

Two Supreme Court decisions have been handed down from on-high by the great, wise, robed-ones. On one hand, I'm disappointed that racial discrimination was found acceptable in theory by a majority of justices, but on the other hand I'm pleased that it appears that a large part of their justification rests on the states' roles as "laboratories for experimentation to devise various solutions where the best solution is far from clear."

For a democracy to survive, it's essential that every individual be treated equally under the law. Each citizen gets one vote, regardless of race, gender, religion, appearance, political affiliation, &c. I find it hard to believe that the Supreme Court would approve of a policy aimed at building a "critical mass" of Senators, Representatives, or Justices of certain races or religions -- but apparently the interest of the government in "promoting [racial] diversity" is compelling enough to affect universities.

It's good to give states the freedom to experiment with law and policy, and I understand the Court's deference to such a principle. However, I believe the time for such experimentation on thsi issue ended when the 14th Amendment was ratified by 28 out of 37 states in 1868. Sure, it took some of the rest of the states a little while longer to catch up (Kentucky ratified it in 1976), but I'm pretty sure everyone is on board by now.

As I've said before, California's constitution requires a 2/3 majority in the legislature to increase taxes; Republicans make up less than 1/2 of the legislature, but more than 1/3, and so it's impossible to raise state taxes without Republican approval. Despite our state's current budget deficit (or because of it?) the Republicans have utterly refused to consider raising taxes at all, insisting instead that the shortfall be eliminated by spending cuts.

This is perfectly reasonable, since in the past four years the rate of population growth with inflation was 21%, government revenue increased 28%, and spending increased 36%. Even when population growth and inflation are accounted for, the increased revenue should have been more than enough to allow for a tax cut without touching services -- but no, instead the Democrats in control of the state increased spending by a ridiculous 36%. The budget shortfall is entirely due to this irresponsible spending.

[Deep breath... mumble... stupid Democrats....] Ok, so, the Democrats can't raise taxes because of the Republicans, and can't cut spending because they need the money to buy votes from their constituencies. What to do?! Well, if you can't raise taxes, just raise "fees" instead!

The Democrats in the legislature along with Governor Gray Davis just tripled our car tax! Oops, excuse me, I mean car fee. "The fee on a new Chevrolet Impala purchased for $24,920, for example, will rise from what would have been $162 to $498 in the first year of ownership." Yes, that's per year, every year.

The Republicans are furious over the issue, and argue that the "fee" can't be increased without legislative approval, which would require a 2/3 majority.

"The state is not entitled to that money," said Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), speaking to reporters in the lobby of the attorney general's office, where he filed proposed ballot initiatives to roll back the tax rate to $1 or abolish it altogether. "They are breaking the law by taking it."

If McClintock is able to get hundreds of thousands of signatures needed in the coming months, his measures will be on the ballot in November 2004.

McClintock accused the Davis administration of exploiting a clause in the state Constitution that makes it extremely difficult for opponents of the tax to stop the state from collecting it until the appeals process has been exhausted in a court challenge. That could take years.

"They know it is an illegal act but the Constitution prevents injunctions to prevent collections of the tax, so they know they can get away with it for the next several years," he said, adding that Peace's argument that the tax hike is legal is "absolute horse manure."

So there's another ballot initiative in process to accompany the near-certain recall of the governor who 83% of people disapprove of, mainly due to this sort of financial mismanagement. Hopefully these two populist movements will, together, be able to break the stranglehold the Democrats have had on this fine state for decades.

Seperation of church and state is fine and good, but what happens when religious teachings yield better results than secular programs?

In a nutshell, [Byron] Johnson [of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society] found that those who completed all three program phases were "significantly less likely than the matched groups" to be either arrested (17.3% vs. 35%) or incarcerated (only 8% vs. 20.3%) in the first two years after release.

Here's how spiritual conversion reads in academese: "Narratives of IFI members revealed five spiritual transformation themes that are consistent with characteristics long associated with offender rehabilitation: (a) I'm not who I used to be; (b) spiritual growth; (c) God versus the prison code; (d) positive outlook on life; and (e) the need to give back to society."

All this, no doubt, will be profoundly discomforting to those who like the results but don't like the religion; a similar program in Iowa is already being sued by the Americans United for Separation of Church and State. But the question is joined: Can you achieve the positive social outcomes of faith-based programs if you strip out the faith?

