{"id":2121,"date":"2005-04-02T16:54:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-02T16:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=2121"},"modified":"2017-10-06T10:01:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T15:01:40","slug":"2121","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/02\/2121\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator Jim Talent&#8217;s Solution to Crime: Federalize It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After all, he&#8217;s <i>federal<\/i> 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 <i>local law enforcement<\/i> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stltoday.com\/stltoday\/news\/stories.nsf\/stlouiscitycounty\/story\/0EEAABBF04E3201F86256FD7000F8D8D?OpenDocument\" target=\"_new\">spake<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Sen. Jim Talent, calling methamphetamine &#8220;the No. 1 law-enforcement problem facing Missouri,&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The bill &#8211; sponsored by Talent, R-Mo., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. &#8211; would direct $20 million to train police, hire prosecutors and fund programs that help children injured in drug labs. But the bill&#8217;s focus is restricting the sale of pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in scores of cold remedies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a big problem facing <i>Missouri<\/i>, 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, <i>if<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n<p>My senator co-sponsored this bill with Dianne Feinstein.  That says it all.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;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.  <\/p>\n<p>The America they&#8217;re strengthening is the federal government.  That America and <i>the amalgamated citizens and states of America<\/i> are often not the same thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After all, he&#8217;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 &#8220;the No. 1 law-enforcement problem facing Missouri,&#8221; on Friday outlined a federal plan to increase funding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16992,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121\/revisions\/16992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}