Oil, immigration and drugs

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Oil, immigration and drugs
By RANDY ALCORN — May 25, 2010
The current news cycle presents an opportunity to reveal the nexus among several of the more urgent issues confronting America today. The serious problems of energy, environment, immigration, and drugs are inter-related, even co-dependent. Unless all of these are addressed concurrently, resolving any of them is unlikely.
The oil gushing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico threatens to become the greatest environmental catastrophe in modern history. Because the growing demand for oil is so great, oil is being extracted from ever more dauntingly difficult locations, including many miles under the ocean floor. As we have seen, the exotic engineering required to get at this oil is not fail safe.
Yet, the demand for energy is greater than ever. What can be done? President Obama recently ordered increased fuel efficiency standards for new cars. Once attained, these standards will reduce oil consumption equivalent to that used by millions of cars today. That’s great, but by the time that goal is attained there will be so many more people driving that the environmental gains could be negligible. Even if all cars were electric, how much fuel will be burned to create electricity?
Meanwhile, Mexico’s president Felipe Calderon, in the U.S. on an official state visit, is condemning the Arizona ID law that seeks to discover and deport illegal aliens back to Mexico.
The nexus between these two events, the gulf oil hemorrhage and Calderon’s criticism, is that of population growth. The need for oil is driven by America’s third-world rate of population growth. That growth is virtually entirely due to immigration, legal and illegal, and to the immigrants’ proclivity for prodigious procreation. Calderon and his fellow privileged elites in Mexico do not want any obstacles preventing the outflow of his nation’s struggling surplus population. Without the safety valve of the porous American border, the millions of poor in Mexico could cause the thin gold line of Mexican society some unpleasant problems.
Mexico has more natural resources than does Canada; yet, Mexico’s greatest export may be its penurious population. Rather than conciliate Calderon, President Obama should give him the same chewing out he gave Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzi, essentially get your house in order and stop expecting the U.S. to solve your problems.
Environmental degradation and sufficient energy will continue to be unsolvable problems until population growth is stabilized and naturally reduced to sustainable levels. That won’t happen while the pusillanimous posture of our federal government toward illegal immigration allows the free-for-all along our southern border.
Calderon’s other impertinent invective against his host country was that the U.S. is complicit in the explosion of savage violence among the drug cartels in Mexico—because of the free flow of powerful automatic weapons from the U.S. Apparently, Calderon sees the problem along our common border as only one of north to south.
Even if an embargo of weapons from the U.S. could be enforced, the notion that drug cartels could not buy weapons elsewhere is, to be charitable to Calderon, naive. Recently, the mansion of a Mexican drug lord was captured by police. Several of the large rooms in that mansion were stacked chest high with bundles of American $100 bills that totaled tens of millions of dollars—just a drug lord’s loose change. These drug lords are among the richest people on earth. They can buy all the guns they want regardless of who is selling or not selling.
Calderon also blamed his nation’s descent into drug war anarchy on America’s unrelenting appetite for banned drugs. We are guilty here, but not for our demand for drugs, but rather for our stupidly stubborn, eternally ineffective, and socially destructive ban on certain drugs.
The war on drugs, which our government insists on pursuing in spite of all the evidence that it is an utter failure as well as it is antithetical to America’s founding principles of individual freedom, gives rise to the savage violence in Mexico. It also promotes the poppy trade in Afghanistan that is funding Muslim extremists.
It would be reasonable to ban any drug that invariably caused its user to harm others. But, that is not the case with most banned drugs. In fact, the harm to others comes because of the ban. Just ask the folks in Mexico caught in the crossfire of the drug wars.
Our unsecured southern border allows Mexican drug cartels to smuggle drugs into the U.S. via illegal aliens. In some cases this is the price the illegal aliens must pay to get across the border. Drug cartels are also sending illegal aliens into America to farm marijuana in America’s backcountry.
All of these issues are connected. They persist because of a lack of logic and a surplus of stupidity.
http://www.thedailysound.com/opinion...0RightonTarget

[Twoller]

This deserves a legible repost:

Oil, immigration and drugs

By RANDY ALCORN — May 25, 2010

The current news cycle presents an opportunity to reveal the nexus among several of the more urgent issues confronting America today. The serious problems of energy, environment, immigration, and drugs are inter-related, even co-dependent. Unless all of these are addressed concurrently, resolving any of them is unlikely.

