Author, book doctor, raker of muck

David Henry Sterry

Tag: economic meltdown

How to Fix the Economic Meltdown & Stop Terrorism: Legalize Heroin and Whores

“Prohibition will work great injury… for it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

If you don’t know who said that, I promise I’ll tell you later.

Selling sex for money is a multi-billion-dollar business. Apparently tens of millions of people want sex so bad they pay through the nose for it. And in that shadowy, shady, underworld, there are many different kinds of economic transactions. At one extreme are coercion, victimization, and exploitation. At the other are consent, empowerment and economic independence. I personally know many people from either extreme of this Bell curve. But both these exchanges are called prostitution. To say these exchanges are the same things is like saying that working at Bloomingdale’s and being forced against your will to work 20 hours a day in a sweatshop are the same thing.

Many people claim that if you make sex for money legal, it will be easier for predators who exploit adults and children alike. Of course, just the opposite is true. We know what happens during Prohibition. Gangsters control the means of production. Al Capone, quintessential American criminal/pop icon, was created by Prohibition. Just as the American Pimp has become the new superstar gangsta, and slithered his way into our culture. Pimp my Ride. Pimp my Crib. Pimp my Wife. It is much easier for predators to hide in an illegal industry. And when you make criminals out of industrial sex technicians, which is what I call people who work of their own free will in the sex business, they have no recourse when things go bad. And things go bad alot in this business. So people all over the Bell curve get raped, robbed, and beaten. Not only by clients. By law enforcement. When one of the recent whores serial killers was caught, he said he killed whores because it was easy, and he knew no one would miss them.

If you take all the money spent on the war on whores, on true industrial sex technicians, and focused it on actually tracking down traffickers and predators, you could take the bastards down. You can find these people if you want to. But there are great economic forces at work in America, and throughout the world, that want desperately to keep things the way they are. Because there’s so much money involved.

But the bottom line, economically, is that there is a big beautiful sexy cash cow to be milked here. With a reasonable rate of taxation, people who choose to work in the business could make a very good living wage, get health insurance, and even have a retirement plan, if that’s what they choose. It’s all about choice. Everyone should have the choice to do what they like as long as they pay their bills and don’t hurt anyone. Isn’t that the whole idea behind America? And with some of that money, we could help people who want to leave the sex business get the skills necessary to transition. Apply the rest of this cash flow to paying teachers a decent wage, making sure no one goes hungry or homeless. Arts and sports in the schools. Music classes for every kid in America! What a revolutionary idea.

As for heroin, since you’re a basketball player, I’ll put it in your vernacular. It’s a slam dunk. In <em>USA Today</em> recently, right on the front page, in very small words, it said that the Taliban is making its money from buying and selling heroin. If you make it legal, like tobacco and alcohol, and package it nicely, you take away the Taliban’s cash flow. And again, you get to control this huge beautiful dopey goose that keeps laying big golden eggs. And why stop at heroin? Consider the hundreds of millions generated by the wacky weed industry. The trade in opium has been brisk for centuries. Hashish. Ecstasy. Speed. ‘Shrooms. Cocaine. Acid. Imagine the fun Madison Avenue would have. Orange Sunshine, the LSD with Vitamin C. Willy Weed, the only dope Willie Nelson smokes. Harry Potter’s Magic Mushrooms.

It’s not drugs that are the problem. Humans have used hallucinogens, intoxicants and in inebriates for as long as anyone cares to remember. Even when they’ve imbibed so much they can’t actually remember. It’s people’s behavior that’s the problem. Every time I’ve been in a room with people shooting up, they just lay there with silly grins on their faces, and their heads nod up and down like bobble head dolls. It’s when they run out of the drugs that the problems begin. If heroin was legal, like cigarettes and alcohol, addicts wouldn’t need to rob and pillage. Cigarettes and alcohol kill a lot more people than marijuana and heroin. But we say, go ahead, smoke and drink all you want, booze it up until you’re dead, if that’s your pleasure. We make money from taxing these products. We control the means of production and distribution. Again, isn’t that what America is all about? That we can do what we want as long as we mind your own p’s and q’s?

Take the money we spend on the war on drugs, and actually go after the Taliban, as well as gangsters in South America and Asia (many of whom are financed by the drug trade) after their money source has been cut off. Instead of declaring war under false pretense and trying to set up our own militia government so we can make millions for military contractors and their cronies, while ensuring that we are more hated every day.

There it is. Economic turbo-boost, predators and traffickers hunted down, Taliban and international gangsters crippled. All with the blessing of Abraham Lincoln. That’s who gave that great shout out about prohibition.

