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AOC wants 70% tax on wealthy
- Thread starter Horn6721
- Start date
Now AOC wants to abolish prisons
"Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoted “prison abolition” in a pair of tweets Monday morning.
Ocasio-Cortez called for “a real conversation about decarceration [and] prison abolition in this country,” adding: “A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them.”
"Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoted “prison abolition” in a pair of tweets Monday morning.
Ocasio-Cortez called for “a real conversation about decarceration [and] prison abolition in this country,” adding: “A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them.”
Now AOC wants to abolish prisons
"Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoted “prison abolition” in a pair of tweets Monday morning.
Ocasio-Cortez called for “a real conversation about decarceration [and] prison abolition in this country,” adding: “A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them.”
What an idiot. Tell her to move into a dangerous neighborhood and see what happens. Then show us your forgiveness...
Clean
5,000+ Posts
Now AOC wants to abolish prisons
"Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoted “prison abolition” in a pair of tweets Monday morning.
Ocasio-Cortez called for “a real conversation about decarceration [and] prison abolition in this country,” adding: “A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them.”
People don't belong in cages? Has she never heard of Ted Bundy or Henry Lee Lucas? How about school shooter Nikolas Cruz? Should he be set free? I've run out of adjectives for her.
"Idiotic" seems to be the best adjective I've seen so far.
Huey Freeman once said not everyone in prison is Nelson Mandela.
ProdigalHorn
10,000+ Posts
Now AOC wants to abolish prisons
"Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez promoted “prison abolition” in a pair of tweets Monday morning.
Ocasio-Cortez called for “a real conversation about decarceration [and] prison abolition in this country,” adding: “A cage is a cage is a cage. And humans don’t belong in them.”
The best thing that can happen to conservatives is for people on the left to keep propping her up and telling her how great she is. The more that happens, the more she's going to feel free to unveil all her fun little ideas.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
I sincerely hope AOC was advocating for prison system reform and was simply inartful in how she shared her viewpoint.
Sounds like a little of both. Daily Wire put her comment into context. Link. She did use the term "prison abolition" (which was foolish), but she explained that her goal would be to make the prison system "dramatically smaller," not nonexistent.
She (like many libertarians) basically buys into the myth that prisons are bursting at the seams with people from Snoop Dogg concerts caught with a little weed. She also refers to "jailing people for their poverty." I'm not sure if she is referring to jailing people for unpaid tickets (a point which could have some merit) or jailing them for any money related offense like theft or burglary (a point which would be titanically stupid).
I'd probably disagree with 95 percent of her criminal justice agenda, but there is truth to this point. "Our prison & jail system is so large bc we use them as de facto mental hospitals, homeless shelters, & detox centers instead of *actually* investing in… mental health, housing, edu, & rehab. If we invested meaningfully, what do you think would happen to crime?"
ProdigalHorn
10,000+ Posts
Lots of truth in that, but unless she's willing to let us build facilities and house people who are mentally ill and unable to function in society on their own, then she's going to have to start planning where to put all the additional homeless camps.
Austin is full. I hear the NYC boroughs would be a good place to start.
Our prison system is large because we can afford it. Every other country would mimic ours if they could afford it too (after accounting for the amount of intrinsic violence existing in each country - no, violence is not a constant across nations or regions).
California tried downgrading a lot of property crimes from felony to misdemeanor...and somehow they are shocked that they now have an increase in property crimes.
Yes, Texas (and other States) have people serving pen time for a series of seemingly innocuous property crimes, but the reality is that you HAVE to have a place to put those that cannot quit stealing. The law makes abundantly clear that the third theft, no matter the valuation, is a State Jail Felony. Add in some other felony offenses and that brisket can, in fact, become a very lengthy term if the idiot is stupid enough to insist on a trial instead of taking the plea that likely would have seen no more than 90 days in jail (if that).
Texas tried the revolving door once before...it didn't work. That is precisely why we built so many new beds in the late 80's and early 90's.
State Jail felony offenses HAD a legislative intent of keeping people out of custody but, gee willikers, color me shocked that people don't want to comply with the terms of supervision and would rather serve their year or two in the State Jail Division.
Yes, Texas (and other States) have people serving pen time for a series of seemingly innocuous property crimes, but the reality is that you HAVE to have a place to put those that cannot quit stealing. The law makes abundantly clear that the third theft, no matter the valuation, is a State Jail Felony. Add in some other felony offenses and that brisket can, in fact, become a very lengthy term if the idiot is stupid enough to insist on a trial instead of taking the plea that likely would have seen no more than 90 days in jail (if that).
Texas tried the revolving door once before...it didn't work. That is precisely why we built so many new beds in the late 80's and early 90's.
State Jail felony offenses HAD a legislative intent of keeping people out of custody but, gee willikers, color me shocked that people don't want to comply with the terms of supervision and would rather serve their year or two in the State Jail Division.
Monahorns
10,000+ Posts
Yeah, victimless crimes of all shapes and sizes. I think Libertarians go a little too far, but I think it would be good every 10 years or so to audit the laws on the books to see which can be removed or lessened. If many drugs are legalized or decriminalized that could reduce the crime and violence associated with the black market. I think it should at least be an experiment.
But I am not advocating massive changes.
I'm not hostile to drug legalization per se, especially marijuana legalization (even though I've never tried marijuana in my life). However, there is a common misconception by many libertarians that drug possession is a huge component of the prison population. That isn't true. Less than 4 percent of state level offenders and less than 1 percent of federal offenders are in prison for drug possession. More are in prison for other drug offenses, but those aren't users. They are traffickers. Would legalizing drugs eliminate or at least greatly reduce the drug trafficker? Probably so. Does that mean those guys wouldn't be in the slammer? Not necessarily. If you're a drug trafficker, odds are, you are in that business because you're a crook, not because you have a special connection to drugs. Accordingly, you'll probably move onto doing something else illegal.
