Ok, so this used to be the opinion of the day, but let's face it, I don't have the time to post something every day. I usually get riled up about something or other enough to write about once a month, hence the name change.
The Homeless vs. Our Kids
The mayor of San Francisco would like to create some play areas in some of the city parks for kids. This would almost necessarily mean that the homeless would be kept out of those same areas so the kids would have a safe environment in which to play.
The homeless of San Francisco feel put out about it.
They seem to feel that the mayor should be putting more money into homeless shelters and less into giving children a safe place to play in the park. How PITIFUL! The mayor, if he has any spine at all, should tell the homeless to get jobs and rent THEIR OWN SHELTERS! They live in a city that is the MOST EXPENSIVE PLACE TO LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and they think that the people scraping by to live there should ante up cash to support a bunch of BUMS. What the people of San Francisco should do is ante up the cash to rent buses and bus these poor victims of circumstance and hard luck out of the city and into the countryside.
Meanwhile, the money I earn to support my family will gladly be paid to create a safe place for them to play. My backyard. Because the world coddles degenerates and bums and allows them to turn our parks into public bathrooms and trashy campgrounds.
Prostitution
Make it legal.
Zone the city for it.
License it.
Tax it.
Regulate it.
Get over it.
Drugs
Alcohol and nicotine are drugs that kill the users and innocent non-using bystanders every day. Thousands are killed by alcohol directly or indirectly every year. You could count the number of deaths over the last 5 years from Ecstasy (MDMA), the currently popular designer drug, on your fingers and toes. Marijuana is illegal, tobacco isn't, yet cigarette companies are losing billions of dollars in court over cases involving deaths from smoking and second hand smoke.
What's to stop you from walking into your house and drinking enough MD 20/20 to induce alcohol poisoning? Maturity, hopefully. A sense of moderation. Your upbringing. Common sense. Call it what you like. The same thing that would stop you from walking into your house and dropping enough acid to drop a rhino. So why isn't LSD legal? In moderation, with adequate warnings on the label and directions for correct usage, shouldn't you be mature enough to decide for yourself what you do and don’t want to partake of?
The point I'm making is, our drug laws are completely arbitrary. Some drugs, like heroin and cocaine, obviously need to be controlled, while others are kept from the general public as though we're simply too stupid or immature to handle them. What distinction am I making here? Well, the rule of thumb I keep coming up with is simply this:
If it's physically addictive, it should be outlawed.
Once you're physically addicted, your choice has been taken from you, or at least severely curtailed.
Now let's be realistic. Drug dealers exist because the drugs are illegal. The drugs get sold to kids because adults, on average, avoid things that are illegal. Make it legal, and drug dealers will be small business owners with shop fronts and licenses.
Paying taxes.
Selling to customers 21 and over with proper ID.
And kids will have a harder time getting at the very substances we want most to keep out of their hands.
Commuter Lanes
The purpose of commuter lanes is to influence people to carpool, right? And the idea for carpooling is to relieve the pressure of the commute, right? Well what good are they if you have cars with more than one person in them driving in the non-commuter lanes? If those people stuck to the commuter lanes until their exit came up, it would further serve to alleviate the crush of cars in the regular lanes on our highways during rush hour. I think people driving cars in regular lanes when they could be in the commuter lane should be fined as much as someone who is driving in the commuter by themselves.
Ok, I'm being facetious here. Gotta have a little humor somewhere in this…