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Ignorance Vs. Stupidity

Ignorance Versus Stupidity
By Walter E. Williams | November 8, 2017 12:32 AM EST
One of the most challenging and important jobs for an economics professor is to teach students how little we know and can possibly know. My
longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell says, "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." Nobel
laureate Friedrich August von Hayek admonished, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what
they imagine they can design." The fact that we have gross ignorance about how the world operates is ignored by the know-it-all elites who seek to
control our lives. Let's look at a few examples of the world's complexity.
According to some estimates, there are roughly 100 million traffic signals in the U.S. How many of us would like the U.S. Congress, in the name of
public health and safety, to be in charge of their actual operation? Congress or a committee it authorizes would determine the length of time traffic
lights stay red, yellow and green and what hours of the day and at what intersections lights flash red or yellow. One can only imagine the mess
Congress would create in the 40,000 cities, towns and other incorporated places in the U.S. But managing traffic lights and getting good results is a
far less complex task than managing the nation's health care system and getting good results, which Congress tries to do.
Here's another task I'd ask whether you would like Congress to control. The average well-stocked supermarket carries 60,000 to 65,000 different
items. Walmart carries about 120,000 different items. Let's suppose Congress puts you in total control of getting just one item to a supermarket, say
apples. Let's not make it easy by having the help of apple wholesalers. Thus, you would have to figure out all of the inputs necessary to get apples to
your local supermarket. Let's look at just a few. You need crates to ship the apples. Count all the inputs necessary to produce crates. There's wood,
but you need saws to cut down trees. The saws are made of steel, so iron ore must be mined, and mining equipment is needed. The workers must
have shoes. The complete list of inputs to get apples to the market comes to a very large, possibly an unknowable, number. Forgetting any one of
them, such as spark plugs, would probably mean no apples at your supermarket.
11/9/2017 Ignorance Versus Stupidity
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The beauty of market allocation of goods and services, compared with government fiat, is no one person needs to know all that's necessary to get
apples to your supermarket. Free markets, accompanied by free trade, including international free trade, make us richer by economizing on the
amount of knowledge or information needed to produce things.
Think about this morning's breakfast. Let's suppose you and your spouse each had four slices of bacon and two eggs. You had coffee, and your
spouse had cocoa. The breakfast might have cost you $22. But what might it have cost you if instead of being dependent upon others, you were
independent and produced your own breakfast? What do you know about raising pigs and their subsequent slaughter? Do you know how to cure
pork to make bacon? Then there are the eggs, which require knowledge about the care of chickens. What about getting pig and chicken feed? You'd
have a big problem with the coffee and cocoa. I doubt whether you could simulate the growing conditions in Brazil and West Africa. One thing that's
guaranteed is that your breakfast would be far costlier than in the case where you depended upon the benefits of skills of others that emerge from the
division of labor and trade.
The bottom line is that each of us is grossly ignorant about the world in which we live. Nothing's wrong with that ignorance, but we are stupid if we
believe that a politician can produce a better life than that which is obtained through peaceable, voluntary exchange with our fellow man anywhere
on earth.
Column Congress Economy Business Coverage Regulation Taxes Wages & Prices Wal-Mart Walter Williams Friedrich Hayek Thomas Sowell
Walter E. Williams
An American economist, commentator, and author of Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism
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Meddling in Foreign Elections

