Laurence of Eurabia literally. He's be certified.

***** Who is Dan Simon?

Nonsense, they "follow the money" by asset forfeiture seizing the bills. That's one of the main ways cops profit from it.

It is more complex than that. If you follow the money in the long urn you find the money in places like for-profit-prisons and in the ordinary economy. Even the drug-lords need to eat.

@@MaskinJunior I was an inmate in a private prison during the CCA experiment in North Carolina. It was by far the best prison (as far as prisons go) and the one place where I felt most of the staff actually cared about helping inmates turn their lives around. Of course, one example does not necessarily mean all others are alike.

@@BobbyCoggins Yes, but the economic incentive to have people locked up in a country where policy can be bought with money is just appalling. It may be a reason America has the highest prison population in the world despite not having the largest population.

I had a hard time to believe when I understood that, but they do. American people for some completely inconceivable reason do want the gap between poor and the rich. Because most of them believe that they'll eventually be on the better side of this gap. Even all the statistics show that most of them will not "make it", at all, they still have a higher rate of hope about future compared to everyone else in the world.

Ramon- He is a very smart guy like Chomsky but he is off on so many of his analysis and observations, First major Inner cities are run from policies implemented by the great society. Since 1970's policies implemented created an exodus from almost all major cities but NY. Exodus of American workers you have no tax base. Right now Baltimore has one of the highest tax rates, so more will leave. One commission lays out that Blacks would be the dominant race in inner cities in 10 years and this was in 68 and you can look at two broad policies implemented off that commission. One is eradication through drugs, abortion and prison. All are most prevalent in Inner cities, and the other is doing away with the family unit through welfare. It's hard to make ends meet on two salaries let alone one and has been since the 90's so to keep in middle class people make it go. In inner cities with poor pay so low and having single parents the welfare and food stamps replace the man or woman. Look at the single household stats in inner cities. These are facts that are not the result of Republican or Libertarian policies. They are result of the great society policies. Drug dealers don't have to pay minimum wage and aren't but where is a black youth going to get a job or an after school job to make money cause his parents don't provide or steal. Minimum wage keeps youth without the necessary training in part time jobs that even when older have some basics in work even if they do not have an high school cert. Why hire a youth when there are adults or the wage is too high at minimum and regulation so cumbersome, and litigious to even afford the position. In 1930's unemployment of the black youth was equal to white youths but the disparage rapidly increases after the implementation of minimum pay. We currently have President that is hated and attacked by the same failed politicians and leaders for anything he does to address manufacturing or anything he does for that matter. The one thing they started attacking him right off the bat was that he campaigned to bring manufacturing back. Wise think thanks and many politicians stated it could not be done especially Hillary and Obama. Things are rapidly changing with vast investments and increases in manufacturing. Whether this can be done fully to the extent of his promises I hope so but there is still a lot to examine whether there will be increases in pay, and if that occurs will the products be out of reach of the pay gotten. But I like that problem better then turning 3/4 of your working population in service jobs and then creating a minimum income for every american without the necessary job. They are trying this in Alaska, where they have money thanks to Palin. It's been tried many other places and money ran out. In the end Simon is smart but it still comes down to taking the 1 percents income and paying for the 50 percent below as the solution that seems to come from his ideas. How's that. The Prison and incarceration is a whole other set of discussion.

tweezee Try living in a 3rd world country recovering from communism for a few months, it might open your eyes how much better living in the U.S. is.

The more I see american fiction, the more I see americans know the country is far from perfect.

Agree

I think the Wire shows that you have plenty of people who are intellectual and sensible but that they end up becoming the thing they had once fought against. It happens all the time in all sorts of institutions.

welcome to capitalism

Alecxace No common sense required: Only greed.

Ed Evans Compassion considered a disadvantage...

Walt jr Well that's a reasonable reply to an innocuous comment! Thanks, pal!

