FEATURED MOMENTS

ANDREW MALCOLM

RedState Commentary Writer

"Calling for something is a time honored, empty political ploy that costs nothing.

It signals virtue so deftly but gloriously involves no obligation whatsoever to do anything yourself. They get the free publicity and someone else has to answer for it. Joe Biden and Barack Obama have perfected this. The other day on the 10th anniversary of the awful Sandy Hook school shooting, they both called for American Society to change to reject violence and for new laws to be enacted to stop future Sandy Hooks. 

New laws are not going to prevent anything not until we address the serious underlying issue which is mental health; how to detect problems and what to do about them."



ROBERT VERBRUGGEN

Manhattan Institute fellow, National Review contributing editor, Institute for Family Studies research fellow

"First of all about 90% of our prisoners are in state prisons rather than federal so the state prison statistics are really the most important here. In state prisons 62% of prisoners are in for violent offenses, 14% are in for property offenses, 11% for public order, and just 13% are in for drugs. Federal prisons only contain about 10-12% of the total imprisonment population. They are a little big skewed to the drug offenses with about half of the federal prisoners being in for drugs – so that does slightly tweek those numbers. 

American imprisonment is not just about the drug war. It’s tilted to property and violence offenses."

SETH DENSON

Business & Market Analyst, entrepreneur, Purveyor of Common-Sense on TV, Newsmax Contributor & Columnist, Occasional TV Host, TEDx Speaker, Best Selling Author

"The United States is the world’s largest super power and with that comes responsibility. Historical precedence has shown that tyrants whose actions go unaddressed lead to issues for superpowers for the world.

We must address these tyrants and not allow them to go unaddressed.

So yes, we should think about the economics and we should want governance of those dollars as well as a strategic plan, but we also must recognize that money, lives, time, and support have lead to both the development and rescue of countries since the dawn of time. The historical shift in superpowers has always come with responsibility, and for this time, it’s ours."



FEATURED CONVERSATION

SCOTT STANTIS

Internationally Syndicated Editorial Cartoonist, Senior Fellow at the Alabama Policy Institute and Co-Host of DMZ America Podcast

"Other Western Countries have seen the life expectancy, it had a down tick because of COVID, but has gone back up except for one country. Can you guess what that is? It’s the United States.

Now what’s causing this? Part of it is the usual suspects. Heart disease, obesity, those things. COVID plays into this as well still, but one of the main reasons that’s not being addressed is healthcare and the fact that many Americans either can’t afford it and hence don’t have access to it. 

Now I know what you’re thinking...Scott, you’re a conservative. You’re not supposed to give a crap about healthcare. Well, that’s simply not true. We want, from the right, to have healthcare that works, healthcare that’s affordable, but how do you get there from here? 

I have a very simply proposal we can start with. Let’s

make healthcare competitive. Let’s get rid of the prohibitions about across state line competition, and just open up the markets.

You and I both know that this will make the prices go down."

TED RALL

Political Cartoonist & Writer, Co-Host of the DMZ America Podcast

"We really need a full socialized medicine system in the United States like every other modern industrialized country has. And we need full mental health parity. 

You have a lot of people who are taking fentanyl and other drugs for really one of two reasons; they are either depressed, they are unemployed or underemployed that’s why you see this epidemic of drug addiction in parts of the country that have particularly low employment. And they are also self-medicating themselves. 

So Scott’s solution does sort of touch upon that. For example, Kurt Cobain suffered from stomach pain, that’s how he got addicted to heroin. He started taking it because it was cheaper than prescription medication. 

A lot of people who get addicted to fentanyl and opioids

are basically resorting to street drugs because they can’t get prescription pain medication to deal with back pain and other problems, which in the United States is a major, major problem because we have an obesity issue. And when you are obese, you often have back and foot and muscle pains that you would not have otherwise. 

So the point, what we really need here is a real robust medical system that prioritizes getting into seeing the doctor pre-emptively."

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