T R E N D I N G
Hypocrisy: Obama, Clinton Have Long History of
Meddling in Foreign Elections
B Y M I C H A E L V A N D E R G A L I E N N O V E M B E R 9 , 2 0 1 7
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With the Democrats blasting Russia for "interfering" in U.S. elections, I think it’s time to discuss the recent history of U.S.
interference in elections elsewhere.
1: Team Obama tried to defeat Bibi Netanyahu in Israel
FILE -- In this Sept. 30, 2016 file photo, US President Barack Obama, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talk during the
funeral of former Israeli President and Prime minister Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. (Menahem Kahana, Pool via AP, File)
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In 2015, the Obama administration illegally funneled money to leftist opposition groups in Israel to help them bring down the
government led by Benjamin Netanyahu: $350,000 was given to a group called One Voice Movement (OVM).
This group said it wants to bring about "peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine." It goes without saying that OVM
was and is against Netanyahu. That's bad enough, but leftover money was used to set up a leftist election machine in Israel
that took on the Israeli leader.
Five American campaign experts were hired. One of them was President Obama's field director during the 2012 elections.
2: Team Obama tried to bring down the right-of-center government in Macedonia
Most Americans probably don't know where Macedonia is, but that didn't prevent the Obama administration from meddling in
that country's internal affairs. Judicial Watch uncovered the relevant government documents:
[The documents] show the U.S. government has quietly spent millions of taxpayer dollars to destabilize the
democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia by colluding with leftwing, billionaire philanthropist
George Soros.
11/9/2017 Hypocrisy: Obama, Clinton Have Long History of Meddling in Foreign Elections | Trending
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We're talking about millions of dollars funneled from the State Department and USAID to Soros' groups in Macedonia. These
groups' main purpose was to bring down the country's center-right government. The Obama administration actively helped
those groups, and this work continued afterward.
3: Team Obama built up the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and helped to overthrow Hosni Mubarak
The United States government actively meddled in Egypt's politics and elections by supporting the fundamentalist Muslim
Brotherhood. Team Obama was quite candid about that interference.
Yet we didn't hear one word of criticism from the mainstream media -- the same media that can't stop talking about Russia's
supposed meddling in the U.S. presidential election last year.
4: Bill Clinton helped Boris Yeltsin stay in power in Russia
Back in the 1990s, Russia was led by a man whom Bill Clinton believed to be a real democrat: Boris Yeltsin. As expert
Stephen Cohen explains:
[P]olitical missionaries and evangelists, usually called "advisers", spread across Russia in the early and mid-
1990s.
Clinton and his advisers actually called this interference "a policy of American tutelage."
Although Yeltsin was incredibly popular in the White House, the same couldn't be said for his popularity in Russia itself. Still
the White House supported him and did everything in its power to keep him in the Kremlin. The result? Russian oligarchs
enriched themselves beyond measure, and "the life expectancy for Russian men and women fell from 64 and 74 years
respectively to 58 and 71 years."
Time magazine was quite open and transparent about the 1996 elections in Russia which were, shockingly, won by the
highly unpopular Yeltsin. Their cover:
Yanks To the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win
SPONSORED
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NVladimir Putin was already on the rise in Russian political circles back then, and he saw clearly what had happened: Yeltsin
"won" the elections because of U.S. interference and meddling. It was Clinton who basically bought Yeltsin's victory by
endorsing a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund:
Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to
secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before
the election, including payment of back wages and pensions.
5: Barack Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod tried to help Labour win elections in Britain
Last but not least, there's this:
The political strategist behind President Barack Obama’s White House victories is taking his talents across the
pond to help Britain’s Labour Party.
David Axelrod will spend the next several months serving as the party’s “senior strategic advisor,” in an effort to
get British opposition leader Ed Miliband elected as prime minister in May 2015. In a statement Friday, Axelrod
said he had been impressed by Miliband’s ideas and says he has solid vision for the country’s future.
11/9/2017 Hypocrisy: Obama, Clinton Have Long History of Meddling in Foreign Elections | Trending
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“Barack Obama articulated a vision which had, at its core, the experience of everyday people,” Axelrod said. “And
everyday people responded, they organised and they overcame the odds. I see the same thing happening in
Britain.”
Obviously, Axelrod wasn't an official representative of the American government, but everybody understood that he wouldn't
be involved in Britain's elections if Obama disapproved. This was meddling -- and not just some fake news Facebook ads,
either. Axelrod actively and officially campaigned on behalf of Labour, Britain's main opposition party.
Democrats are clearly using a double standard.
Of course one nation is trying to interfere in another nation's elections. There are very real interests at stake, which is why
the U.S. -- especially under Democratic leadership -- has a long, long record of meddling in other country's internal affairs.
The U.S. does this all the time and had never been secretive about it, either. So why the outrage aimed at Russia now?
Simple: because Putin's interests are not aligned with the Democrats' interests. That's all there is to this story.
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Las Vegas Self Driving Shuttle Crashes

A driverless shuttle bus crashed less than two hours after it was launched in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

The city's officials had been hosting an unveiling ceremony for the bus, described as the US' first self-driving shuttle pilot project geared towards the public, before it crashed with a semi-truck.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the human driver of the other vehicle was at fault, there were no injuries, and the incident caused minor damage.

