No more tragedies. It’s time to amend the constitution.

Yes, hundreds of millions of people use them legally. A ban would infringe on their rights, but as a nation, we must make choices.

Yes, anything we do would largely be symbolic. Nevertheless, we need to do something, whether or not it will actually have a meaningful impact. Unintended consequences be damned. It is not enough just to mourn.

And yes, there will likely be unintended consequences. We will almost certainly create a broad new class of lawbreakers.  Organized crime will grow to serve this new market. Government will grow, because from no-knock raids to prison beds, the law enforcement state will need to metastasize to address this new prohibition.

Still, we can’t sit idly by while 17,000 innocent victims die each year. 

So yes, it is time to amend the constitution to repeal the 21^st amendment, and thus forbid the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Wait – you thought I was talking about the 2^nd amendment? About gun control?

Sure, 8,582 Americans were murdered in 2011 with firearms[1], but drunk drivers alone cause more than 17,000 deaths annually. That’s 310 funerals every week, one death every 30 minutes[2]. Sure, in 2009, 18,735 Americans used a firearm to commit suicide[3], but the CDC estimates that alcohol abuse kills some 75,000 Americans each year, shortening their lives by an average of 30 years[4].

So, if we are really serious about trying to prevent tragedies, let’s stop piddling around. It’s far more important to ban booze than it is to ban guns.

But wait, you say. We’re not talking about an outright ban, just sensible regulation. Let those ignorant rednecks who have the misfortune to live west of the Hudson River and south of the Holland Tunnel keep their guns. We just want ‘em to get permits and undergo background checks and have their home addresses posted on some newspaper’s website. We just want to limit what their guns can look like. We need laws like Connecticut’s existing assault weapons ban, virtually indistinguishable from the lapsed federal assault weapons ban, to protect us.

Nope, been there, done that. It’s hard to imagine a more regulated product than alcoholic beverages. Since the US Constitution was amended in 1933, just about every possible form of regulation has been tried. And still we tolerate 75,000 deaths each year…there ought to be a law.

Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic Magazine is one of the most insightful journalists of our time, but sometimes even he gets the details wrong. In his article The Strangest Conservative Priority: Prepping a ‘2nd Amendment Solution’,” he states that “the right to bear arms is the costliest liberty we have, in terms of innocent lives lost as an unintended byproduct.[5]” Certainly the statistics argue that the right to bear arms is not even close - the 21^st amendment has a far more pernicious impact on innocent lives than the 2^nd ever could. Given the Bush and Obama administrations’ gutting of the “Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth amendments” under the guise of the war on terror, we should be hesitant to give up any liberties, but if we decide to trade away liberty for security, then the 21^st Amendment is absolutely the logical place to start.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) is raising some eyebrows with a comment he made about the U.S. territory of Guam during a House Armed Services Committee hearing last Thursday.

In a discussion regarding a planned military buildup on the Pacific island, Johnson expressed some concerns about the plans to Adm. Robert Willard, head of the U.S. Pacific fleet.

“My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize,” Johnson said. Willard paused and replied, “We don’t anticipate that.”

Online pundits have wasted no time lampooning the congressman for his remarks.

“Presumably, when you’re the head guy of a major fleet for a big-time navy, you’ve got plenty of other ways of filling your time other than reassuring congressmen on whether miscellaneous land masses are likely to tip over and sink,” Mark Steynwrote at the National Review Online. “But it’s business as usual in Congress.”

The blog Left Coast Rebel said, “Call it a new low, a new ‘tipping point’ - even in the halls of Congress, if you will.”

ATHENS, Ga. — Georgia Rep. Paul Broun said in videotaped remarks that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of hell” meant to convince people that they do not need a savior.

The Republican lawmaker made those comments during a speech Sept. 27 at a sportsman’s banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell. Broun, a medical doctor, is running for re-election in November unopposed by Democrats.

“God’s word is true,” Broun said, according to a video posted on the church’s website. “I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

The quote comes at 34:50 in the video above, in which Broun first recounts his exploits as a big-game trophy hunter. Later, he witnesses for Christ and tells his own personal story of finding salvation at a moment of crisis. Personally, I think a more telling moment comes a little earlier, when he tells the audience that pastors of other, more mainstream Christian denominations “are going to send their people to hell” because in his opinion, they do not stress a personal relationship with their savior.

Broun, who is a physician by training, sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Let’s be clear - if you think that Barack Obama is the best candidate, you should absolutely vote for four more years of hope and change. If you find Mitt Romney’s platform of “At least I’m not Obama” compelling, then voting for the Republican candidate is an easy choice.

But what if you are like most of the electorate? Maybe you’re not particularly impressed with either candidate. Maybe you are struggling to see the meaningful differences between them. Is it your civic duty to choose between the “lesser of two evils?” If you vote for a third party candidate instead, are you “wasting your vote?”

While both parties will assure you that it is a binary choice between good and evil, between right and wrong, and between everlasting salvation and eternal damnation, their claims are certainly self serving and probably nonsensical. A good  politician knows he can’t appeal to everyone. The more voters he can take for granted, the more attention he can lavish on those who remain undecided.  if you can convince the electorate that they have only two choices, you can take more voters for granted.

So here is our guide to making the most of your right to vote.   

1. No matter where you live, your individual vote doesn’t really count. Your right to vote counts a great deal - it is the bedrock the country is founded on, but your actual vote for a presidential candidate? Not so much. Even in 2004, a single vote wouldn’t have made a difference in at least 49 out of 50 states. Even in the 50th state, the election turned more on the electorate’s inability to follow simple instructions in the voting booth than on any individual’s actual vote. 

