The Nutty Irishman Solves Everything! (Part One)

That's right folks, yours truly is going to give you the solutions to all the ills that plague us, and I'm going to do it simply, effectively, and cost-efficiently. Then, I'll tell you why my practical solutions will never see the light of day. Ready?

Problem #1: Illegal Immigration. Conservative types love to spout off at illegal immigrants, and will miss no opportunity to hitch onto whatever is happening in the news and somehow contrive a way to make it the fault of illegal immigrants. The most recent example is this swine flu thing. Apparently, according to the fringe right wing hacks, Mexicans have deliberately and knowingly brought swine flu to the U.S. when they came here illegally. Bad enough they steal all our jobs, now they want to kill us. Not paranoid enough for you? Try this one: allegedly al Qaeda manufactured this latest epidemic of swine flu (in their super-secret chemical labs, hidden deep in the mountainside caves of Afghanistan). Then, instead of using one of a million possible ways to import it directly into the United States, they chose instead to infect Mexicans (with whom they have no quarrel, incidentally), knowing that they would, in turn, sneak into America and infect the lot of us.

Solution #1: Jail Time for Employers, Not Employees: Okay, so if we are going to address illegal immigration in this country, we need to go after the two things we know the immigrants do: work and sleep. Despite what you may have been told, they don't tunnel under our border fences and emerge, only to immediately give birth to babies, collect food stamps and welfare. We know they get jobs, and we know that without jobs available to them, they'd have very little reason to come here. In the drug trade, law enforcement is much more interested in nabbing the dealers than the buyers. We simply apply the same rationale here. So, we pass a law. Any company that is found to have illegal immigrants in their employ, they're the new targets of law enforcement. Any business, from your local restaurant all the way up to Wal-Mart, the owners, presidents, chairmen of the board, get sentenced to 30 days in a federal prison for each illegal immigrant they hire. No fines, no community service – go directly to jail. Imagine seeing the owner of Wal-Mart taken away in shackles, live on CNN. Watch how quickly employers would then start insisting on documentation for their employees.

Solution #2: Jail Time for Landlords Who Rent to Illegals: The second part of the solution has to do with where they stay. In most cases, they live in apartments, and those apartments are being rented out by landlords. So, we get law enforcement to go after the landlords. We make them responsible for who rents their apartments, pure and simple. If an illegal immigrant is found to be residing in an apartment (whether they're on the lease of not), the landlords or owners spend 30 days in federal prison for each illegal found there.

Why it will never happen: My solutions sidestep the notion of fining the companies. Most of the bigger companies keep tons of cash in reserve for such legal issues and would not be deterred by fines. Or if they are fined out of existence (like a restaurant), another similar business would just come along and take its place, likely hiring the same batch of illegal immigrants. No, fines are not the solution. Take some of the seven-figure salaried elites and put them in general population for a few weeks, see if that changes their perspective. But we all know even if such legislation passed, it would be rotted with loopholes that would allow their lawyers to get exceptions in almost every case, making the law moot. Besides, these business owners are known for making contributions to candidates at election time, and money talks. Even if they don't donate to the candidate directly, they can still pump lots of money into both major political parties, pretty much ensuring that whoever gets elected will remember who got them there. If I sound cynical, it’s because I am. I believe that when big business and government get together, the one thing you can count on is the average American getting screwed. Unless you own their stock, most companies will not do anything to acquiesce to your demands. Don’t like Wal-Mart’s policies? Shop somewhere else, it’s a free country. Don’t like the fact that Candidate “A” gets his ass kissed by big business? Okay then, vote for Candidate “B”. But don’t fool yourself for a second into thinking that it makes a difference to Big Business. They have both bases covered.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Next topic? Comment on this blog with your suggestions.

The War on Drugs

First off, I do not do drugs myself. I just need to get that out of the way. Whenever there's someone advocating the legalization of drugs, I (and you, probably) tend to think that what they're really saying is "yes I do drugs, and I don't want to go to jail over it." I did smoke pot, but that's behind me now. Even still, I want to talk about the legalization of marijuana.

Yes, marijuana. Not cocaine, not meth, not crack. My problems with those drugs lie in the differences between them and marijuana: the high addiction rates, the tendency towards violent behavior in its users.

Let me get right to it: one of two things is true. Either marijuana is bad for you, harms your health, and causes long-term damage, or it doesn't. Studies have been done intending on proving one or the other true over the years.

If it's true, and marijuana is bad for you, harms your health, and causes long-term damage, then it needs to be legalized. Now wait - follow my logic. I'm not suggesting that a harmful substance be 100% legal and packages in Happy Meals. I'm saying, it needs to be inspected and regulated by the government. The fact that it's harmful shouldn't make it necessarily illegal. We have plenty of harmful, health-threatening things that are legal: alcohol, tobacco, guns, cars that pollute, etc. Alcohol and tobacco would be the two most closely paralleled with a legal marijuana: not sold to minors, not to be consumed in public or while driving (like alcohol), inspected and taxed, the whole magilla. My reasoning: people are going to smoke pot whether it's legal or not. We know this. All the drugs laws in the world won't stop it. But making a substance that's already potentially harmful illegal as well means that those who are going to do it anyway are then going to have to resort to going to some shady drug dealer. There's the chance of getting ripped off, having them not show at all (which only makes us seek out even shadier dealers), getting slipped a "mickey" (having the pot laced with something truly harmful, like PCP) etc. If it's legal, or partially legal like alcohol, tobacco etc., then we don't have to worry about any of that. Also, think about this: if pot were legal, pot dealers would be out of business. There isn't an anti-drug crusading soccer mom in America who wouldn't love that. What happened to the speakeasies of the 20's and 30's when they repealed Prohibition? They simply went away, and with it the bathtub gin. Problem solved.

And finally, if it's not bad for you, harms your health, and causes long-term damage, then it needs to be legalized. The laws and the campaigns to criminalize marijuana had very little to do with actual marijuana. The motivations behind the marijuana laws were always suspect. William Randolph Hearst sought to outlaw the plant because hemp paper was cheaper and easier to produce than wood paper. And as Hearst had major investments in the lumber industry, not to mention major pull with the politicians of his day, and major influence over the American public's thinking by way of his publishing empire, he manipulated and coerced until he was able to affect his will on a nation. But in all of his crusading, there was never once an ounce of proof that his "demon weed" really had any more potential to harm than alcohol. Similarly, as marijuana use was often associated with immigrants, marijuana laws were often particularly harsh in areas eager to cook up reasons to deport Mexicans. I think it's safe to say at this point that marijuana is enjoyed equally by all races and ethnicities. To use anti-pot laws as a way of targeting law enforcement towards one race or nationality would be a misguided effort.

Folks, we spend roughly $40 billion each year on pot laws. Enforcing them, housing the offenders, "anti-drug education" all costs our taxpayers money that would better be spent elsewhere. I'm sure our nation's health care system would benefit from such an infusion of funds, or perhaps our border patrols, or maybe the educational system...? Make your list of how we should more prudently spend $40 billion. Got any ideas?