"Thirty up my ass gump"!!!! I agree any man capable of writing that immortal line is dope yo

+mbill hitchens is an asshole who has no fuckin clue

Peter Hitchens is not his brother Christopher...

It seems to me the middle class are sucked into that attitude because they don't have any other choice. They have a boss who tells them what to do, and if they take responsibility for things they get fired or sued by whoever is overly eager to abuse their responsibility. You wonder why so many people are turning to the internet for a career now?

Really the middle class are the ones that get screwed...very poor get help , rich big tax loopholes...collective barganing, etc - maybe not the same as the 80s its changed but..he hits it directly on the head...nail on the head and all that.

Mr. Simon also does not like Libertarians or any person who is subscribed to an ideology and thinks they can solve the world in a paragraph of principles.

Libertarianism is junk science and only exacerbates the evils of capitalism and is promoted by juvenile minds that cannot accept that capitalism and the dream are a fallacy

I agree with you. Many wouldn't call it a war as war ends. In this war, drugs won.

I agree, you can't call it a war. War ends. This drug war, drugs won.

reginaDexant No doubt.

It has been tested, in the sense that it was a pretty much free wheeling thing from the git, and it resulted in Robber Barons battling one another, one in particular playing middle man to cilimb to the top, and they were worried for a quick minute there about William Jennings Bryant, who pledged to cast them out to his last breath. They got their boy in there, and were a little concerned about Teddy Roosevelt, and decided the safest place to put him was in the Vice President seat, i.e. akin to the mushroom treatment as jobs go, leave you in the dark and occasionally shovel a little shit on you. Then their boy (the President) died in office. Guess what, Teddy becomes a Trust Buster. So in THAT sense. Now, in the sense of the PURE CAPITALISM that the Libertarians or what have you pine for, as the speaker says, IT DOESN'T EXIST. How could anyone logically think (as I have read others contend it would work out) that simply by removing the current bunch of scoundrels that, for instance, some cat (new, PURER in his Capitalism, citizens, with cash, even, if not other scoundrels with REAL power, pining in the wings to be the new Robber Barons)...how could anyone think, I was saying, that "It wouldn't be in the interest of the guy who buys tracts of land with trees on them to simply chop them all down for profit, he'd want to keep it properly looked after, rotated...or see the value in it as to tourism", or the like? Look..without guys like Mr. John Muir and other incredible men and women alike, who spent DECADES of their lives fighting to create awareness of what we had as to real treasure and Mr. Roosevelt and other certain Presidents, in the minority, WE WOULD NOT HAVE ONE STATE PARK. The BUSINESSMEN ASSHOLES were trying like MAD, with all their power, and succeeded in many a case, to our great loss, to make EVERY INCH OF THIS COUNTRY UP FOR GRABS AND SALE, i.e. RAPED. I used to see some of what Libertarians had to say as good and proper, but the fact is they just want to be the new kids on the block, remove "Government, which is evil", and believe as he says in juvenile fashion that what has NEVER happened WILL HAPPEN, and that it will double as a moral compass, the FREE MARKET. I call bullshit, and while I have been union for a decade of my work life, now in the past (I am a professional), and know FULL WELL the necessary evil aspect of that in modern times, i.e. union reps in smaller stations of an airline golfing and drinking with the free to fuck with you manager out in the weeds, per se (not some podunk airport, a MAJOR city, just one not the hub of that particular airline, as to flights, or A hub, of which there were a few) MANAGER, i.e. weakening things for you and breaking the rules set up for you, etc. In the bigger settings, it is not immune to corruption, skimming, back room dealing, etc., of course. HOWEVER...you have JOB PROTECTION, as it used to be a matter of course to use you like a dog and fire you on the 89th day, i.e. a day before you made the union, and were thus protected. That still goes on, but far less. And EVERY MOTHER'S SON and daughter owes a DEBT to the WOMEN of the Triangle Shirt Factory or Company, owned by two jewish brothers, with unsafe conditions (the rule, not the exception), who picketed, tried to get a better environment, and were beaten by paid prostitutes posing as workers, or other goons, and ultimately did not succeed in their lifetimes, because as they were LOCKED IN THEIR WAREHOUSE routinely, the either burned to death in a fire or had to LEAP TO THEIR DEATHS. THis so outraged the country, WOMEN, CHILDREN, basically, in there as well 14 year olds, etc...for GREEDY CAPITALISTS. Well, long story short, OTHER UNIONIZING EFFORTS BENEFITTED, and WE ALL OWE OUR 40 HOUR WORK WEEK, 8 HOUR DAY, 5 DAY WEEK and much more (including a MINIMUM WAGE) to these women. THis is what the speaker, interviewee, writer and former journalist with HEART and SOUL and BALLS, part of the 1% as he admits, is saying. Until we get mad enough, and risk things, this is the fate. PEACE