2. Not casting a vote counts only slightly less than actually voting. Every presidential election, approximately 40% of the population doesn’t vote. By not voting, the 40% are saying either (1) they can’t justify getting their lazy asses off the couch and to the polls or (2) they are absolutely willing to get their lazy asses off the couch but they don’t see enough difference between one candidate and the other to justify the effort. Politicians write off the first group, but live in fear of pissing off the second group so much that they might actually follow through on their threat. 

3. If you do vote, your vote only has a chance of counting if you live in one of roughly 15 states.  Turn on the television. If every second commercial isn’t devoted to the presidential race, you live in one of the roughly 35 states where your vote for Obama or Romney won’t make a difference. If you live in Maryland, Obama will get every one of your state’s electoral votes whether you vote Republican or Democrat. If you live in Arizona, Romney is a shoe-in irrespective of who you vote for or whether you even vote at all.

4. If you do live in a swing state, your vote could theoretically count. You need to ask yourself how much you dislike the major party candidates and how much difference you see between the two. If you really don’t like either candidate, there is a significant benefit to voting for a third party who is more in synch with your beliefs. For example, if you think that the guy behind Obamacare is pretty similar to the guy behind Romneycare, than your vote for a third party has very little opportunity cost. In the unlikely event that the absence of your vote means the wrong guy wins, big deal. Your ultimate decision is based on comparing that benefit to that opportunity cost. 

The difference in delinquency rates between the low-downpayment loans and the high-downpayment loans, here, ranges from 2.94 percentage points for the 2008 vintage, to 7.15 percentage points in 2006. Clearly much bigger differences than are implied in the white paper’s table. And if you look at the percentage increase in delinquency, it’s enormous: all of the delinquency rates more than double, with the lowest increase being 101% in 2006 and the highest being an amazing 502% in 2002

http://seekingalpha.com/article/276531-how-the-mortgage-industry-lies-with-statistics 

Median Family would have to save for 14 years to have 20% downpayment for median house. ($172,500)

http://www.responsiblelending.org/mortgage-lending/policy-legislation/regulators/low-downpayment-factsheet-final.pdf

Forty years ago, the United States locked up fewer than 200 of every 100,000 Americans. Then President Nixon declared war on drugs. Now we lock up more of our people than any other country—more even than the authoritarian regimes in Russia and China

John Stossel

http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/29/americas-war-on-drugs-keeps-it-from-bein

 At year-end 2009 it was 743 adults incarcerated per 100,000 population.^{[4][7][8][9][10]}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States 

Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments … Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs.

Ludwig von Mises

http://www.quoty.org/quote/5889

The National Institutes of Health found that 36 million Americans have tried crack. But only 12 percent have used it in the previous year, and fewer than 6 percent have used it in the previous month. If crack is so addictive, how did 88 percent of the users quit?

John Stossel

http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/29/americas-war-on-drugs-keeps-it-from-bein  

Most people find economics inscrutable and boring. In reality, it’s the economists who are inscrutable; the subject matter is merely boring. Sometimes hugely useful, but boring.

So let’s talk about boring stuff - we’ll start with the difference between “cheap money” and “easy money.”

“Cheap money” is when you can pay low interest rates on the money you borrow. “Easy money” is when there are few obstacles to actually being able to borrow it. Obstacles are things such as underwriting standards and requirements for things like equity and credit ratings and collateral.

So let’s say you want to buy a house. If you can get a mortgage with no money down and spotty credit and minimal documentation of your income, that would qualify as “easy money. “

If you can get a low rate, that would qualify as “cheap money.”

For 4-5 decades ending in 2008, interest rates went up and down, but (at least in the context of the housing markets) money got steadily easier. 20% down payments became 0% down payments. Credit standards were eased to support an “ownership society.” Income became more and more loosely defined and less and less documented. Not surprisingly, housing markets soared, and when they did, they created paper equity that further fueled the growth.

In 2008, this trend reversed. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into receivership. Pundits found that people without equity in their homes were more likely to mail in the keys and walk away. Analysts discovered that people with low credit ratings often weren’t good credit risks. Journalists discovered that people sometimes lied about their income. Banks rediscovered underwriting standards. Easy money became a fond memory.

Policymakers responded to these unpleasant epiphanies by blaming the banks and Wall Street and muttering darkly about predatory lending, but it was difficult to argue that money should be easier.

The Federal Reserve responded to the sudden lack of easy money by providing gobs of cheap money. This meant that if you could come up with the 20% downpayment and could thoroughly document your solid income and had a good credit score, you could get a really cheap mortgage. Unfortunately, if you were one of the other 80% of the population, you just didn’t qualify. Since a high percentage of homeowners were sitting on negative equity in their current homes, the percentage of have-nots was even higher than normal.

When cheap money didn’t solve the problem caused by lack of easy money, the Fed made it still cheaper. For all the same reasons, it still had no effect, and the zero bound on interest rates finally forced the Fed to stop trying to help.

So what have we learned?

1. Cheap money is no substitute for easy money.

2. When governments mess with markets, by doing things like promoting homeownership, they risk unintended consequences. 

3. The credit cycle is alive and well, and unable to be repealed by government action or wishful thinking.

4. Greenspan’s Fed had a lot to do with “cheap money” but very little to do with “easy money.”

4. Markets are self-regulating in that they do correct. Unfortunately if they are irrationally exuberant for long enough, the correction can be extremely painful and take a long time to resolve. 

to be updated extensively with some useful statistics and links and to better make the case… this is stream of consciousness for now..