Steve_S

yes , but i make at the most 40k a year, theres no way when i bought my home in the bubble that i was going buy a 400k house. live like a king then have the income of a king. i planned for my payment to be 1500 a month and its half that now( i refinanced)i even pay extra on principal. a consumer must educate himself or herself..

Self education in not needed matters such as this, the government will protect you!

after they left. they knew we backed the mujahadeen. we fought chinese and russian migs in both nam and korea. we also went into chinese territory in both wars. we also did go into the iron wall and kill key leaders and the russians used terrorism to repay that favor. russia(if you notice terrorist use mainly russain weapons) controlled the islamic states quite well. and we had a few of then on our side.

the russians had gangs in w. germany that would attacked and kill soldiers or capture them. cat and mouse games.the ussr wouldnt go nuclear. i suggest you read up on korea and what stalin did and how he basically because of economics allowed the korean war to end.

I've read about it, i thought you were referring to when reagan was president, because they were there the entire time.

This is what happens to members of armies of occupation. Members of the localpopulation will resist occupation. This has nothing to do with frustrated fasters or indeed the religion of the resistors

I have to agree in part with what you say here. If it were my country I would be fighting the invaders as well, like the French resistance did, and they were mostly Catholic!

And for Jason to say....

we did and we allowe them vote and form their own constution. hardly oprressive. we allowed them to vote and they formed the islamic republic of afghanistan and they based it on sharia law. hmm

We allowed, we allowed? It is their own country man not yours! Your statement is condescending to say the very least!

The statement made many years ago, and the history of Afghanistan, from the British and the Khyber Pass,to the Russians, which says "Afghanistan is the burial ground of nations", is sadly, for those on both sides dying over rock and sand, is as true now as it was then no matter what the religion of the inhabitants.

i was there. so we shouldnt have rebuilt GERMANY, just killed hitler and left all dem nazis in power? the same with japan? dont rebuild the country we just came in basically leveled(then) and no we remove their leadership. we asked them whom do you want to rule you and they go to choose.

so we forced a leglemitate german leader from power and should have allowed nazi(ya them jew haters to come to power?) if so then why bother? that is what we did to japan. its war, yes. but well they attacked us and we remove the haters and allowed the locals who came to like us to vote. not arrogant. that is actually what we have done since ww2.

ya know reagean was warned we should have went into afghanistan and he told bush sr. if we did it then and picked who too lead, the taliban being pakistani(not afghani) wouldnt have came to power.

Going into afghanistan when reagan was president would've led to direct conflict with the soviet union, which would've likely lead to a total nuclear war. This was not a viable option for any reasonable human being.

Not shocking, to be expected from a hate filled heathen religion such as Islam. We (the United States) give this country money, by the way.

So you're telling everyone that the Taliban was a legitimate government in Afganistan? I don't think so. Certainly the non-Pastuns didn't think so. Anyway........

Legitimate insofar as that it had control of the country. Whether or not someone was "democratically elected" is irrelevant with regards to legitimacy.

Apples and oranges. The vichy government was a puppet government set up by the Nazis. The government in Afganistan is "democratically" elected. We just need to get out of there now, to heck with them. While we are at it, let's just nuke Pakistan on the way out instead of giving them billions of dollars. 90% of them think of us as their enemy anyway. None the less, no more American blood for muslim hate!

I'm not saying that the vichy government was not that, but the legitimate government of a country is generally the one in control before the army rolls in, not while its there. Saddam Hussein was "democratically elected" multiple times as well. This is absolutely an occupation, I do agree that we should be gone though, as soon as possible.

They've already died for that unachievable goal and will continue to do so until withdrawn. And if an unwanted foreign armytrting to control a local population isn't an occupying force, I don't know what is.

I agree. But we are not an occupying force. We are still there at the request of the, albeit corrupt, government. We need to get out now, though.

This is sort of a misnomer, the germans were in france at the request of the vichy government too, were they occupying it?

I can't believe the RNC was going to have him as a speaker at the convention! Romney needs to court the female vote and this is NOT the way to go. Maybe this is why Trump ended up not speaking? He is getting more and more buffoonish as he gets older....

http://shine.yahoo.c...-192600474.html

I think that it'd be best if the republicans just told the truth about things and didn't attempt to "go after" any "vote." The republicans blatant political pandering instead of truth telling is almost in line with that of the democrats at this point and not the least of the reasons that I no longer call myself a member (not the most of the reasons either, though, lol).