Because of the human factor. That's the thing. Just like communism, nice on paper, human factor twists it. Same for capitalism, people will always twist it to their own good.

Foksuh And in 99 fewer lines than I.

Foksuh Oh come on, are you going to tell me that socialism isn't easy to twist to one's own benefit? When greedy politicians have too much power you sell, corruption is inevitable.

KiloByte72 Eh? Why would you even ask something like that?

The corner premiered 2 years before the wire , and they used some of the same actors

Many points hit on target though.

Sounds to me like you are the one who should stay out of politics

Throwing out a social program that isn't working as intended is one solution. Fixing it is another. Given that he is probably not a libertarian, he probably wants to see if changes can be made to get things to work, with a possible exception for truly non-effective and potentially harmful efforts like the war on drugs.

evileaten My point is that putting financial gains (whether government or private) is crass in comparison to the human cost of the war on drugs. The much more important benefits of legalization are things like not imprisoning innocent people, not making people unemployable because of drug convictions, drastically lessening the violence associated with the illegal drug trade, or helping addicts rather than harming them. Maybe I was hyperbolic in saying that it's equally crass, especially if the taxes collected from drugs are directed to the good things government does, like to drug treatment programs or food stamps. But also consider that private money made from legal drugs isn't just funneled into massively rich corporations... a lot of it would go to small businesses, farmers, and individual employees in the retail sector.

laws was designed to destroy blacks and they done well.

ghuegel"But also consider that private money made from legal drugs isn't just funneled into massively rich corporations... a lot of it would go to small businesses, farmers, and individual employees in the retail sector." It would depend upon how the industry is regulated. If you take say, our so-called "Conservative" government of Canada's new approach to medical marijuana, they effectively took away the licences of farmers trying to make a little money to survive, with what little we make from selling commodity-crops, and handed it over to a bunch of industrialists with surplus capital.

Jimmy Dallas Yeah, the whole crony capitalism thing does a lot of harm to a lot of people and could definitely poison the legal drug market and ruin its economic benefits to the people. But I think my main point holds - the economics is far less important than the direct human costs of the war on drugs.

ghuegel You have to see that man made drugs are easier to control than natural ones and that this is the main reason why it is not legalized. If marajuana were legal, most of the drugs that you take for headaches and other common illnesses would take a nose dive in the market. It would put a lot of people out of work. The drug industry makes up a huge part of the U.S. economy. So you say that the human costs would be more than the economic if marajuana were made legal, I say prove it. I have not heard of too many cases of marajuana related deaths. I'm sure that their are, but you wanna compare that to prescription drugs and alcohol?

So you're saying nobody was murdering each other in Strabane during the height of the Troubles?

323guiltyspark The sectarian/civil unrest is a completely different subject. Nobody was killing their next door nieghbour over drugs or being "Dissed" or for "looking at them funny" in Strabane during the Troubles. Nobody was being kicked and beaten to death for jumping the queue in a chipshop In the South, during most of southern Ireland's short history of being an independent nation ( 1922 - 2014 ), murder was largely unheard of, even though unemployment was chronic and tens of thousands have been leaving Ireland every year since 1922 to seek work ...I suppose they could have stayed at home and murdered each other and then blamed, oh I don't know? ...the British

No you could not have said the same thing... not at all.