Saw a special once about the illegal drug trade in Colo after legalization. It claimed, with interviews of dealers, drug trade in the black market was even higher now because prices of legal weed was so high. Claim was the demand was higher since legal and the prices drove the traffic to them. No idea how true but seemed legit.
Just put another complication on my thoughts as to benefits in legalization.
Just put another complication on my thoughts as to benefits in legalization.
Monahorns
10,000+ Posts
I have heard that same explanation from a Congressman on KLBJ. He said that human and weapons smuggling would go up. Maybe even kidnappings. It all sounds reasonable to me.
I don't have the answer but I would like to see some experiments to see what improvements can be made.
Monahorns
10,000+ Posts
What you describe isn't the problem with legalization. It is the problem of the laws put in place to regulate the marijuana industry. They set up a huge set of regulations. In many cases the people writing the regulations were starting marijuana businesses or they had family that were. So they were writing the laws in a way to protect their financial interests. In the process they created a monopoly price. There was still some limited competition.
But the fact that the illegal sources were less expensive than the legal ones proves the price was a monopoly price.
Some libertarians prefer decriminalization. That just means either laws aren't enforced or additional laws aren't set up regulating marijuana supply. If it was an unregulated or very lightly regulated market you wouldn't see that.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
In Washington State Marijuana sales carry a 40% tax which im sure largely impacts the legal vs. illegal sale price.
To be fair, many conservative states do the same crap with gambling.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
My wife is a teacher who got a near 20% raise this year funded by Marijuana taxes. For a profession that is historically underpaid, that's not a bad use of the money from my perspective.
Of course, the government will eventually screw with your Medicare. It's just a matter of how broke we're going to let the country get before it does it.
It's not a bad use of the money, but it's a bad way to run a government. We shouldn't legalize something we think is bad but justify it by discriminating against it in the tax code to finance something that is politically popular (and undoubtedly benefits a major Democratic voting bloc and special interest group). And if we don't think marijuana smoking is bad, then we shouldn't tax it any more than we tax other things.
If teachers in Washington deserve a raise (and they may very well), the proper thing to do is to finance it through a broad based tax hike on sales, property, or income or whatever funding mechanism Washington and its school districts generally use to fund teacher salaries. (Of course, I understand why they didn't do that. To finance a raise that big, it would take a significant tax hike that would be unpopular, but simply kicking the hell out of pot smokers is politically easy.)
If you're going to play the game of legalizing something and then imposing special taxes on it (which I wouldn't do), you should dedicate those funds to costs related to the item or activity legalized. For example, if we're talking about marijuana, I'd dedicate the funding to drug treatment programs, greater law enforcement against illegal drug dealers, or something along those lines.
And again, this isn't a rip on Washington or Democrats. Almost everybody does this sort of thing. Texas does it with traffic tickets (though less so than they used to), hotel occupancy and rental car taxes, and of course, gambling. It's sleazy policy.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
Thanks for the admission. My in-laws are the same. I pointed out to them that the average persom pays ~$150k into Medicare over their lifetime and takes $450k in benefits. Like most of our entitlement programs its an unsustainable model.
With that said, I'm empathetic to our senior citizens. If we simply removed or greatly reduced the benefit they'd suffer significantly. Unfortunately, the ages on all of the entitlement programs need to be raised because we are living much longer and they have to be means tested. Thats a start. I've already planned and told my children not to plan for that safety net.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
I was answering Monahorns accusation the tax revenue was feeding corruption. My assumption was he was using the purest sense of the word when we talk about politicians enriching themselves. He even pointed to politicians owning marijuana businesses. If his reference was more an attack on perverse policy, like yours, I'll welcome that debate.
I'm not a libertarian in this regard. Raising taxes to curb public vices that have a significant public cost is an appropriate use of public policy. Separating the tax from the usage of such revenue, high taxes on tobacco, alcohol and marijuana is not bad public policy, IMHO. They each have significant public health and safety costs that are born by us all. Reducing their consumption is in our collective best interests. Should Marijuana be legalized? My vote was "no" but I'm sympathetic to the argument that it was occurring rampantly so should be brought into the open, regulated and yes, taxed.
Should money from one revenue source be used for another source? Generally, I'd say no. The ultimate example is the raping of the Social Security trust fund by our Federal politicians. Let's focus on Washington's marijuana legalization and tax revenue usage though because I'm moderately informed on that. The legalizatio law itself dictated that a % (from memory) of all tax revenue be dedicated towards marijuana usage research, prevention and health services. University of Washington received a $5M grant in yr 1 to study usage for example. Given the volume of tax revenue, certainly you can understand there is an upper limit on how much you can/should spend on research/prevention.
The WA State Treasurer posted this article regarding usage of revenue. This report cover FY18 which ended June 30, 2019. The summary of tax usage:
As you can see 40+% of the the revenue is going towards its core intent, Educstion, Prevention and Basic Health. The tax revenue was $50M more than the prior year so you could say the windfall is getting bigger. Keep in mind, this puts a spotlight on the size of the black market before legalization. It was immense. Legaluzation didn't remove the black market but I'm very skeptical of any claim the black market has increased based on the public revenue numbers.
So, should this revenue be used for other uses? If you can accept the principle that tax policy can be used to shape public policy and there is an upper limit to what should be spent on Drug prevention then wht do you do with the extra revenue? Washington States reserve fund hit $3B this last FY. We are a state flush with cash.
I'm not convinced it's sleazy politics, especially when the government entity is running surpluses. My views may be influenced by the bias of how the revenue should be used.
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