The oil gushing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico threatens to become the greatest environmental catastrophe in modern history. Because the growing demand for oil is so great, oil is being extracted from ever more dauntingly difficult locations, including many miles under the ocean floor. As we have seen, the exotic engineering required to get at this oil is not fail safe.

Yet, the demand for energy is greater than ever. What can be done? President Obama recently ordered increased fuel efficiency standards for new cars. Once attained, these standards will reduce oil consumption equivalent to that used by millions of cars today. That’s great, but by the time that goal is attained there will be so many more people driving that the environmental gains could be negligible. Even if all cars were electric, how much fuel will be burned to create electricity?

Meanwhile, Mexico’s president Felipe Calderon, in the U.S. on an official state visit, is condemning the Arizona ID law that seeks to discover and deport illegal aliens back to Mexico.

The nexus between these two events, the gulf oil hemorrhage and Calderon’s criticism, is that of population growth. The need for oil is driven by America’s third-world rate of population growth. That growth is virtually entirely due to immigration, legal and illegal, and to the immigrants’ proclivity for prodigious procreation. Calderon and his fellow privileged elites in Mexico do not want any obstacles preventing the outflow of his nation’s struggling surplus population. Without the safety valve of the porous American border, the millions of poor in Mexico could cause the thin gold line of Mexican society some unpleasant problems.

Mexico has more natural resources than does Canada; yet, Mexico’s greatest export may be its penurious population. Rather than conciliate Calderon, President Obama should give him the same chewing out he gave Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzi, essentially get your house in order and stop expecting the U.S. to solve your problems.

Environmental degradation and sufficient energy will continue to be unsolvable problems until population growth is stabilized and naturally reduced to sustainable levels. That won’t happen while the pusillanimous posture of our federal government toward illegal immigration allows the free-for-all along our southern border.

Calderon’s other impertinent invective against his host country was that the U.S. is complicit in the explosion of savage violence among the drug cartels in Mexico—because of the free flow of powerful automatic weapons from the U.S. Apparently, Calderon sees the problem along our common border as only one of north to south.

Even if an embargo of weapons from the U.S. could be enforced, the notion that drug cartels could not buy weapons elsewhere is, to be charitable to Calderon, naive. Recently, the mansion of a Mexican drug lord was captured by police. Several of the large rooms in that mansion were stacked chest high with bundles of American $100 bills that totaled tens of millions of dollars—just a drug lord’s loose change. These drug lords are among the richest people on earth. They can buy all the guns they want regardless of who is selling or not selling.

Calderon also blamed his nation’s descent into drug war anarchy on America’s unrelenting appetite for banned drugs. We are guilty here, but not for our demand for drugs, but rather for our stupidly stubborn, eternally ineffective, and socially destructive ban on certain drugs.

The war on drugs, which our government insists on pursuing in spite of all the evidence that it is an utter failure as well as it is antithetical to America’s founding principles of individual freedom, gives rise to the savage violence in Mexico. It also promotes the poppy trade in Afghanistan that is funding Muslim extremists.

It would be reasonable to ban any drug that invariably caused its user to harm others. But, that is not the case with most banned drugs. In fact, the harm to others comes because of the ban. Just ask the folks in Mexico caught in the crossfire of the drug wars.

Our unsecured southern border allows Mexican drug cartels to smuggle drugs into the U.S. via illegal aliens. In some cases this is the price the illegal aliens must pay to get across the border. Drug cartels are also sending illegal aliens into America to farm marijuana in America’s backcountry.

All of these issues are connected. They persist because of a lack of logic and a surplus of stupidity.

"It would be reasonable to ban any drug that invariably caused its user to harm others. But, that is not the case with most banned drugs. In fact, the harm to others comes because of the ban. Just ask the folks in Mexico caught in the crossfire of the drug wars."

We see similar problems in Jamaica this very day:

BBC: Jamaica 'drug lord' standoff kills at least 11 people

The only thing that really needs to change in the Drug War is to completely decriminalize simple possession of any of the plant product drugs and punish distribution of same with huge fines. No jail time should be involved. Jail time is what drives the profits from black market distribution because jail time is the only risk involved. The plants, coca, cannabis and poppy, are all easily available. Remove jail time and the justification for black market profit falls away and as profit falls away, so does the motivation to distribute.