streamdragon wrote:
Justice, health care, military.

3 things whose privatization should be 100% nixed. I know people like to crow about "smaller government!" and all that, but there are certain things that the government is supposed to provide for its people. Things which should not have profit associated with them. To me, those three things fit that bill.

You should not be above the law, no matter how much money you have or who you know.
No one in this great country should be forced to decide "Can I really afford to go to the doctor?". Not when we have some of the top hospitals in the world.
And no one should turn a profit from wars that cost human lives. Certainly no one should be in the business of making sure two sides want to kill each other.

 whembly wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:
Justice, health care, military.

3 things whose privatization should be 100% nixed. I know people like to crow about "smaller government!" and all that, but there are certain things that the government is supposed to provide for its people. Things which should not have profit associated with them. To me, those three things fit that bill.

You should not be above the law, no matter how much money you have or who you know.
No one in this great country should be forced to decide "Can I really afford to go to the doctor?". Not when we have some of the top hospitals in the world.
And no one should turn a profit from wars that cost human lives. Certainly no one should be in the business of making sure two sides want to kill each other.

Justice? Yup... right there with you.

Health Care? You know I've been on record for wanting the Canadian / German model.

Military? Wait, wut?

Eisenhower wrote:A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

 DarkLink wrote:
It's also pretty important to understand just how much new technology comes out of military research. It's far from just weapons, but most of modern computer hardware, gps systems, aircraft, medical technology, and countless other vital areas of life only exist because the key technologies were funded and researched by either the military itself, or some related organization.

 DarkLink wrote:
It's also pretty important to understand just how much new technology comes out of military research. It's far from just weapons, but most of modern computer hardware, gps systems, aircraft, medical technology, and countless other vital areas of life only exist because the key technologies were funded and researched by either the military itself, or some related organization.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

In some cases this happens over a $41 fine. I'm not going to argue that there should be no punishment for breaking the law, just that the punishment that is proscribed be reasonable and appropriate. If a person is unable to pay a fine further financial penalties are not effective. Perhaps diversionary sentences like community service are more appropriate (provided that we are actually concerned more about justice than profit).

 Bookwrack wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
My personal opinion is that there are certain public functions that the government should not contract out. And the justice system is one of them - justice cannot be blind if it is run as a commercial venture.

Yes, this. No one should be making money off someone going to jail.

Wasn't that what caused the horror show in PA where the judge was taking kickbacks for sending as many kids to detention centers as possbile, no matter what they'd _actually_ done?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Yes, this. No one should be making money off someone going to jail.

In fact, prisons should cost society a lot of money. That way the only people who end up in prison are the serious offenders who are so bad that society is willing to pay a ton of money to keep them locked up. There should never be a point where sending people to prison is a cheap and easy decision.

 Ouze wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
My personal opinion is that there are certain public functions that the government should not contract out. And the justice system is one of them - justice cannot be blind if it is run as a commercial venture.

Yes, this. No one should be making money off someone going to jail.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
If you can't afford to pay for your government without entrapping and fining your citizens, then you need to shrink your government, not make new fines and ways to strip money from the people.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Ouze wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
My personal opinion is that there are certain public functions that the government should not contract out. And the justice system is one of them - justice cannot be blind if it is run as a commercial venture.

Yes, this. No one should be making money off someone going to jail.

The criminal justice industrial complex (not being facetious) is vast, substantially larger than the military industrial complex. Why do you think we still have a war on drugs ?

It’s spring, and just as the appearance of shoots and buds makes you optimistic that winter is departing, so too are there signs around the country that make you optimistic that our leviathan state is, if not departing, at least starting to retreat.

Americans are becoming increasingly distrustful of government, and with good reason. Among those reasons is the abominable use of civil asset forfeiture laws to deprive people (largely but not exclusively poorer people) of property without due process of law. The slightest suspicion that a person might have engaged in a crime or allowed his or her property to be used in a crime is sufficient under these laws for police to seize the property.

Then it is up to the owner to fight through a legal minefield to get the property back by somehow proving innocence. Talk about a perversion of justice!

