Saturday, April 02, 2005
 
Senator Jim Talent's Solution to Crime: Federalize It

After all, he's federal legislator, so he cannot be seen by the public as Doing Something!!!! on local law enforcement problems. So he gathered up a news conference with local law enforcement and spake:
    Sen. Jim Talent, calling methamphetamine "the No. 1 law-enforcement problem facing Missouri," on Friday outlined a federal plan to increase funding for police and prosecutors and restrict sales of the over-the-counter cold pills used to make the powerful narcotic.

    Speaking at a news conference at the St. Louis County Police headquarters in Clayton, Talent called the Combat Meth Act the most comprehensive anti-meth legislation ever proposed.

    The bill - sponsored by Talent, R-Mo., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. - would direct $20 million to train police, hire prosecutors and fund programs that help children injured in drug labs. But the bill's focus is restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in scores of cold remedies.
It's a big problem facing Missouri, so Talent (a name, not necessarily a noun) wants the federal government to gather federal tax dollars, take its cut off the top, and then pass those federally-taken tax dollars to the states to spend as they see fit. Well, maybe pass the money back to the states, if the states jump through the new federal hoops correctly, probably including passing legislation to make it possible to charge someone with DUI for wearing aftershave. But I digress.

My senator co-sponsored this bill with Dianne Feinstein. That says it all.

They're doing something to make America better and stronger by setting up a vigorish that will fund administration of the tax money redistribution and by making more innocuous behavior (buying too much cough medicine) criminal. The America they're strengthening is the federal government. That America and the amalgamated citizens and states of America are often not the same thing.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:54 AM
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