Why didn't the REAL lenders (the banks) say to Congress: "Whoa, if you do this, the borrowers won't be able to make the payment when the balloons become due?" Congress may or may not have known better. The banks definitely knew better, but they DID IT ANYWAY.

The banks also could have extended the mortages to allow homeowners already in the program the ability to keep paying a lower premium, while saying "No more!" to new buyers who couldn't afford it. But they instead chose to throw those people out of their homes instead. Then they begged for bailouts. Sorry, that simply doesn't wash.

On the first question, I simply don't know. My assumption is that they figured congress was going to do what it was going to do regardless of what the private sector says, as it always does.

The second question is far more murky. Banks can't always unilaterally adjust a mortgage. You have to remember, these mortgages are usually insured (remember AIG's collapse?) and there are lots of times contractual obligations with peripheral companies such as this that disallow them from unilaterally forgiving some of the debt. This is sort of irrelevant, honestly, though.

The big problem is that a lot of the worst subprime loans routinely get passed around from institution to institution once they are made (they're traded as commodities). There's probably an 80 to 90 percent chance that by the time any of these given subprime mortgages came up that they were owned by a different institution entirely. The institutions that generally buy mortgages such as this do so knowing full well that they may default and they do it with an eye towards the property itself in a lot of cases. So they're not even in the hands of the original lender and lots of times aren't even in the hands of banks that actively make direct loans to consumers, but are in the hands of venture capitalist corporations that are looking to cash in on the ones that folks can actually afford and to get the property of those who can't. These mortgages were being sold incredibly cheaply (sometimes pennies on the dollar) by 2008, because these companies had foresight.

The main mortgages that are still owned by the big banks (and were mostly owned by them in 2008), such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, etc., weren't the subprime adjustable rate mortgages, they were typical fixed rate mortgages on homes that were underwater but could still be paid for by the tenants in general (at that time). So in other words, most of the loans still owned by the banks now and when the real collapse happened were given to people who could afford them and who understood exactly what they were getting for the most part, but still probably paid too much. The real issue with these came when unemployment went 4 points past where anyone in the banking industry ever thought it would go and the people who COULD afford and who DID know what they were getting themselves into started defaulting due to losing their jobs. Add to this the fact that a lot of the loans on homes over 300 thousand dollars were to college educated people who retained their jobs but consciously chose to default when they did not have to because their home had lost half its value (this has happened almost an unmentionable amount in areas like Phoenix and Las Vegas). So in other words, a lot of the defaults you saw from 2009 into 2010 and early 2011 were conscious defaults by people who could still afford their mortgage payments and had at least a basic understanding of the system, but didn't want to pay 300 thousand dollars for a 150 thousand dollar home and decided that it was best just to default and take the credit hit.

Agree Katy Ann. The big industries did the same thing, and they got government bailouts, so this guy was simply saying, "You did it for them, now where's mine?"

But on that subject...If the banks led people believe that things would honestly work out, led them to believe that they weren't getting in over their heads, etc, do they bear no responsibility at all? I say this, because it seems to me that the banks should have never made the loans in the FIRST PLACE. In making those loans, knowing full well that the borrower couldn't afford them, can the bank not be said to have used deceptive practices? I think so. And I believe that their punishment should be that they should have to eat the bitter fruit of the tree they poisoned. They should have to give those people back their homes, agree to payments the homeowner can afford and stop foreclosure.

This is a fairly logical argument, but one that I believe doesn't provide all of the details. In 2008 when the crisis hit, the end of the big lending era of our history so to speak, there were 27 million sub-prime mortgages in the country, this was half of ALL mortgages. Of these, 19 million were on the books of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or other similar GSEs (government sponsored enterprises). These were part of the new deal, but have been publicly traded for about 40 years or so. The main difference is that, even though these are public companies, the government has a huge hand (pretty much the main hand) in their decision making and pretty much covers them for any bad decision that might be made. The financial services committees in congress (both the house and senate) have pretty much the main oversight over entities such as this (as far as I can tell anyway, the exact machinations of things such as this tend to be a little bit foggy at times, which, theoretically, gives those politicians involved in mistakes plausible deniability). Early in the 2000s, these congressional committees began to compel these companies and others like them (but mainly these) to give out adjustable rate sub-prime mortgages to people with low income so they could get into "affordable" housing. The brunt of the bad mortgages doled out in the country were from 2002 through 2007 and until late 2006 the very vast majority had been given out or guaranteed by these GSEs. At the end of 2006 it was getting to the point that the private banks were having serious trouble competing in the loan market (to their standards) in general due to the massive influx of cash from these government backed corporations, so they dove in head first. It wasn't until late 2006 and in most of 2007 that the private sector actually outloaned these entities in subprime mortgages and it still wasn't nearly enough to bridge the gap, as by the time the bubble burst they were still sitting at only roughly 28 percent of all subprimes, while roughly 72 percent were on the books of GSEs.