The oval-shaped shuttle -- sponsored by AAA, the Review-Journal added -- can transport up to 12 passengers at a time. It has an attendant and a computer monitor, and uses GPS and electric curb sensors instead of brake pedals or a steering wheel.

The crash follows the US House passing the Self Drive Act in September, which if passed by the Senate would exempt car manufacturers from various federal and state regulations, allowing for the eventual deployment of up to 100,000 test vehicles a year.

Under the Act, states would still decide whether or not to permit self-driving cars on their roads. However, the federal government could permit a car manufacturer to bypass certain federal safety rules, as well as some state regulations.

The Las Vegas crash is not the first time self-driving vehicles have been involved in a collision. In March, Uber halted its self-driving vehicle tests in the US following a collision in Arizona. An Uber spokesperson later said all tests had been paused for the ride-hailing service to complete an investigation.

Google's self-driving car was found to be at fault when it struck a public bus in California early last year. The company said that it would improve software for the vehicles to more accurately differentiate larger vehicles such as buses. Its self-driving car unit Waymo also recently patented a way to make vehicles softer as part of efforts to reduce collision-related injuries.

Tesla's Autopilot feature was engaged when the driver of a 2015 Model S was killed in an accident in Williston, Florida in May last year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into the performance of the feature, although it later found no defects in the its design or performance.

Car manufacturers around the world are still investing in autonomous vehicle efforts. Volvoplans to involve every-day drivers in its "Drive Me" pilot on the streets of London in December; while Intel's Mobileye is building more than 100 level 4 SAE vehicles, which it will test in the United States, Israel, and Europe starting this year.

General Motors last month announced its acquisition of LiDAR developer Strobe to accelerate the development of its autonomous vehicle tech; Toyota last year opened a research institute with a focus on fully autonomous driving; and Audi announced its partnership with Nvidia earlier this year with the aim to bring level 4 autonomy to the roads by 2020. Level 4 vehicles are "designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip," according to the Department of Transport (DOT).

Nissan, BMW, and Hyundai are all looking to have driverless vehicles on roads within the next five years, which is also the amount of time Ford believes driverless cars will take to "change the world".

In Australia, Transurban is currently conducting a driverless vehicle trial in Melbourne over the course of 18 months; while the NSW government kicked off a two-year trial of a driverless shuttle bus at Sydney Olympic Park back in August.

The Royal Automobile Club (RAC) of Western Australia kicked off Australia's first driverless electric bus trial last year with support from the state government and the City of South Perth.

The vehicle, known as the RAC Intellibus, is able to carry up to 11 passengers and operates at an average speed of 25 kilometres per hour. It uses light detection and ranging, stereovision cameras, GPS, odometry, and autonomous emergency braking to detect and avoid obstacles.

The South Australian government also launched a AU$2.8 million trial of driverless shuttle buses in March, similar to the RAC Intellibus; while Darwin has entered its second phase of a driverless bus trial, although with a driver still on board for safety. According to the ABC,more than 3,500 passengers had ridden the bus from the beginning of the trial in January up to June.

