The Legalization Movement

There are limitless valid reasons to support drug legalization. You don't think it's the government's place to legislate against people smoking dried plants, or you don't think attempting (and failing) at preventing kids from smoking pot or doing other drugs is worth all of the consequences, you realize that the reality of the black market makes it so it's easier for kids to get drugs than it is to get alcahol or cigarettes, you think that it hurts more than helps to lock up non violent users with real criminals, even sometimes letting real criminals go to make room, etc.

You don't like the fact that weed costs $50 an eighth and you want to be able to smoke in public are not two of them.

For the legalization movement to go anywhere they need to appeal to middle America, the average citizens, showing them that we're not harmful people to be around, we just like smoking a dried plant. And going into public parks and smoking joints while listening to bad reggae (sung by WHITE people), and in the mean time annoying the fuck out of everyone living in the area by the utter disregard for anyone's situation but your own IS NOT GONNA DO THE FUCKING TRICK!

I'm sorry. Last Saturday I took part in the Global Marijuana March in Iowa City. I don't protest all that often, but I've done it before, and I've seen some really well organized ones, but this was not one of them. This was a bunch of filthy hippies and crusties who had wandered down from the ped mall (where they sleep). They hadn't prepared any chants, and instead asked people around to make up the chants minutes before the march was supposed to start (and when they came up with some they were worded in the EXACT way to alienate all of the average Iowans walking around "2,4,6,8, Marijuana's really great, 3,5,7,9, I smoke reefer all the time!", or something along those lines). It didn't matter because 75% of the marchers weren't chanting anyways.
We marched from the school's IMU to College Green Park, a march of 7 or 8 blocks, not what one would consider a good march (easily labeled as a "Pothead" march). And we got there, and listened to white kids playing reggae (as terribly as one would expect), while these filthy (and I mean REALLY filthy) hippies smoked pot around kids, gave booze to local teenagers (not to mention weed), had a ton of pit bulls (scaring the shit out of people walking their dogs through the park), and so on.

And I can say with 100% confidence that there isn't a chance in hell that this helped the movement. People don't support legalization because they're scared of the results. They're afraid that there'll be potheads walking around ripping bongs in front of their kids, stoned drivers will run over thousands of kids a day, etc. People don't like potheads. I'm a pothead and I don't like potheads, not the dumb ones. They're stupid and they're self centered. They only wanna do what they want to do, and they don't give a shit about anyone else around them. People don't want there to be more stupid potheads, and parading a whole bunch of stupid potheads in front of them isn't gonna do much to aleviate their fears.

Think of what has to happen before any movement gets moving. In the Sufferage movement, it started getting moving, civil rights got going when the white kids started getting into it, and the anti-drug prohibition will get going when people who don't do drugs get involved with the movement. And the people are there, if you sit down and talk to someone in a serious, non judgemental, informative way a whole lot more people are there who'd support the movement (if we stop trotting the filthy hippies around town regularly reminding them of the downside of pot).

And I need to make an important distinction here. In comparing the legalization movement to the suffrage and civil rights movements, I meant in no way to compare the plights of potheads to the plights of blacks in the 50's or women in the 20's. I believe firmly that the War on Drugs is very clearly as serious as either problem as a whole, considering all of its effects on society (mostly, if not entirely negative), but potheads cannot act like victims. You aren't a victim. Yeah it sucks that pot's expensive, but it's also good, because that way you don't smoke as much of it, and thus you have life with a functioning brain just that much longer. And yeah, it'd be nice on a summer afternoon to go to the park near my apartment, sit under a tree and smoke a joint, but it wouldn't be nice for the family of the kid who see older people (kids in their late teens and early to mid twenties, who kids see as authority figures on what's cool) sitting around smoking pot, making that kid more likely to smoke pot (whether or not this actually happens, it's a legitimate fear for parents to have). The hardships you go through as a pothead are NOTHING.

So if you support legalization only because you want it cheaper and you want to smoke it in public, please, for the love of God, stay home during the next march, you'll be doing a lot more to help the movement.