Thankfully, that perversion has gotten a lot of attention over the last few years, with quite a barrage of bad publicity last year. The Washington Post and New York Times both covered the egregious abuses of this tactic. The Institute for Justice trumpeted its victories over asset forfeiture in cases such as that of Dr. Alireza Yarahmadi, who had over $344,000 seized from his bank account merely because the government found his pattern of deposits suspicious.

And we also found out that law enforcement officials aren’t above forging documents if necessary to grease the rails for a big confiscation of cash, as occurred in Baltimore.


Civil asset forfeiture is one of those issues where Americans of all political persuasions grasp the truth that government has grown far too powerful and arrogant, with officials serving their own interests rather than those of the public. Some officials have badly overreached, using their power to engage in what Frederic Bastiat called “legal plunder” and thereby awakened a huge cross section of the populace to the fact that government is often more about helping itself than about serving the public interest.

The silver lining to civil asset forfeiture is that it helps people to understand that, as Albert Jay Nock argued in the 1930s, the state is our enemy. (His book Our Enemy, the State is as pertinent today as when he wrote it in 1935.)

In particular, state legislatures have responded to this abuse and New Mexico is on the verge of a complete turnabout. Both chambers of the state legislature have unanimously passed HB 560 sponsored by Representative Zachary Cook. Cook is a Republican, and the GOP controls the House 37 to 33, but the Senate is controlled by the Democrats, 24 to 17. Nevertheless, it passed without a single no vote and now awaits Governor Martinez’s signature.

The key provisions of the bill include that no citizen will suffer forfeiture prior to conviction of a criminal act, that proceeds from forfeitures in those cases will go into the state’s general fund and not into the coffers of the seizing agencies (thus removing the temptation for, as the Institute for Justice puts it “policing for profit,”) and that state and local law enforcement agencies will not be able to get around the state law by resorting to the federal “equitable sharing” law.

This is quite remarkable. Civil asset forfeiture has been a “growth industry” for many police departments around the country, allowing them to pad their budgets at the expense of hapless individuals. That is going to come to a screeching halt in New Mexico, and other states have similar bills pending.

Furthermore, civil asset forfeiture is under attack at the federal level. Senator Rand Paul and Representative Tim Walberg have reintroduced the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR, of course, since most bills these days have catchy acronyms) which, inter alia, raises the level of proof required for seizure, abolishes the “equitable sharing” program, and, as in the New Mexico legislation, eliminates the temptation to grab property for the benefit of the agency’s budget, by requiring that any proceeds go into the treasury.


The crucial reason why the opposition to civil asset forfeiture has spread so fast and across party and philosophical lines, I believe, is that the stories about the victims resonate with Americans. (This piece has seven stories about egregious abuse of civil asset forfeiture, for example.) We read them and think, “That could easily have happened to me.” And that suggests a means of whittling away at many other aspects of our governmental leviathan.

Government officials are constantly damaging people with needless SWAT raids, eminent domain seizures, regulatory impediments to simple business startups, and much more. Candidates who tell their stories and pledge to put an end to these abuses will find wide support.

 streamdragon wrote:


I am staunchly against the privatized military industrial complex. Companies whose revenue now largely lies in making sure their weapons of war are used as often as possible.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I must include, that mercenaries are a complete no-go on my list. We have a military, and that is what we should use. PMCs are just mercs under a more friendly name, making money off war.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
You clearly haven't dealt with many US PMCs, they take all sorts of contracts all over the world. Not just with the State Government. A sell sword is a sell sword. Just because they won't fight against their own country doesn't make them not mercenaries. Those PMCs tend not to have the best reputation either, there's a reason Blackwater had to be renamed a few times, then purchased by Academi.

Further, there are over a million untested rape kits in the United States. A large amount of our police intelligence, forensics and foot work is caught up in the drug war as opposed to even testing those kits, and investigating those crimes. It's not hyperbole when it's the result of the revenue generation system law enforcement has become. High profile murders? Cop killers? Sure. Otherwise, why prioritize what doesn't make money?