Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 26, 2010

The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

More durable that wood pulp paper and naturally low acid.

You can get hemp breakfast cereal at Trader Joe’s.

Y’all just wait. Zonker is going to show up here in the comments, spamming his hempware site.

I don’t think there are any squares in the wild, though.

Actually, we meet at tractor pulls and Lynrd Skynrd concerts.

Sure glad honest family farmers will control the market and the crooks will never get involved. Like alcohol or gambling. I trust those honest men in Washington.

^Why trust anyone? There are crooks at every level of government and business (which is actually even more crooked).

If Zonker is serious about his dream he better move his garden indoors.

@ Spaghettus from yesterday:

I am assuming that the high cost of doing business is driving them overseas, which includes increasing taxes, collective bargaining agreements, environmental regulations, and many other direct and indirect factors which result from government interventions. The same happens on the state level.

We can argue if these government mandates are important or not, but we cannot credibly argue that they don’t close down US factories.

@ Mike Price from yesterday,

Mike, take a clue from Garry and don’t demonize Sarah until after the election. All you’re doing is proving your hateful nature to the election-deciding Independents, who will pull the Republican lever out of disgust with associating with you. Bush benefited from the same phenomenon in 2004.

Nemesys, In your exchanges with Spaghettus and Neocon regarding the Federal government’s interference with business, you overlook cdwards’s point that business on the whole is more corrupt than government. I’d rather deal with the IRS than with a banker.

American corporations make greater profits overseas not only by exploiting the cheap labor but by paying foreign taxes (and bribes) required to escape regulation and oversight.

Much like those corporations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spends vast anonymous sums on bribing the voters to reject the Federal regulations that protect them from exploitation.

After seeing what the business-friendly administrations from Reagan to G.W. Bush have done to lift the rules, how can you argue for still less regulation? Carter began by deregulating the airlines and Reagan and Clinton freed the banks. Both those industries have profited (or grown enormously “productive”) by ruthlessly exploiting the consumer.

No matter what the outcome of next week’s vote, the Consumer Protection Agency is going to make it harder for business to profit by cheating. We’ve drifted too far into lawlessness, and the pendulum is about to swing back. Thank God and Obama for Elizabeth Warren.

palin, you may be happier dealing with IRS agents than with bankers, but having dealt with both, I must tell you that I’ve benefited much more from the latter than from the former.

As to business being more corrupt than government, that viewpoint is challenged by reports such as provided by CBS News, who tell us that Medicare fraud is estimated to add up to $60 billion annually. That number is more than the profits earned by the top 16 medical insurance companies combined. Government programs may (or may not) have good intentions, but the fact that they have always been the biggest target for plunder from the outside and from within. The corruption within business pales when compared with that of government, which is compounded by the fact that this is our money we’re talking about, not that of a private enterprise.

I’m not arguing for less regulation… as I’ve said, we can argue about the pro’s and con’s of each new rule as it comes along. However, these regulations drive corporations from state to state, and ultimately out of the country.

Someday the United States will have the dubious distinction of being the country with the best, most comprehensive deck of government regulations and no companies left to regulate under them. Will that signify a victory for you? Since everything will be owned and run by the government at that point, perhaps it will.

Just ask nephew Zipper to move in with you. THERE’S your “small family” right there.

A well thought-out plan, Zonker.

Nemesys,

I’m sure you understand that Medicare fraud isn’t committed by the Federal Government, but by unscrupulous BUSINESSES!

As a marijuana farmer you get to meet people in high places. Gary, once again you have opened the floodgates. :-)

AND put luxury taxes on it!

Attempting to discard unwanted stems down the garbage disposal (back in the day, of course) I can attest to the toughness of hemp fiber. Poor garbage disposal…. Aren’t we all family? Sly Stone, some time in the distant past.

Isn’t it odd that hunters, who vilify big intrusive government, are the ones so quick to turn in cannabis growers in the wild?

My problem with pot isn’t adults use it to relax now and then, but the kids who get psychologically hooked on it to the exclusion of everything else they could be doing.

Most of us who went to college remember the guy (or girl) with big dreams who ended up flunking out of school because they spent his/her time partying instead of studying. I run into one at the deli department at my local grocery store. Instead of designing innovative computer systems, which he used to describe to me when he was my room-mate 30 years ago, he’s spending his time slicing provolone cheese during the day and still getting stoned at night.

