Bad News For That Rubato Person

[rubato]

If you can't look at a public policy question and ask the "short term vs long term" and "personal cost versus general cost" questions then you cannot even begin to think about public policy.


With oil prices the equation is:

short term = minor pain, long term = huge benefit.

Personal = higher fuel costs = pain
General = better economy, less pollution, less oil imports, more efficient vehicles, more efficient infrastructure


Only a stupid person wants heroin or cocaine (or oil) to be cheap and plentiful.


yrs
rubato

[dales]

Gosh its just such a nice place especially for people in the sciences. I'd hate to move.

yrs,
rubato

Indeed...

Every year on April 20 at 4:20 p.m., hundreds of University of California at Santa Cruz students and residents gather in a field on UCSC's campus to light up.

The annual tradition is not a university-sanctioned event; however, no one stops students from getting high on marijuana. Under Saturday's brilliantly sunny skies, pot smokers wearing a lot of neon-colored sun glasses and "Keep Santa Cruz Stoned" T-shirts lit up and got giddy while police officers watched.

But one marijuana enthusiast took the opportunity a little too far.

A joint weighing nearly 3 pounds was found by officers. When a large crowd of students noticed 3 pounds of marijuana rolled into a single joint was being carried away, they booed the officers and recorded them with cellphone cameras. A video of the incident was uploaded onto YouTube Saturday and had been watched 28,000 times by Monday morning.


A 25-year-old man who was suspected of creating and bringing the massive joint, UCSC student Gennady Tsarinsky, was escorted away from the field and arrested.

"(Tsarinsky) was arrested for possession of more than an ounce," UCSC spokesman Jim Burns said. Burns said he could not confirm the exact weight of the joint.

A second pot smoker was arrested for disorderly conduct, but overall students said the marijuana smoke-out was a carefree counterculture fun fest.

"Everyone is super-friendly, super-easygoing, really accepting," UCSC student Trio Harris said. "You can just be yourself and not be judged, and that's why I love 4/20."


Read more: http://www.ksbw.com/news/central-califo ... z2RL6vD6Mg

[Lord Jim]

Only a stupid person wants heroin or cocaine (or oil) to be cheap and plentiful.

Only a person of monumental stupidity would attempt to draw such analogy...

Rube apparently thinks it would be just fine to completely tank the economy and throw many more millions into poverty until we can power our economy with sources he approves of...(no matter how many decades that might take)

It's no skin off his ass...

He wouldn't have to scratch by on the dole; he has another source to subsidize him...

So what if the cost of energy puts the price of food through the roof, or puts small businesses under, or causes more folks to have to chose between eating and heating...

Not his problem...after all you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs can you rube?... the ends justify the means....

Those folks will just have to get by on government cheese...

ETA:

On the other hand, maybe I've got it wrong...

Maybe rube really does like poor people....

That' would explain why he supports policies that would create so many more of them....

[rubato]

Gosh its just such a nice place especially for people in the sciences. I'd hate to move.

yrs,
rubato

Indeed...

Every year on April 20 at 4:20 p.m., hundreds of University of California at Santa Cruz students and residents gather in a field on UCSC's campus to light up.

The annual tradition is not a university-sanctioned event; however, no one stops students from getting high on marijuana. Under Saturday's brilliantly sunny skies, pot smokers wearing a lot of neon-colored sun glasses and "Keep Santa Cruz Stoned" T-shirts lit up and got giddy while police officers watched.

But one marijuana enthusiast took the opportunity a little too far.

A joint weighing nearly 3 pounds was found by officers. When a large crowd of students noticed 3 pounds of marijuana rolled into a single joint was being carried away, they booed the officers and recorded them with cellphone cameras. A video of the incident was uploaded onto YouTube Saturday and had been watched 28,000 times by Monday morning.


A 25-year-old man who was suspected of creating and bringing the massive joint, UCSC student Gennady Tsarinsky, was escorted away from the field and arrested.

"(Tsarinsky) was arrested for possession of more than an ounce," UCSC spokesman Jim Burns said. Burns said he could not confirm the exact weight of the joint.

A second pot smoker was arrested for disorderly conduct, but overall students said the marijuana smoke-out was a carefree counterculture fun fest.

"Everyone is super-friendly, super-easygoing, really accepting," UCSC student Trio Harris said. "You can just be yourself and not be judged, and that's why I love 4/20."


Read more: http://www.ksbw.com/news/central-califo ... z2RL6vD6Mg

There's that, too!

Any group of college students who don't engage in a little experimentation are missing out.

yrs,
rubato

[Jarlaxle]

Money collected never seems to end up where it was supposed to be targetted for. Originally the tolls acros the bridges to get off/on LI were to pay off the bonds on the bridges and for upkeep. If that were the case, the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridge tolls would be about a $1 now. Instead the MTA just keeps upping the tolls to pay for the subway system, the LIRR, Metro North and a host of other things, meanwhile the bridges deteriorate and they have to float bonds to repair them.

Same with gas taxes, they were targeted to build/repair the roads, instead it goes into the general fund and the roads/overpasses/bridges deteriorate.

Fuel taxes here just go into the general slush fund to be pissed away. Kind of like the tolls...which were, you know, supposed to come down THIRTY YEARS AGO!

[dgs49]

Only an economic ignoramus would advocate government policies to manipulate the price of a commodity that is freely traded throughout the world.

If there is evidence of any economic reality in the world it is the mountain of evidence that proves that Governments are disastrously stupid when they try to play Economic God.

[rubato]

Only an economic ignoramus would advocate government policies to manipulate the price of a commodity that is freely traded throughout the world.

If there is evidence of any economic reality in the world it is the mountain of evidence that proves that Governments are disastrously stupid when they try to play Economic God.

That would be Nixon who regulated oil prices. Carter deregulated it.

Taxing motor fuel by contrast is not regulating a "commodity price".

yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

Only a stupid person wants heroin or cocaine ... to be cheap and plentiful.

It would beat all hell out of people's killing each other over them. And over the right to sell them. Etc.

Only a stupid person wants us to continue the anti-drug lunacy we are engaged in now.

[Big RR]

Not to mention surrendering our civil rights, and paying significant taxes, to the government to protect us from the "scourge of drugs". I, too, would question the intelligence of anyone thinking that continuing the war on drugs is a good idea.

[Lord Jim]

I believe that the costly waste of the "War On Drugs" is one of the very few things that we seem to have broad consensus about on this board, across the political spectrum.

Though we may all have come to this conclusion for different reasons...

As I've said a number of times over the years, if the WOD had been a stellar success, I might very well be a strong supporter....

But by any yardstick one would care to apply, it has been an absolute, total, and complete abject failure, with vast direct and indirect costs in both financial and human terms. A complete squandering of resources.

Like the old saying goes, the definition of insanity is dong the same thing over and over again expecting different results....

[rubato]

Only a stupid person wants heroin or cocaine ... to be cheap and plentiful.

It would beat all hell out of people's killing each other over them. And over the right to sell them. Etc.

Only a stupid person wants us to continue the anti-drug lunacy we are engaged in now.

I don't disagree but not related to the topic at hand.

Others, not myself, have been quite bitter about people changing the subject. Assholes about it, really.

I don't have a problem with it personally. I'm into the whole free-form thing.

yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

I'm into the whole free-form thing.

That's certainly always been your approach to history...