Lotteries are a tax on the stupid, and they tend to be sharply regressive; poor people buy the bulk of lottery tickets. Donald Sensing mentions a lottery scam email he received and then correctly notes that all lotteries are scams.

The California lottery has a rate of return of around 12%. Slot machines in Vegas generally return 98%+ of the money you put into them, and they've got flashing lights and spinning wheels. As you can imagine, state governments make a killing off lotteries... but the money goes towards education, right?

The California lottery raked in $2,910,000,000 in 2002... that's around $100 per California resident -- including children. With a payout of 12%, the education system should have gotten around $2.5 billion from the lottery, right? Well, actually, the law says that only 34% of lottery revenue has to go towards education, and in 2002 that came to around $1.1 billion.

34% to education, 12% to lottery winners, and the rest goes into the irresistable black hole of California's bureacracy. Oh well. At least it's a voluntary tax.

Bill Hobbs writes that Laffer Associates, the firm founded by the creator of the famous "Laffer Curve" of supply-side economics fame, is moving from San Diego to Nashville because Tennessee doesn't have an income tax. Sucks for us Californians, but oh well.

Bill quotes a site that sums up the idea behind the Laffer curve and supply-side economics quite well:

The curve suggests that, as taxes increase from low levels, tax revenue collected by the government also increases. It also shows that tax rates increasing after a certain point (T*) would cause people not to work as hard or not at all, thereby reducing tax revenue. Eventually, if tax rates reached 100% (the far right of the curve), then all people would choose not to work because everything they earned would go to the government.

In theory, there's an "optimal" tax rate such that if the rate goes either up or down, government revenue will go down. The rate is "optimal" in the sense that it maximizes government revenue, but may not be optimal from other perspectives (such as burden on the economy, for instance).

In his update at the end of the post, Bill makes an important point: many conservatives want to shrink the size of government, and try to enact tax cuts in order to do so. However, if we're currently taxed at a rate above the optimal rate, government revenue will actually rise when taxes are cut.

Ideally, from my perspective, taxes would be cut down past the government-optimal point and government revenue would then continue to fall. My own optimal point is different from the government's; I don't want to maximize government revenue, I want to maximize my freedom and quality of life. I believe that eliminating many functions of government would benefit me greatly, and so my optimal tax rate is lower than the Laffer optimal rate. For more of my opinions on the matter, see this previous post.

In a sense, a tax rate below Laffer's optimal is "benignly sub-optimal", since the lesser government revenue isn't due to harm inflicted on the economy (and should actually benefit the economy as a whole). "Lost" government revenue that's caused by a tax rate that's too high, however actually reflects a real economic loss.

MINORITIES: According to the WaPo, Hispanics are now the nation's largest minority. Well, the largest racial minority, anyway. I expect that men are the largest minorty overall, since very slightly fewer than 50% of the people in the country are male.

The new census figures also show that Latinos accounted for half the country's population growth in the two years after the 2000 Census was taken. ...

The Hispanic population is growing rapidly because of high birth rates and immigration. Immigration accounted for more than half the recent Latino population increase, census officials said.

Despite the heavy influence of immigration, another census report released today said three in five Hispanics are born in the United States.

So, half the Hispanic population increase is due to immigration... what percentage of that half do you figure is legal immigration? Uh huh.

The good news is that Hispanic immigrants tend to assimilate well into the greater fabric of American culture; one-third of Hispanics marry non-Hispanic whites, for instance.

Following up on the post below, Allen Glosson writes in the comments:

For a somewhat more pointed view about reforming the FDA, you might also see http://www.stopfda.org, in particular the essay about "Consumer Rape".

The story I like the most about the FDA involves Beta Blockers. Back in 1984, Dr. Kessler proudly announced that the FDA had approved Beta Blockers to treat high blood pressure and that the approval would save 17000 lives each year. What he didn't tell us was that Beta Blockers had been approved in Europe in the mid 1970s and approval was sought with the FDA back in 1977. The FDA took 7 years to approve a drug which had already been shown effective in European markets. Thus, the FDA had willfully and deliberately allowed over 100K people to die needlessly while they dotted i's and crossed t's in the approval process.

