The single best reason to support Dennis Kucinich..

[The Vinyl Ripper]

There are a lot of reasons I like Dennis Kucinich, but for me one stands out above the rest

It doesn't seem to get much attention here on DU but Dennis Kucinich has a truly radical idea for a national level politician in the USA.

Dennis wants to end the single most freedom destroying program in America, the War On Drugs.

If you have to piss in a jar on demand to get or keep a slaving job , blame the War On Drugs.

http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/world.htm#west

[rurallib]

1. about the best argument I have heard yet.

[Romulox]

2. hear hear!

The War on Drugs is at least as big a failure as the War in Iraq.

[whoneedstickets]

3. Good point, Lame Graphic...

..the blue and green bars can't be proportional since the half a million blue bar would be about 1/600th the size of the green bar. For the Euro side blue would be 1/1000 the size of green. I doubt either would be visible if the scales were constant.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

5. The green bars are proportional to each other.

And the blue bars are proportional to each other.

The graphic is designed to make a point and I think it makes the point fairly well.

It could certainly be better, but then what in life couldn't be better?

[whoneedstickets]

7. I understand that...

...but the placement of the bars is obviously intended to exaggerate the size of the incarcerated populations and I've read enough 'lying with statistics' books to find the strategy ham-handed even when I agree with the sentiment.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

9. The bars are labeled quite clearly with the numbers..

For those who can read it's fairly clear what the meaning of the graphic is.

And I do see your point about lying with statistics.

Not trying to be accusatory or nasty, but how would you do it better and still carry the same impact?

[whoneedstickets]

11. Well a more accurate figure would depict....

incarceration proportions, or incarcerated persons per 1000 in each polity. Two bars.

But the world is full of bad graphs. USA Today produces a half-dozen daily.

[warren pease]

4. Great point...

The war on (some) drugs is particularly odious since it serves as a trial run for a fascist state that can seize property -- particularly if it happens to, say, consist of 10 acres overlooking the Pacific, a couple of Porsches and a power boat or two -- arrest anyone on "suspicion," no matter where the "evidence" came from; target specific groups hostile to the administration, or to the power structure in general; imprison non-violent offenders for what's essentially thought crime; suspend the 4th Amendment; damage the 1st's freedom of association clause; and basically sow fear, angst and misery among the general population -- kinda like BushCo's MO.

I ask again, what can anyone possibly have against DK? He's the only true progressive running for president, he doesn't take corporate money, he champions just about every single cause that makes sense and shuns those that don't. What's not to like?


wp

[The Vinyl Ripper]

6. Not to mention that it's extremely easy to set someone up

On a drug charge.

Just plant a little illegal substance on them or their property and voila', instant jail time.

Like the cops who murdered the 92 year old woman in Atlanta tried to do.

The only reason they got caught is that they planted the drugs after the shooting.

[valerief]

8. Wow. He's gonna stop the flow of heroin INTO the U.S., cuz that's

all the War on Drugs is as far as I can see.

He'd make a great president!

[The Vinyl Ripper]

12. The War On Drugs...

Is primarily a war on pot.

That is what the great majority of drug arrests are for.

Pot is harder to hide and harder to smuggle than any other illegal drug, due both to its greater bulk and its strong odor.

You can put a quarter million worth of cocaine or meth in a suitcase, not so with pot.

Under equal circumstances, both substances being legal and pure, heroin is a safer drug than alcohol.

[valerief]

13. Yeah, but I thought the funding for the War on Drugs was to facilitate

the couriering of drugs into the U.S. for sales and profit.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

14. The WOD

Has many purposes, one of which is probably what you remark on in your post.

Another purpose is to accustom the citizenry to random searches with no good reason for such a search, they even search your bodily fluids with no reason for suspicion and very few Americans object.

Yet another purpose is to fill the prisons with cheap labor.

It's no coincidence that private prison companies are big GOP contributors.

[valerief]

17. You make good points. The deprogramming of the citizenry of their

sense of freedom is surely part of it. Definitely the cheap labor force in prison is major part of it. The War on Drugs is just another scam Congress funds.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

18. Random drug testing

Is basically a "guilty until proven innocent" scenario.

Drug war advocates will tell you that it is private employers doing the screening, but fail to mention that it is the government pushing private employers to do so.

In a nation with essentially no social safety net losing one's job is tantamount to becoming homeless, a strong motivator to buckle under and accept the ultimately intrusive searches of one's bodily fluids.

A truly free and uncowed citizenry would never stand for such a thing.

[porphyrian]

10. I like him more every day. - n/t

[MrMickeysMom]

15. Okay, it's not the SINGLE best reason to support DK, but I agree about

the utter failure of the WOD, numbers of offenders who would be handled better by not going to jail, and the absolute need to legalize hemp as a crop.

Hey, knowledge is good and fear is bad. The war on drugs or any other war is a big marketing ploy, and Kucinich knows that. I just wish MSM, and even KO would direct their cameras to his very successful platform on SO MANY, MANY issues!

[The Vinyl Ripper]

16. It was Nixon who started the modern day WOD...

Because he basically hated the anti war protesters and was looking to find a way to hurt them.

The anti war position got linked, rightly or wrongly, in the conservative mind with drugs other than alcohol and tobacco.

It's really all about the dirty fucking hippies and their un American pacifism.

Or at least that's the way it started out.

[truedelphi]

19. And that is how it remains today

A bomb threat gets called into your city. The Homeland Security teams go out and monitor the subways and the bus companies - and no they don't find the Mad Bomber but they do manage to ensnare half a dozen doobie smokers who knew nothing of the search and seizure about to occur and who brought their recreation along with their brown bagged lunch

[The Vinyl Ripper]

20. Jesse Ventura has an absolutely outstanding rant about this subject..

Click on the link and then select "Alcohol vs Marijuana".

http://soundboard.com/sb/Jesse_Ventura_sound_clips.aspx

[Greyhound]

21. Just one of many, many, reasons to support his candidacy.

Even the worst of his ideas are better than what is offered by the so-called mainstream candidates.

:kick: & R