What does that really cost a country?

who is against the legalization of marijuana these days? I ask because I know there must be some on this forum… I just don’t understand the logic. did we learn nothing from prohibition?

Will they rely on subsidies to maintain the American Pot Farm?

They have tractor pulls in northern California?

Zonker would rule at square dancing!

Happy 40th

MOST IMPORTANT!! THIS PROPOSAL SAVES “BACK COUNTRY”!! Get the growers down there right with the cotton, corn, and other subsidized crops, and get them OFF our public forest and park lands! Remove the incentive to screw up the “back country” with their illegal plots. Save law enforcement billions of dollars in wasted efforts to wage war on pot. Let’s police the real criminals, like bankers, fund managers, and politicians!! We could throw in a few “defense” contractors as well.

Actually, Clark, many do do that while stoned or drunk. They are seldom the best dancers. Worse, they are mostly male, who are trying to lead. There can be problems.

Zonker is correct. You can meet your fellow hemp farmers at square dances.

You have trusted some in Washington, Lewpeon. Your bosses have resided there your entire life.

Nemesys, demonizing Sarah Palin would be a promotion. The only people who take her seriously have trouble finding their way to the polls. She is just a few years away from her first infomercial.

In 2004, Bush-Dick benefited from evoking fear of terrorists and hatred of homosexuals and from the corrupt election in Ohio. It is all past, though. President Obama continues to clean up your Bush-Dick’s messes.

That figure about Medicare fraud? You found it where?

Drome, I much appreciate your concise answer to Nemesys and was thinking, during it, of the contaminated food—especially infants’ food—in China, where unregulated capitalism reigns.

Russell, the phrase used to be “heels over head”. We should bring that one back.

Brian,

It doesn’t matter if you take Palin or Bush seriously. What matters is that throwing that level of hateful verbal diarrhea at them only discredits the messenger. Bush benefited from many things in 2008, including having an opposition that was way out of his league, but what put him over the top was CNN’s and Fox’s coverage of the anti-Bush protestors. The signs and chants they displayed against Bush would have made any Tea Partier blush, and many folks voted for Bush because they wanted to distance themselves as far away from that toxicity as possible. In other words, negativity that takes the form of inane personal insults backfires in election season, so please hold the Palin bashing until after the election. Even Garry has finally woken up to that.

The Medicare Fraud figure was from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtml . According to CBS, defrauding the government has displaced drug trafficing as Florida’s biggest cash crop.

Person918 Ah, your are expecting people to learn from Other Peoples Past Experience, not their own. History, in fact. When have they EVER?

Doonsbury in the ‘boonies. hang on to the side rail of the buckboard - it could get rough!

And what’s with those stupid commercials? Flag ‘em!

Nemesys, Bush-Dick didn’t run in 2008.

Thanks for the link to the story on 60 Minutes: It is one more unregulated mess from the days of Bush-Dick & the Republicans. Are you glad that Attorney General Holder & health & human Services Secretary Sebelius have put Medicare fraud on the front burner? I am.

C.B.S. got onto the story after The New York Times wrote about this in July. President Obama continues to clean up after Bush-Dick & the Republicans. Why would anyone want to put the Republicans back into control of Congress?

Happy 40th Garry! I have enjoyed the ride, thanks very much.

Holder/Sebelius HAD to put “Medicare Fraud” (it’s real) on the front burner because the new Health Care Law ASSUMES $500Billion in Medicare Cuts in order to make their math work. If they can’t get that back in “Fraud” then Seniors who depend on Medicare will get rationed Health Care.

Now if the Government and the Media already knew Medicare was corrupt and laden with fraud, why haven’t they already taken care of it? Because they can’t - the Federal Bureaucracy is not capable of running these programs.

Nemesys’ allusion to Medicare fraud as a Guv’mint corruption symptom misses the point.

The fraud wasn’t IN Guv’mint, it was PRIVATE criminals taking advantage of a largely UNregulated industry, that a Single-Payer (call it Medicare-for-All) would have a chance of bringing under control, when put together with proper auditing.

One of the people my wife worked with, just after she left that section, defrauded (a Huge Aerospace Company) of some $12 Million, once she realized the auditing was going away. No Guv’mint involved a’tall there (except for being the Customer), and she might even be out by now.