Do we still believe that the FDA saves lives? I for one, do not.

Incredible, and damning.

TAX GIVE-AWAY: Everyone's complaining about the $400 billion bribe that Bush is offering to old people in exchange for their votes, but no one has any outrage left for the ridiculous child tax credit that's paid to people with children. Under Bush's new plan, an average family of four will see their taxes cut by $1600. An average family of one -- like me -- will see their taxes reduced by a lot less. I can't even find a source on the web that will tell me how much I'll save... every article gives numbers for "a family of four" that will save "ten gajillion dollars!"

What this setup means is that single people and people without children are subsidizing tax breaks for married people and people with children. The situation hardly seems fair. Families with children consume more public services, not less, and there's really no reason that society should create a financial incentive for people to have children. The problem is that, as Donald Sensing points out, politicians "take money from the demographic groups of people who vote less and give it to the groups who vote more."

Most people either have children, have had children, or plan to have children in the future, and so they think it's great that at some point they'll benefit from these tax breaks. I plan to have children someday, too, but I'm critical enough to realize that the child tax credit really is nothing more than a bribe that's so entrenched that it's never going to go away, regardless of how unfair and unbalanced it may be. (Some might make the same claim about tax-deductable mortgage interest, but this is a very different issue. As I've mentioned before, promoting property ownership is a valid interest for a democratic society to promote because it strengthens the sense of individual ownership of the society.)

I favor a flat tax rate with a poverty-line deduction of, say, $20,000, and deductions for charitable giving. I would also favor -- as an alternative -- a flat consumption tax. The current income-based tax structure is nothing more than a social engineering tool that those in power use to manipulate and control the population.

Bill Hobbs has a post with a great letter from Allen Glosson of St. Louis, Missouri, who gives a good description of the difficulties drug companies face trying to recoup their R&D costs by selling their drugs under patent. Drug patents last 17 years and...

It takes about 15 years for the entire drug approval cycle to be completed, previously leaving only 2 years for the drug company to recover all of its R&D costs.

Bill suggests that the "patent clock" shouldn't start until FDA approval is granted, but a) 17 years seems like a very long time to go without generic substitutes, b) what about drugs that never get approved? Sounds like it would create a new disincentive construct that might change the dynamics of the whole industry in some unforseeable ways.

But on to the real issue at hand. Allan writes further:

Currently, the drug can't be sold to anybody until after the FDA finally approves it. If you've ever read the writing of cancer patients, slowly dying, desperate for that new drug begging with the drug company and the FDA to allow them one more shot at life, you'll know that the FDA process is deeply flawed.

The Food and Drug Administration essentially has veto power over all new medical drugs and devices, and is controlled by a lopsided set of incentives that tends to make it overcautious -- the repurcussions are far worse for the FDA if it mistakenly approves of a treatment that turns out to be dangerous than if it mistakenly delays or fails to approve a treatment that is actually beneficial, even if the number of lives lost in each case is equivalent. The fact that the FDA can prevent sick people from voluntarily assuming the risk of unproven (but potentially beneficial) drugs has undoubtedly claimed thousands or even millions of lives.

The best proposal I've read was put forward by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and suggests that the FDA's veto power be eliminated and that unapproved treatments be made available under medical supervision and with clear warnings of the potential risks involved. The FDA would continue to serve as a state-run evaluator of treatments, and drug companies could choose to seek FDA approval if that approval was sufficiently valued by the public. Competitive market forces would then take hold in the medical industry, bringing costs of production down and thereby lowering prices all around. Additionally, and even more importantly to some, a greater number of treatments for a greater number of diseases would become available for use, which could save an uncountable number of lives above and beyond those saved by the lower prices.

CONSTITUTION, SCHMONSTITUTION: California's constitution requires that the legislature pass a budget by June 15th. That's the law. Over the past 25 years only 4 on-time budgets have been passed, and this weekend marked yet another failure by our pathetic state legislature. Via Rough & Tumble I found this San Francisco Chronicle article which describes some of my feelings quite well.

Deadline day and nary a lawmaker in sight.

As the final hours ticked down toward the constitutional deadline for the Legislature to pass a budget Sunday night, a canvass of the state Capitol failed to uncover a single lawmaker tucked away in an office, crunching numbers or making deals. ...