The main reason it went down exactly like it did was because the adjustment period (the cheap period) on these subprime loans generally runs from 3 to 5 years, so you've got the first really significant wave going out in 2002 and 2003 and 5 years later you get the first really significant wave of adjustments. I'm sure you've seen all of the stories of people with 300 thousand dollar homes paying 500-700 dollar a month mortgages for a few years and then getting a bank statement one month out of nowhere asking for a 1900-2500 dollar payment. When the first wave of those hit you saw immediate mass defaults by millions.

The real reason I get into this is that, while the private sector certainly does bear a huge burden in causing this, it's not the main culprit and likely would have never went down this path had the GSEs not led the way. This subprime bubble isn't something that was hatched in the boardrooms of major banks, it was hatched in the halls of congress. The banks had decades' worth of opportunity to do this very thing, but never did, for good reason, any bank that tried it knew that it would bankrupt it. In that little 5 or 6 year period though the government started guaranteeing bad loans that it would have never guaranteed before and, even worse, making bad loans directly through its proxies, the private sector was bound to eventually follow. You could say that they were the straw that broke the camel's back, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. This would've happened with or without them, it would've just been delayed by 2 to 3 years had they not jumped in when they did and probably would have been only about 3/4 to 1/2 as bad (if that's something you can even quantify).

I've studied this fairly intently on and off over the past few years, but I may be mistaken on some of my data or explanations, and if I am I have no problem being corrected, but this is my simple understanding of a very complex and arduous system (one that had gotten so mind bogglingly out of hand that it took a combined 1.5 trillion dollar cash infusion from the fed and treasury just to keep a sizable portion of it afloat during the worst years of the crisis, just to keep it AFLOAT).

Chancellor Angela Merkel's plans for a new treaty governing the European Union are becoming more concrete. SPIEGEL has learned that the German leader wants the EU to begin working on a draft this year, with the aim of providing Brussels with greater power to monitor budgets. But many countries are deeply opposed to the idea.

http://www.worthynew...-a-852292-html/

Translation - Germany is sick of nations that are vastly overextended financially hurting their economy, so they want to be able to control them more.

America is full of guns. Virtually everyone who wants a gun has one.

There are two things I have noticed.

1. All the school shootings, theater shootings etc are done by people who have guns.

2. Even with all the gun owners in the U.S. the shootings keep on happening. There goes the argument we need guns to protect ourselves.

Evidently, easy access to guns is not working. We need to find away to honor the constitution without endangering the general public every time a nut job loses it.

The constitution has been interpreted by the supreme court on multiple occasions to imply that easy access to guns is a right granted there in. There is no way to honor it by not providing that. The main question here isn't even about self defense, it's about criminal behavior. Banning guns will not stop criminals from getting guns just like banning drugs has not stopped drug addicts from getting drugs. Why on earth would someone who is willing to commit murder care about breaking a firearms possession law, a misdemeanor or a low end felony in some cases? It has never made logical sense to me to assume that a person who is willing to commit CAPITAL MURDER, which in a significant percentage of the country carries a sentence of death, is going to have any qualms about buying a gun on the black market with which to carry out said crime.

Exactly! Gun control disarms law-abiding people and leaves guns only in the hands of criminals. The playing field of survival would no longer be equal.

Certainly, which leaves us more reliant on the government for protection, which is why most socialist are anti-gun in my estimation.

http://www.dmv.org/m...een-drivers.php

Step 1: Get an Instruction Permit (Traffic Education Learner's Permit)

The State allows you to begin driving when you turn 14 1/2 years old. But to do so you must enroll in a State-approved traffic education program. Once you enroll, you will be issued a traffic education learner's license or permit that will allow you to operate a car only while under the supervision of an instructor. This permit expires when your driving classes end. Then you may get a learner’s license from a driving exam station just like teens 16 and older are permitted to do without taking driver′s ed.

