Free Talk Live

Americans armed themselves to the teeth and paid through the nose to have a smoke, according to a U.S. government report released on Wednesday. The U.S. federal government collected $20.6 billion in taxes on alcohol, tobacco, firearms and ammunition in fiscal year 2009, up 41 percent from the previous fiscal year, according to the annual report of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. --- Remember, kids... "Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.

The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Not content with driving cigarette sales out-of-state with high taxes, New York Michael Bloomberg has begun a "partnership" aimed at “reducing alcohol retail outlet density" and "reduc[ing] the exposure to alcohol products and bar advertising and promotion in retail." Hey, it worked in the 1920s, right?

A team of researchers at the University of California at San Francisco say sugar should be identified alongside alcohol and tobacco as a health danger, and governments should tax sweetened drinks and food as part of their efforts to combat it.

Best Quote: "We're not talking prohibition, we're not advocating a major imposition of the government into people's lives. We're talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient"

When the government people aren't drone-bombing wedding parties and throwing peaceful people in cages by the millions, the result of their coercion is still death and suffering. I wanted to look at some of the less obvious, but still lethal, ways government kills. This list is nowhere near complete, and I plan on updating it in the going forward, so if you have any information you’d like to add, feel free to send it to me.

I maintain that a government ban on bitcoin would be about as effective as alcohol prohibition was in the 1920s. Government prohibition doesn’t even do a good job of keeping drugs out of prisons. The demand for an item, in this case digital cash with user-defined levels of privacy, does not simply evaporate in the face of a jurisdictional ban. One could even make the case that it becomes stronger because an official recognition that Bitcoin is not only a “renegade” currency but a “so-effective-it-had-to-be-banned” currency would imbue the cryptographic money with larger than life qualities.

Alcohol consumption is banned in Qatar, except in hotels and for non Muslims who obtain special licenses.

To cut down on underage drinking, county officials will begin enforcement of a new ordinance next month that allows officers entry into residencies if they suspect minors are drinking on the premises.