"When they want your vote, they say they are going to work for you. Why aren't they working now?" said Sergio Jimenez of Baldwin Park in Los Angeles County.

Jon Boice of Potrero Valley (San Diego County) labeled the lawmakers' absence disgusting.

"What are we paying them for?" he wondered as he left the gallery overlooking the empty Assembly chamber.

Democrats blame the Republicans. The state constitution requires a 2/3 majority to pass tax increases, and the Republicans in the legislature have determined that they will not vote for to raise taxes under any circumstances. Republicans blame Democrats for years of over-spending, but Democrats are unable to cut their precious social programs and reduce their union bribes without alienating their masters. So, we're pretty much stuck.

Tourist Jeff Peterson has a good point when it comes to legislators being away from the office:

"There is no accountability," Jeff Peterson said. "I'm not really sure we're better off when they are here or gone."

It looks increasingly likely that California's Governor Gray Davis will be recalled and a special election will be held either this November or next March. Some 900,000 signatures are required for the recall to make its way to the ballot, and organizers claim to have more than 500,000 already -- with months to go before the September deadline. This is a good thing; no matter who replaces Davis it's sure to be an improvement.

Despite his 24%-27% approval rating, Davis isn't counting himself out yet. He's the dirtiest political fighter that I've ever seen, and he's coming up with some rather underhanded schemes to stay in office. He's in a tough position: if the recall petition gets the required number of signatures, then there is no way to prevent the recall from appearing on the next ballot. It's not a competition -- there's no "counter-petition" that could, given any number of signatures, prevent the recall from going to the ballot. And Davis knows that if the recall proposal is put to the people, 83%-86% of them will vote him out of office.

So what can he do? Well, apparently there are only a limited number of companies available to be hired to circulate petitions, and Davis is trying to hire them all so that the recall proponents can't use them. Hey, that's pretty sneaky! What's really unsettling, however, is that Davis is also circulating a pro-Davis "petition" and getting people to sign it by tricking them into thinking it's the recall petition.

"The Davis carriers ask people 'Have you had a chance to sign the Davis petition?' They leave the impression with people that they've signed the recall petition, so voters then decline to sign the real recall petition when it's offered to them because they think they've already signed," Costa complains. "I believe that's fraud. For sure it's gutter politics." ...

Meanwhile, those who sign the "Davis petition" aren't really signing a petition, defined by Webster as "an entreaty" or "a request" for something. All the Davis document says is that signers don't want the recall.

Gray Davis is total scum. I could link to hundreds of different scandals he's been involved in, but here's five:

Davis accepts kickbacks from Oracle.
Davis abuses Coastal Commission to do favors for friends.
Davis admits to questionable fund-raising practices.
Davis gives prison guards 30% raise in exchange for $2.6 million in campaign contributions.
Davis' advisors owned stock in companies California bought overpriced electricity from.

I like libertarian ideas in some respects -- I believe that the government which governs least also governs best. The point of government is to prevent people from interfering with my life, and to leave me alone. That's pretty much it.

So why aren't I a Libertarian? Well, most Libertarians' foreign policy is far too isolationist for my tastes. I believe that one of the only essential mandates for government is to protect me, and in order to do that it may sometimes be necessary to have an active foreign policy (such as with Iraq and Afghanistan).

I tend to be more socially conservative than most libertarians... not because I want the government to meddle in my private life, but because, for instance, I consider abortion to be murder. Most Libertarians are pro-choice, but if they believed that abortion was murder they probably wouldn't be. I'm also not sure that legalizing drugs will solve as many problems as most Libertarians do, and I see some value in having laws that restrict freedom in order to prevent activities that have a very high likelyhood of causing damage or injury.

For instance, many Libertarians I know are against drunk driving laws, on the grounds that it's already illegal to run someone over with your car -- they think there's no reason to punish someone unless they actually hit someone. In my mind, this is like saying that it shouldn't be illegal to fire a gun into a crowd of people; we've already got laws against shooting another person, but if you don't hit anyone then what's the problem?