The sad part about this to me is that due to one man's irresponsibility (standing in the road while wearing a camouflaged ghillie suit that is used by professional snipers to conceal themselves), not only did he lose his life, but now two young women are going to have to live with his death for the rest of their lives as well.

http://news.yahoo.co...-190426669.html

Never trusted peta.

I think it would be nice if every single "scientific" study released didn't have some obvious political agenda behind it.

How lovely.

Knowing this, how can anyone who is pro israel and a Christian be a member of the democrat party? Not saying anyone should be republican. Im sure not. But to remain a democrat with this?

Sadly enough, if a platform that includes the murder of unborn children isn't enough to dissuade some, it's highly doubtful that islamic prayers will.

It may be that we can't do much of anything at all even if we suspect someone is planning something. I mean, you can't arrest someone for something you think they will do.

This is the root. If you want a free society you can't arrest people who have done nothing illegal, but you suspect may be dangerous. If you start doing it then it's pretty much guaranteed that people who aren't dangerous at all will be victims of persecution and/or vendettas by governments from the local all of the way to the federal level.

I'm not sure how this isn't an infringement upon a constitutional right.

It is not banning anyone from owning as man guns as they want to own. It doesn't limit how much ammo a person can buy. It is simply a means of taking note of unusal purchases that don't reflect how normal gunowners usually buy their guns. The aurora shooter bought four semi automatics and 6,000 rounds of ammo in a very short period of time, about 3-4 weeks. If there were a way to track those purchases, it could have sent up a red flag to law enforcement to start asking him some questions and let him know that he is being watched. It might have uncovered what we now know about him before he had a chance to go on his rampage.

It's not under the second amendment necessarily, it's under the constitutionally implied right to privacy that the supreme court has reaffirmed on multiple occasions over the past century. In other words, keeping records such as this on people whom have committed no crime and are just exercising their rights as free citizens to purchase ammunition is an infringement on privacy. Federal procedures with regards to firearms purchases even mimic this. When a criminal background check is ran by a gun store prior to selling a firearm to a person, they can only keep the paperwork a finite period of time and the government is not allowed to track the purchases, just perform the background checks.

You could probably get something like this legalized on a state or local level (and this isn't even guaranteed), but I seriously doubt the ability of the federal government to do it and have it be upheld as constitutional.

Of course. Because when they demand your country, you will simply hand it over to them without a fight like good little Canadians. Just like they are in Great Britain and France, your parent countries.

There is no such a thing as "tolerance" with a Muslim, just as there is no such thing as "tolerance" with a Liberal. It is their way or dead eventually.

Respectfully, no and no. That's simply not true, unless you have personally talked to every Muslim and Liberal and found that all of them, and found that they all want that with zero exceptions.

So no, that's false.

You don't have to talk to them about what they personally believe. If they're a muslim, they believe the koran, which says to kill and/or subjugate Christians, Jews, nonbelievers, etc. If they claim the islamic faith there's nothing wrong with assuming that they believe what the faith teaches in no uncertain terms. This is pure logic.

I think what we need to do is hire some of those Israeli personnel that work at EL AL airport terminals. When you go through their terminals they ask you probing questions and because they all have advanced degrees in behavioral science, they pay careful attention to your response and they look you in the eye. That is how they weed out potential threats without embarrassing and invasive pat downs.

We need them at gun stores to ask questions to customers about why they are purchasing this weapon what they intend to do with it and why 7,000 pieces of ammunition are necessary to carry out their plans. We need gun shop personnel that are not afraid to meddle in the affairs of those intending to purchase guns and ask invasive questions.

I'm not sure how this isn't an infringement upon a constitutional right. Realistically, guns aren't going to be banned and even if you have a mandatory ammunition quantity cut off all folks would have to do is go buy smaller amounts at several different places. Pretty much every sporting goods store, every gun store, every wal mart, etc. sells ammunition. So if you'd want to limit that then you'd have to put folks' who bought ammunition's names into a federal database and ID them every time they did it in order to confirm their identity before adding that purchase, which raises all sorts of new constitutional issues. Quite frankly, gun shop personnel are running a business and selling more product equals making more money, anyway, so that line of reason doesn't really flow as a potential pragmatic application anyway.