Poor People Happier Than Rich People for the First Time in History

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One unexpected benefit of the worst economic depression in a century is that for the first time in history, poor people are happier than rich people. Experts claim this is because the lifestyle of poor people has barely changed with the economic downturn. They were below the poverty before, and they’re below the poverty level now. But apparently, according to experts, many poor people are taking great comfort and the joy in the misery of the rich. In addition, they feel that President Obama actually wants to help them, a notable change from the last eight years in America.

Many rich people, on the other hand, have lost boats, airplanes, luxury automobiles, jet skis, two or three homes, and large portions of their wealth. Certainly many have been the victim of their own greed, but many have also been swindled, deceived and lied to. Just as poor people have been throughout the ages. And many rich people have never been poor, so they have no idea just how hard it is to be an American without money. Whereas most poor people, having been poor most of their lives, are very used to it.

Gerald (not his real name) is a doctor. He is in his mid-50s. He had a thriving practice. He lived in a beautiful home. He had enough money saved to live comfortably for the rest of his life. Or so he thought. Unfortunately for Gerald, he was friends with a very well thought of financial genius named Bernard Madoff. All his friends also knew Bernard Madoff. And they all trusted him to make them more money. In fact Gerald trusted him so much that he went out and mortgaged his house so he could give Madoff all his money. And now it’s all gone. His house, his retirement, all his money.

“It’s very depressing,” said Gerald, “I worked so hard for so long to build my practice. So I could provide for my family, so I could retire and travel. And now it’s all gone. Decades of hard work flushed down the toilet. I’m tired. I can’t sleep. And I’m angry. Why is this villain, this crook, this Madoff, still living high on the hog, in his palace? He should be in jail. Getting shtupped by big angry criminals. I guess though, I’ve always known, in the end I have no one to blame but myself. And that makes me depressed.”

Carla Crandall (her real name) is homeless. She’s in her early 30s. She is a very talented writer who will be published for the first time this summer. She suffers from mental illness, and she is a recovering drug addict. She lives on a fixed income from Social Security because she is disabled. She’s been depressed for years. Her income hasn’t changed at all. She has no retirement. She has no home. She has no money to invest. She didn’t lose one single penny during this catastrophic crash.

“Actually,” said Carla, “I’m really excited that my work is finally going to be published. It’s always been my dream to be a published author. I’m engaged to be married. But it’s so hard to live in the ghetto, drugs shoved down your throat, screaming lunatics and junkies, you just know at any minute someone can stick a knife right between your ribs. It just wears you down. If Obama would only give me, like, maybe ten grand, I could get out of the ghetto, get a computer, get on the Internet. Doesn’t seem like that much out of $800 billion, does it? But I have noticed you can get pants cheaper on the streets recently, so that’s good.”

Yes, it seems that everyone is suffering. But for once, the poor, the downtrodden, the huddled masses, the Carla Crandalls of the world, are suffering a little less than the rich people.

Link to the original post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-henry-sterry/poor-people-happier-than_b_164772.html

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Economic Meltdown & Chippendales

1208LD1 Chippendales21500 points the market plummeted last week. This was preceded by months of money drunk Wall Streeters feeding like little piggies at the trough of dirty money. For me it’s déjà vu all over again. Black Monday, October 19, 1987, the market crashed 508 points, while I was the master of ceremonies at Chippendales, the world’s greatest male stripping empire. And just as one-bedroom fixer-uppers were recently being valued at half a million dollars, citizens were taking out loans with balloon payments so full of hot air they exploded, and the new Bush was turning Wall Street into a Vegas casino; so Chippendales, with its steroid-bloated, mountain-peak-pecced excess was business as usual in a culture where the Emperor was a male exotic dancer with no clothes on. In both cases, America was writing checks with its mouth that its ass couldn’t cash and it crashed like an addled addict after a lost weekend.

In fact, that’s what happened to me. Started when the Snowman, a Chippendales studmuffin, began feeding me coke so I’d give him better intros. Soon I was shoving massive amounts of blow up my nose to feed the demon beast inside that could never be satisfied, til one night I did so much coke I died. Luckily, I came back to life. I quit coke that night. Dedicated myself to working hard, finding love, and conquering my demon beasts old-school style, by unraveling my knots slowly and painfully. Took me decades of busting my hump and years of hypnotherapy, but today I’m drug-free, with a job I love, a wife who loves me in all my idiocy, an apple-of-my-eye baby girl, and a
glorious home with a spectacular garden that feeds me every day.

I’m hoping America will have just as happy an ending. Dump the gas-guzzling SUVs, play well with others, stop the billion dollar a day war, and prosper the old-school way: work hard and earn it. Well, that’s my two cents worth, and with inflation I owe you approximately one trillion dollars.

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