Blood on the Left's Hands

Blood on the Left's Hands in Manhattan

sultanknish.blogspot.com/2017/11/blood-on-lefts-hands-in-manhattan.html

Earlier this year, a final settlement was reached in the war on the NYPD’s counterterrorist Islamic surveillance. The Manhattan courtroom where the lawfare effort to dismantle the NYPD’s ability to stop terrorist attacks was heard is blocks away from the site of the latest Islamic terrorist attack in New York.
Walk two blocks down to City Hall. And then head down Chambers to the West Side Highway. That’s where the terrorist attack that killed eight people ended when an NYPD officer shot the terrorist. If he had kept going down the West Side Highway, instead of crashing into a school bus, he would have eventually been within attack range of the 9/11 Memorial. And maybe that was his original plan.
But his message was very clear. He shouted it as he left the truck with which he murdered 8 people.
“Allahu Akbar”. These were the last words on the Flight 93 flight recorder. Mohamed Atta had advised his fellow 9/11 hijackers to, “Shout, 'Allahu Akbar,' because it strikes fear in the hearts of the infidels.”
Sayfullo Saipov, the Muslim terrorist who carried out the latest attack, was just listening to Atta’s advice. The 16th anniversary of the attacks has passed, but the hatred of Allah’s killers burns as hot as ever.
And the attack carried clear echoes of 9/11.
Saipov had listed an address in Paterson, NJ. Paterson, known to the locals as ‘Paterstine’ for its sizable Islamic community, is where the PLO terror flag flies over City Hall and where Islamic terrorist sympathizers celebrated after their compatriots murdered thousands on 9/11.
Paterson is also where 6 of the 9/11 hijackers lived.
The attack by the Muslim settler from Uzbekistan was almost identical to previous Car Jihad attacks in Europe. Right down to using a fake firearm. But New York City had avoided the non-stop terror wave that engulfed Paris and other European cities thanks to the hard work of the NYPD.
But every time the NYPD broke up an Islamic terror plot, the media and its leftist allies would howl that the racist police had entrapped another innocent mentally ill Muslim. When the Newburgh Four plotted to bomb synagogues in the Bronx, the media was in their corner. HBO even aired The Newburgh Sting, a piece of propaganda whitewashing the terrorists. The revisionist documentary played at the Tribeca Film Festival. And Tribeca is the site of the latest Islamic terrorist attack.
Linda Sarsour, the leading Islamic activist on the left, defended Ahmed Ferhani, who had also plotted to blow up a synagogue, and Shahawar Matin Siraj, who was convicted of plotting to blow up a Manhattan subway station, as victims of NYPD entrapment.
But it’s hard to think of a NYPD or FBI terror bust in New York that the media didn’t undermine. The Nation and the Guardian led the lynch mob. But soon CBS, The Atlantic and the New York Times joined in. All the Muslim terrorists that the NYPD had stopped were really immature and easily manipulated young men. The plots had been invented by paid informants. And it didn’t stop there.
For the last four years, the ACLU and other pro-terror groups had waged an effective lawfare campaign to cripple the NYPD’s counterterrorism. And they succeeded. The NYPD’s ability to send informants into mosques was handicapped. New York cops were now required to consider the “impact” of informants on mosques after Islamist groups claimed that their presence discouraged mosque attendance. The approvals required made it much harder to use one of the more effective terror prevention tools.
The Demographics Unit, one of the most important big picture intel tools for the NYPD, was shut down. But that wasn’t enough. Even when the NYPD agreed to a settlement, Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. insisted that it didn’t go far enough to protect “law-abiding Muslims and believers in Islam who live, move and have their being in this city.”
Sayfullo Saipov moved his being and the truck it was in over the bodies of New Yorkers leaving tire tracks over corpses. The Manhattan attack, like every Islamic attack before it, could have been stopped. But the NYPD’s hands had been tied. And the left had done the tying. It defended every Islamic terrorist that the NYPD had arrested. And prevented the NYPD from investigating mosques and radicalization.
Now it has what it really wanted. Dead Americans. And it has their blood on its manicured fingers.
The Uzbeki Islamic terrorist had listed an address in Paterson, New Jersey. The NYPD had come under attack for conducting surveillance in New Jersey. One of the targets was a mosque in Paterson. The Uzbeki Muslim terrorist also links back to Florida. The media has largely ignored or tried to cover up the string of Islamic terrorist attacks linked to Florida, from the Pulse Massacre in Orlando, to the latest Islamic terrorist plot to bomb the Dolphin Mall on Black Friday.
Sayfullo Saipov had come here in 2010. In that short amount of time he managed to amass criminal records in Pennsylvania and Missouri for traffic offenses. After stints in at least three other states, he went on a killing spree that took eight lives and wounded as well as traumatized countless others.
Dem leaders in New York are already rolling out the standard messages urging everyone to go back to life as usual. Mayor Bill de Blasio called the attack “cowardly”. But the attack wasn’t cowardly. It was vicious and murderous. It’s Bill de Blasio and the other politicians who crippled the NYPD because they were afraid of political pressure from Linda Sarsour and CAIR who are the real cowards.
They are cowards with blood on their hands.