And if we are going to do it, why stop there? Far more people yearly are killed by drunk drivers than are killed by people who buy 7000 rounds of ammo at a time. Why don't gas station attendants have to run background checks to ensure that the people they're selling gas too don't have a history of drunk driving? Should people have to sign a written statement every time they get their oil changed that they won't text while they're driving? Maybe we should go even farther with it. Should the cashier at McDonald's request medical records to ensure the person they're selling that milk shake doesn't have diabetes?

This is pretty simple to me, there is one body:

1Co 12:12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.

I think that with regards to the issue of unity in and of itself, it's going to be incredibly difficult to obtain between "catholics and Christians," due to the SIGNIFICANT doctrinal disagreements between the two.

In saying this I'm going to reference Ephesians 4:11-15.

Eph 4:11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;

Eph 4:12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:

Eph 4:13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

Eph 4:14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

Eph 4:15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:

If you look at 11 it tells us that people have been given gifts/appointed to offices. In 12-15 it tells us why those people were given those gifts/appointed to those offices. I could go line by line and delineate my opinion on what these mean, but I don't think that it's necessary as these are straight forward scriptures.

The reason I think to these scriptures when unity between the "catholics and Christians" is mentioned is that the doctrines between the two are so incredibly different that I believe it's Biblically impossible that the leaders from both sides are being spirit led simultaneously, so the evangelists, pastors, and teachers (4:11) from one of the two sides are incredibly wrong, I'd go so far as to say that it's apostate levels of errancy by one or the other. 4:12-15 tells us what the fruits of having the proper people in the proper positions within the body of Christ are. One can only assume that these fruits are incredibly difficult to impossible to achieve under apostate or near apostate teaching due to the incredible amount of discord that is going to be sewn between the two factions due to one being heretical and one being correct. So yes, I think that we should pray that the body of Christ is unified (this is a no brainer to me). However, I don't know that Biblical unity can be achieved between the "catholics and the Christians" due to the irreconcilable doctrinal gulf that exists between them.

As a disclaimer here I've tried to keep this post non-venomous, but to be up front I'm militantly opposed to a large portion of extra-Biblical catholic Dogma, though I know this thread is not here to focus on that, I'd feel deceitful if I didn't at least disclose that I was writing from that perspective.

I believe the point of that verse is to say that time has no meaning to God, as in, He was and always is, and can move through time at His will, with no restraints.

I think that a furtherance of this would be to say that God created everything.

Col 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

Col 1:17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Time is part of everything, so God created time. God is not bound by His creation so God is not bound by time.

In this context it's incredibly difficult for me to take 2 Peter 3:8 literally and it's my opinion that it's likely an elucidation to God's complete Sovereignty over His creation, specifically with regards to the passage of time, in a manner that's easier for humans to digest.

The customer who asked the employee of Chick-Fil-A to explain her company's position was neither disrespectful, nor showed any malice in intent , nor was violent...

And in all his questions was fully within his rights as a US Citizen under the 1st Amendment to question Chick-Fil-A's openly unconstitutional stance which discriminates against other-than heterosexuals.

Let's take this to the Supreme Court!

Even Roberts will rule against Chick-Fil-A!

And if the employees of Chick-Fil-A carried guns...so too would even Antonin Scalia rule they had limits!

Sheesh!

You do realize that all chick-fil-a is doing is exercising its own constitutional right to contribute to non-profit organizations that they agree with, right? That's also protected under the first amendment. It's not an unconstitutional stance to defend marriage as between only a man and woman because homosexual marriage isn't a guaranteed right in the constitution, if it were this conversation would not be taking place because this issue would've been settled long ago.

How disgusting! No church should ever refuse to welcome or marry ANY believers! I think this is probably illegal too; I hope they sue. This 'pastor' is merely a puppet and he should be fired. No church I've ever heard of has turned away ANYONE. That's kind of the whole point of being a church. God sees this stuff and He will not be happy with it.

Most discrimination laws will have some sort of religious exemption (either implied or otherwise) so it's very unlikely that it's illegal, but possible I suppose. Him being a puppet will make it more likely that he will keep his job, as opposed to lose it. Having said that, this is heinous and someone at that church needs to take a stand, even if it's not going to be a the preacher or the deacons (or whomever has their hands on the strings).