Libertarian ideas are nice, in theory, but in reality I don't think they completely pan out. There is a great advantage to social order and central government or else it wouldn't exist; the trick is in finding a balance of power between the group and the individual. I do think that in some ways our government has too much power, but most of my complaints could be solved by drastic tax cuts that left other laws untouched. That said, I'm very grateful to all the brilliant Libertarians out there who are fighting the good fight against excessive government, and more often than not I'm right there with you.

Update:
Amazingly, Mark Aveyard has just posted a rather elegant fisking of pro-choice Libertarian Arthur Silbur. What excellent timing! You'd almost think we planned it.

Update 2:
I want to briefly clarify my stance on abortion. Abortion is killing a human being, but in some cases killing is not murder.

Everyone has heard about the Muslim woman in Florida who refused to take off her veil for a drivers license photo. Well, despite the ACLU's best efforts, a Florida judge has rejected her request to have the photo taken with the veil in place. Fine. This is pretty clearly the right position to take.

What's particularly interesting to me is what James Taranto notes from the side bar in the CNN article above:

DRIVER'S ID RULES IN MUSLIM NATIONS

Saudi Arabia: Women aren't allowed to drive
Iran: Women wear a traditional chador, which does not cover the face.
Egypt: Women do not cover their face in I.D. pictures
United Arab Emirates: Women do not cover their face in I.D. pictures
Oman: Women do not cover their face in I.D. pictures
Kuwait: Women do not cover their face in I.D. pictures
Qatar: Women do not cover their face in I.D. pictures
Bahrain: Women do not cover their face in I.D. pictures
Jordan: Women can drive if their faces are covered but do not cover their face in I.D. pictures

So, in the headquarters of Islam -- in Mecca itself -- women aren't even allowed to drive. Spiffy. In that long list of other Arab Muslim countries women are not allowed to cover their faces in ID pictures. Sandra Kellar is trying to claim that her religious rules should take priority over our secular laws, but in point of fact the very clerics who preside over her religion wouldn't allow her to drive a car, which would make her complaint in this case pretty much moot.

Translation: shut up, Sandra Kellar (a.k.a., Sultaana Freeman); shut up ACLU. Quit bothering us with all this nonsense and quit wasting our time with trivialities. If you want to be taken seriously, then concern yourselves with serious issues.

There's a movement afoot to legalize many types of currently illegal drugs (particularly marijuana) on civil liberty grounds, and I'm generally sympathetic, even though I have never used any illegal drugs and I rarely drink alcohol. The basic idea behind the movement is that if someone wants to use drugs, even dangerous ones, it's no business of government as long as no one else is hurt. It is also argued that if drugs are legalized then the black market and all the crime associated with it will evaporate because the premium prices will disappear when large, legal, corporations take over production and distribution.

Both of these justifications are plausible. I don't like the government involved in peoples' personal lives, and I do think legalization would quickly undermine the vast drug cartels that smuggle illicit substances into our country and wreak havoc all around the world. But. I don't think that anyone has a clear and complete understanding of how legalization would affect our society and economy.

Civil libertarians may argue that it's irrelevant, but consider what demographics would be most likely to increase consumption of currently illegal drugs. Who would these newly-formed drug companies target with their product? Alcohol has a rather high penetration rate and is often abused... what effect would wide-spread "moderate" LSD or cocaine use have on society? (Can such drugs even be used in "moderation"? Doubtful.)

It may be argued that even if drug use is legalized it will not become wide-spread, but economic theory does not support that belief. Right now illegal drugs are expensive and difficult to acquire, but if they are legalized the price will drop by a factor of 10 or more and they will be available at every corner store. It's absurd to think that this change in market conditions will have no effect on consumption. Will the productivity lost by increased hard drug use be offset by the money saved in law enforcement and gained through taxation? I'm skeptical. And do we really want our government raising money by taxing addictive substances, and thereby gaining an incentive to get more people hooked? (This is why I'm against tobacco taxes and why I think the tobacco industry scored a huge win with the structure of its lawsuit settlements with the states.)

As with all things, a balance needs to be found that maximizes liberty and minimizes the cost of that libery to society. Perhaps alcohol should be legal and LSD should not, perhaps marijuana should or should not be. I don't think the answer is as clear as the legalization-ists would have us believe, but I also think that the status quo needs some serious reconsideration.