To the winners of the upcoming election, scheduled for May 20 with ballot out on May 2, here’s a few bills I’d like to see you introduce and causes I’d like to see you take up:
– Our outstanding law enforcement officials work hard to jail drug addicts in our decades-old and ineffective war on drugs. They build their cases, and drug users, dealers and manufacturers don’t really face that much risk from the judicial system.
While they’re busy fighting a war that politicians and courts refuse to allow them to win, the same politicians are handing drug addicts the means by which they can continue their habits – They feed them and pay their bills.
Out of one side of their mouths, politicians say we’ve got to get tough on crime, and along comes a measure or two to make them look like they’re tough on crime. Out of the other side of their mouths, they continue to support public benefits for drug addicts, at both the state and federal levels. They may actively support the welfare industry or simply passively support a budget that allows welfare benefits for drug addicts to continue.
The war on drugs does little to reduce the abuse of drugs, while the welfare industry does everything it can to promote it, by enabling drug addicts to survive without working. It in essence subsidizes their addictions.
The person elected to Sweet Home’s Senate and House districts should immediately introduce a long-overdue bill to drug test the beneficiaries of all public benefits, from food stamps to cash assistance and college tuition waivers. Anyone found to be using drugs should immediately lose all public assistance. They should not be permitted to receive public assistance for some extended period of time.
The idea of public assistance is to help people survive not to enable them to continue their drug habits.
I’m sure the savings from those who will soon be starving will more than cover the cost of administering the drug tests.
I believe that the recreational use of narcotics should be legal, but in my world, you have to live with the consequences of your choice. If you can’t work, you can’t eat. If you starve, well that’s your problem not ours.
It may seem odd, but this anarchistic view toward drug abuse is much tougher than anything Democrats or Republicans have ever had to offer – I’d let the addicts starve. Help for addicts should be the realm of private charity not government agencies who take their revenues from citizens at gunpoint (and make no mistake, taxes are always extracted at gunpoint).
– The speed limit must increase in the next session. Our existing speed limit is an embarrassment. More importantly, that sudden drop to a crawl leaving California, Idaho and Washington is enough to put a driver to sleep. No other state west of the Mississippi has a speed limit under 70 mph. It’s time we joined the 20th century.
Speed may kill people, but it doesn’t cause wrecks. It’s the passing on the right, unused turn signals and tailgating that cause wrecks. Emphasize enforcement of those rules and increase the speed limit on open freeways to 75 mph and open highways to 65 mph. Tell ODOT, in the words of Jean Luc Picard, to “make it so.”
I heard a leftwing talk show host the other day extolling the virtues of slowing down to 55 mph voluntarily and arguably saving oil. Our oil’s going to disappear. Until it does, let’s enjoy it.
– Please, no more taxes. Cut taxes. At least one candidate is headed there with the explicit goal of not only fighting the tax increases sought by Gov. Sleepy Ted Taxandgougeme and his ilk but also cutting them. If you aren’t a candidate like this, you should be.
The end of legalized theft should be a goal we all pursue. You don’t have to buy into my notions of what taxes are most wrong. Anything substantive would be nice.
Those folks in Salem can’t seem to stop talking about increases. Instead of just fighting against tax increases, change the discussion to cutting them and cutting spending. As House District 17 candidate Bruce Cuff says, we don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.
– Now is as good a time as any to push for a choice-oriented education system. My preference is for a completely privatized system that rewards teachers, support staff and administrators for their exceptional work and punishes poor workers; but in lieu of that, the next best thing is allowing parents to use education revenues confiscated from the working public to send their children to schools of their choice, fostering at least some of the benefits of a free market.
– Ban the smoking bans on private property. Property owners should be able to decide whether smoking is permissible in any building they own. No one has a right to enter or eat at any restaurant or other place of business. If a customer doesn’t like the smoke, he should eat or shop where there is no smoke.
Market forces already implemented smoke-free businesses and restaurants.
The state government, not to be outdone by free men acting in a free market, has to get into the act as well, and now we’re looking at bans in bars of all places.
Alcohol’s little brother is nicotine. They go together. Even those who normally turn their noses up at smokers in public places love to light one up with their favorite micro.
These upcoming bans in bars are absurd and heavy handed. I realize this fight may be difficult, and you may not even care to take up the cause of smokers and smoking property owners, but you have a duty to defend your constituents’ property rights. You should fight those who trample those rights under a façade of legality even if you personally detest smoking.