***** I disagree. You can't say that one community is better than another because its rampant violence is sectarian. Violence is violence. No cop or city official is going to breathe a sigh of relief when they find that a murder was committed for political reasons. By your logic, Gaza City is a model of civic uprightness. In the case of the Troubles, it was extremely difficult to run a drug trade when your city is under virtual martial law and the IRA will kneecap you if they find you dealing drugs. As far as I can recall, the IRA still does that in some cities. It's not a general Irish aversion to dealing or buying drugs.

I never said that "one community is better than the other"... David said that. And who do you think ran the drug trade in Ulster during ( and now ) The Troubles ?

What if you didn't have a car?

+H0urg1the left right paradigm. Its a lie meant to keep people from making meaningful changes in our country.

+H0urg1ass *I don't buy into the left right paradigm. Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr and above all Obama have been absolutely horrific for this country in so many ways.* By almost any rational measure those are all right wing administrations. America's measure of left and right is so fucked that of course you should doubt it. Problem is Americans for some reason never look past their own political landscape or even into their own history for perspective. Americans don't even know what left and right is. In America today a Republican like Eisenhower would be called a communist.

+beanie01121 Reagan years were spend crazy. End the end, Obama inherited the left over crap with interest, to work with.

+TheRatesMusic Their is a left and a right wing of libertarianism. The right wing being represented by people like Bob Bar are completely like what he described.

+Rick Not sure what I meant a year ago but on re-watching "if there's cash involved you can always depend on the libertarians and conservatives" That's just a lazy ad hominem. As lazy as if I said "where you find unions you find corruption". A libertarian may or may not be greedy just like a socialist may or may not be greedy. But "greed" is not a tenet of either ideology. It's not even a tenet of capitalism. I'm not from the US so I've never heard of Bob Bar.

That's anti-semetic.

Maybe thats because Marxism and Socialism are two completely seperate things? He can be a socialist without being a marxist.

oh come on, discredit a political idea as a bad idea all you like, but don't start thinking its some massive lefty conspiracy theory. Once people start doing that, you can't really take there political opinions seriously anymore

A man who has repeatedly stated that capitalism is the only credible engine for producing mass wealth. A man who believes that a skilled working class taht produced things for the mass consumption of others, who in turn made things for the other half of society to consume, created a dynamic, broadly dispersed U.S economy that was the envy of the entire world in the 30's-50's and should be again, sounds like a socialist, does he? Do the Monkeys also sound like the Beatles to you too?

In the following paragraph in that article he writes "I'm not a Marxist in the sense that I don't think Marxism has a very specific clinical answer to what ails us economically. I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician. He was good at figuring out what was wrong or what could be wrong with capitalism if it wasn't attended to and much less credible when it comes to how you might solve that." You were simply taking the small part of the article which fitted to your viewpoint, and ignoring the rest which went against it. You don't have to be a Marxist to admit that Marx was a sharp man. And your not a Marxist if you take the stance of David Simon, agreeing with his diagnosis, but not with the measures he recommends to resolve it. Personally, I think people, especially in America, are far to quick to discount anyone who mentions that Marx made any kind of sense as a Marxist, when that simply is not the case.

JDrakeify My viewpoint! What on earth are you talking about? The core of his thesis is that capitalism, since the 50's has lacked the responsible management it once had, which made vastly more Americans wealthy, optimistic and willing to participate in democratic processes. Also Marx is erroneous to this discussion. Mention his name and Americans immediately start resting on preconceived, lazy assumptions that nationalisation / collectivisation and a diet of cabbage is being proposed.

Must be quite nice to live unencumbered by a single worthwhile thought bouncing between your two anemic brain cells.

​@@theyruinedyoutubeagainGood counter argument