The New York media’s first response after the attack was to try and blame road rage. Before long, you will see it running the standardized “Muslims fear backlash” stories that are a staple of every effort to sweep the latest Islamic terrorist attack under the rug along with the blood and the bodies.

Islamic terrorists like Sayfullo Saipov are able to do what they do because they have a long list of collaborators like the ACLU, Democrat politicians, Federal judges and the mainstream media.
While law enforcement fights a desperate battle to stop the next Saipov, the men and women tracking the terrorists know that if they get their man, the media will make them the villains. Just ask the good people who brought down Ahmed Ferhani, James Cromitie, Shahawar Matin Siraj and so many others.
Sane societies celebrate those who risk their lives to keep them safe. The leftist culture machine does everything it can to destroy them and to aid the Islamic butchers who run over pedestrians for Allah.
The way to stop the next Saipov is to untie the NYPD’s hands.
After every shooting, the left insists that anyone who opposes gun control wants people to die. But guns don’t hop off the shelf and shoot people. And trucks don’t run over pedestrians on their own.
Islamic terrorists drive them into crowds, over pedestrians and cyclists, in London, Nice, in Berlin, in Jerusalem and in New York City. And leftists who refuse to stop them might as well be behind the wheel.
Leftists who would rather control the police than the Islamic terrorists want people to die.

By Ralph Peters, Lt Col, Ret. NY Post

Attention, all troops peeved with your platoon sergeant, bored with your field rations, or who just want a little private time: It’s okay to desert your post in a combat zone. It’s fine for you to trigger the deaths and grave woundings of better men than you. A military judge just set a precedent: Deserters in wartime walk free.

You’ll probably get a book deal, too, and be portrayed as a hero in a big-budget film.

The US Army colonel and judge who decided Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s fate has some explaining to do. How is it that a confessed deserter, whose actions brought our Afghan campaign to a halt and led to the acknowledged wounding and alleged deaths of his comrades, can walk out of a military courtroom a free man? With not one day of prison time? How is that possible?

How can our armed forces maintain good order and discipline when the only penalty for desertion in wartime is a dishonorable discharge with a reduction in rank? The lowlifes who abandon their buddies in wartime don’t care what form of discharge they receive.

Apologists for Bergdahl insist that, as a captive of the Taliban for five years, he suffered enough. But what about those who died searching for him (as his comrades insist occurred)? What about the known wounded condemned to life sentences of pain and incapacity?

Please, Col. Nance, explain your decision to Bergdahl’s victims. Explain it to every soldier who served honorably.

As for abuse endured during his captivity, Bergdahl could have avoided it by remaining at his post. He wasn’t captured doing his duty. He quit and walked away.

The only military sin graver than desertion in a combat zone would be to turn one’s weapons against one’s fellow soldiers. What Bergdahl did was a cardinal sin in any military. But, despite constant refrains of “Thank you for your service,” military values are despised, mocked and attacked in our society.

As for any alleged mental problems influencing Bergdahl, a psychologist can make the case that any human being is disturbed. But Bergdahl was rational enough to plan his desertion, to mail home his personal computer and effects. He knew what he was doing.

Did the judge know what he was doing?

Political correctness has infected our military even more profoundly than many of us long feared. Successive administrations have used our armed forces as a laboratory for social transformation. Real damage has been done. This destructive sentencing is one result.

For a military judge, a colonel, to wreak havoc upon good order and discipline, to, in essence, sanction desertion if there are “mitigating circumstances,” sends traditional military virtues of loyalty, obedience and self-sacrifice into eclipse.

This case isn’t just about punishing one jerk. It’s about the combat effectiveness of our military in time of war. While the man is judged, the institution is sentenced.