Neccisary Institutional Reforms

This will undoubtedly be the least sexy of any of my posts so far, considering the others have dealt with the issues of abortion, immigration, secularism, etc. Despite the fact that this probably won't get anyone excited, I believe this may be about possibly the most important government reforms out there, and this may alleviate a lot of the stupidity that we all allow to happen in Washington.

For a long time general elections used to be run by the parties. They used to pass out ballots of different sizes and colors for the different parties, and you could only vote for members of whatever party's ballot you took. Also, because of the differences in color and size, voter privacy was non-existant, which led to voter intimidation and bribery. Because of this we instituted what's called the "Australian Ballot", which is one ballot that has all of the parties nominees.

This is what needs to be done in the primaries. Right now turnout to primaries are around 12% on a really good year. And you have to think, who are these 12% that show up? Mostly, it's the people who really give a shit about politics, like me. And what's one common attribute of people who really give a shit about politics? In general, we are more extreme than the 88% of the nation that doesn't show up for the primaries, meaning already we're faced with the problem that we know the candidates are representative of the extremists instead of the moderates. The other aspect to this is the people who show up to primaries are mostly people who've got no beef with having to caucus only for one problem, thus the people who have strong party affiliation with either the democrats or republicans (this isn't me, but in general). Because of this we get the candidates that we get. The republicans churn out gun loving, God hates queers, let's bomb the shit out of the unbelievers, and the democrats churn out whiney pussy environmentalists who believe abortions should be done for free in public schools and people who believe in God are retarded, and they keep churning out these fucking candidates because of the institution of the primaries.
Now if, instead, we instituted an Australian Ballot for the primaries, where you were still only able to vote once in each election (presidential, senatorial, congressional, whatever), but you were able to say pick your favorite republican for president, democrat for senate, Libertarian for congress, etc, it would help immensely towards solving these problems. Turnout would become more for the people who don't care so much, since it's now more similar to the general election, and also the candidates would be selected by the public, instead of the echo chambers. This would lead to more moderate, representative candidates in the general elections.

The only problem with this is, according to the Supreme Court, passing a law requiring this change is unconstitutional, at least according to Associate Justice Douchebag, I mean Scalia. Thus, for the parties to make this shift, they'll have to do it voluntarily, which is something they will only do if we force them to.

But let's move on to the general elections. Right now we have a plurality system in place, meaning whoever gets the most votes wins. This is a system that adharently leads to a two party system, because of, well, the obvious reasons people don't vote for third parties now (You're throwing your vote away, a vote for Nader might as well be a vote for Bush, etc.).
Now if this is replaced with a run off system, then these arguments wouldn't carry any weight, because candidates almost never get 50% of the vote, and when they do it's because their only competition is that other guy. Now, if instead, you don't win until you acquire 50% of the vote, and if in the general election there is no candidate recieving 50% of the vote, there would be a run off between the top 2 candidates. This would encourage 3rd party representation, and thus a more representative government.
The problem with this is we are governed by republicans and democrats. Neither party will make a move for this, namely because the only ones hurt by this change are the republicans and democrats.

And finally, we need to redistrict. Right now we are, for the most part districted on a partisan basis (for example, I'm in Iowa, one of the most politically diverse states, and yet something close to 90% of my district vote democrat). This does not lead to competitive elections. As is it's nearly impossible to unseat an incumbant anyways, because of patronage, pork, a seat of authority, etc. Now add onto that that the incumbant is a member of the party that the vast majority of his constituents support, and thus to be unseated a member of the opposite party has to beat him, etc. it's ridiculous. Instead, we should be districted based on a competitive basis. Now, mind you, there will still be districts in Kansas that are 99% republican, and there'll be districts in California and New York that are 99% democrat, but by and large the effect will be that congressional turnover may raise over 2% every other year. Also, there are suprising effects of this for the feminism movement. Apparently, in competition for open seats women fare equally well as men, but still they are HORRIBLY underrepresented in government, which is due to the incumbency advantage. Because of the incumbency advantage the representation is 30, 40, 50 years behind at all points in time simply because we're blinded by incumbency and all of the election benefits it brings. If congressional elections were all of a sudden competitive, there would be an almost immidiate jump in the number of female representatives, not to mention it will allow shifts in party control more frequently, which will force them to be more attune to the actual public.