I never said they would be responsible, and of course we should try to stop human trafficking, but I believe that the loss of the illicit drug trade would greatly weaken the cartels ability to traffic humans due to their lack of funds and the lack of cohesion that the lack of funds would cause. And again, you are proving my point "you never saw an addict who..." if the war on drugs were working you'd have probably not seen enough addicts to determine their patterns. My point is simply that if it's not working we should stop it.

few and far between. lets say many of potheads i speak of are in my family. bro was and my wife has alot. her brother smokes that so much that well he could have likely afforded a house and not be in a trailer and works and races. he also has NO health care. yet smokes enough to pay for it all easily.

sorry no sell my uncle also smoked and says pot and nicotine have contributed to his copd.

And it being illegal has stopped them from smoking it.......

neither does regualion of any business stop them from doing wrong. why have laws then if people are going to just break them. the 14th amendment didnt stop slavery at all. it just went into the forms we have today. illegal immigration and also child sex slaverery. its nothing new just the media doesnt do much reporting on it. yet its larger then we think.

do hate crimes make people love each other? No, does penal codes against rape and murder stop them. NO.

Right, and those are all crimes against other people. We're talking about personal use here. You imprison a murderer to remove him from society and protect society at large. You imprison a drug user to protect himself from something he could be doing to himself perfectly legally with exorbitant alcohol use. It's an illogical position, you can't successfully legislate personal behavior. If you could the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels wouldn't be pulling in 20+ BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. Black markets are always built to fill a vacuum and are almost impossible to stop, because if there's a buyer you can guarantee there will be a market, for anything. The situation we have here is that there are tens of millions of buyers and a thriving black market that has basically made so much money that it can go gun for gun with the Mexican government. It only took the government 13 years to realize that prohibition of alcohol was an utter and complete failure because doing so criminalized half the population and gave an incredible amount of power to organized crime here. We are seeing the exact same thing right now, both in this country and out of it and 40 thousand Mexican citizens have paid for it with their lives over the past 5 years. Northern Mexico is more dangerous to live in than Afghanistan right now, and Afghanistan is a legitimate war zone. The border regions of Mexico have the highest concentrated murder rate on the planet, some of the highest murder rates you will ever see that don't involve actual government sanctioned genocide. Prohibition of alcohol did not work and prohibition of drugs is not working.

Look at the Bureau of Justice's own statistics. The "War on Drugs" started in earnest under Nixon in 1971. According to the US Department of Justice in 1970 there were 322,000 adults arrested on drug charges in 1970, the year before the war on drugs started. The next year it went up to 383,000. By 1980 it was up to 471,000. So over that first 9 years the number of arrests increased by about 25 percent. By 1990 the number of adults arrested more than doubled from the 1980 number, up to over one million. By 2000 this number was at nearly 1.4 million. In 2007, the final year they have statistics for it was over 1.6 million.

During this same time period, from 1970 to 2007, the population increased by about 30 or so percent, from 203 million to roughly 300 million, this according to the US census bureau (please note that I'm postulating the 300 million number in 2007 due to it being between censuses and would be willing to accept an exactly accurate number if one is provided).

So, the population increases by about 30 percent from 1970 to 2007 and the number of people arrested for drug related crime increases by over 400 percent. If the war on drugs were working and it was actually getting people off drugs and keeping them off drugs one would assume that there'd have been a drastic increase in the number of arrests in the first 5 to 10 years as the government ramped up their enforcement policy and then a slow year by year decline in the number of arrests made after that point due to the lack of available drugs for purchase and the many government programs that have been implemented that are designed to help people kick their addiction. That's not what has happened at all. We have seen the number of arrests increase dramatically as enforcement was added and then after nearly 30 years finally hit a level in which the number of arrests made remained fairly stable in direct proportion to the united states population. This is not something "working." If it were working there'd be fewer drugs available, fewer people wanting to do them, fewer people doing them, and fewer people being arrested for doing them.

Meanwhile, we've spent over a trillion dollars on this so far and there has been no tangible evidence of it stopping anybody who wants to do drugs from doing drugs. I wish nobody would do drugs in an illicit manner, but it simply cannot be stopped in a society such as this and the outcome of trying to stop it is, in my opinion, far worse than the outcome of the government getting out of the lives' of its populace and allowing them to make their own bad decisions as long as these decisions don't hurt anyone else.