That judge condemned the institution when he decided that Bergdahl should go free.

We expect explanations.

Meanwhile, Bergdahl can celebrate. The activist left can celebrate. Former President Barack Obama can claim redemption and Susan Rice can grunt with satisfaction that, despite his dishonorable discharge, Bergdahl kinda-sorta “served with honor and distinction,” didn’t he?

And the widows Bergdahl’s actions left behind can go to hell. Wives serving their own life sentences of caring for heroes incapacitated by wounds because of Bergdahl’s treachery can be damned. His comrades who served honorably can kiss off. Let’s all line up and spit on those who serve proudly.

This is a wonderful day for America’s enemies, foreign and domestic.

Blaming Doctors for Addiction, Hat Tip; American Spectator

The Nation’s Pulse

Betsy McCaugheyNovember 1, 2017, 12:05 am

And the president is right to emphasize the “just say no” approach.

President Trump’s declaration that opioid abuse is a public health emergency is sparking debate about addiction. Tragically, myths and misinformation are blocking the path to preventing more deaths.

Start with the causes of the opioid crisis. On Face the Nation, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, chair of Trump’s opioid commission, blamed over-prescribing doctors. “This crisis started not on a street corner somewhere. This crisis started in the doctor’s offices and hospitals of America.” That’s untrue, Governor.
It contradicts scientific evidence and lets drug abusers off the hook. At least three quarters of opioid pill abusers and almost all heroin addicts got hooked without ever having been prescribed pain medication for an injury or illness, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Emergency room records show only a fraction – 13% — of opioid overdose victims began taking drugs because of pain, according to the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The media feature many stories about patients who needed pain killers and later became addicts, but these are exceptions, not the rule.
Experimenting with opioids — whether heroin or pills — is almost always a choice. A bad choice. Young adults account for 90% of first time abusers. To protect the next generation from making that mistake, Trump proposes a “massive advertising campaign to get people, especially children, not to want to take drugs in the first place.” The liberal media mock Trump’s proposal as a throwback to the 1980s, but in fact he’s on the mark.

For decades, popular music has glamorized drug use. Late night host Jimmy Kimmel pays lip service to tackling tough political issues, but his guest line-up this week includes Ty Dolla $ign, whose music videos showcase drug use.

Trump’s offering an alternative message. History proves it can work. In 2012 and 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ran hard-hitting and graphic ads against smoking, with ex-smokers talking about their own lung disease, cancer, and other miseries. The ads cut smoking among youth and convinced 400,000 smokers to quit for good. Trump’s campaign should be just as terrifying. Show hospitalized teens with their arms amputated because of infections from heroin needles, and brain-damaged overdose victims in nursing homes.

Warning about opioid abuse sounds like a no-brainer. So why do activists like Kassandra Frederique of the Drug Policy Alliance deplore “the persistent stigma of drug use”? As if we’re not supposed to hurt addicts’ feelings. With drug overdose deaths at record highs, that’s misguided.
You no longer see smoking in movies or on television. Stigmatizing cigarettes worked. So why de-stigmatize opioids? We can help those already hooked without doing that.
Christie calls addiction a “disease.” It’s true that some people succumb to it more than others. But new research suggests the disease metaphor could be hurtful. Addicts who believe they have the free will to quit have a much higher success rate than those who think of themselves as diseased, according to new research from the University of Minnesota and Florida State University. Quitting Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s isn’t possible, but getting off drugs is.
Harvard professor Gene Heyman insists addicts can choose to stop using drugs. Once “the penalties for excessive use become overwhelming,” such as losing their job or their kids.

Half of addicts who quit do it without treatment. The drug treatment industry doesn’t want you to know that. The industry’s salivating for more public funds, and joining Democrats in bashing Trump for not spending more. But he’s right. Families exhaust their savings and taxpayers foot ever mounting bills for treatment despite a dismal success rate (under 30%) at most rehabs.

To save lives and get better results for the $50 billion already being spent yearly, Washington needs to stop pinning the blame on the medical community, scrap political correctness and turn to the research. And most important, bombard young people with warnings against ever trying drugs.

Romer Jed Medina/Creative Commons