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88-Year-Old Inventor Hassled By the DEA
New submitter Calibax writes "30 years ago, Bob Wallace and his partner came up with a product to help hikers, flood victims and others purify water. Wallace, now 88 years old, packs his product by hand in his garage, stores it in his backyard shed and sells it for $6.50. Recently, the DEA has been hassling him because his product uses crystalline iodine. He has been refused a license to purchase the iodine because it can be used in the production of crystal meth, and as a result he is now out of business. A DEA spokesman describes this as 'collateral damage' not resulting from DEA regulations but from the selfish actions of criminals."
Not to mention nobody wants to spend the incredible amount of money it would take to fix broken people, instead they'd rather let their friends make money on both ends thanks to privatization of everything from the military to the prisons.
I once saw a show with this monk, damned if I can think of the name of it, that spent all his time with junkies. he said if you talked to them, I mean REALLY sat down and talked to them, nearly all of them had ONE THING, one single thing that they just couldn't face. After all nobody wakes up and says "I want lots of sores and my teeth falling out" now do they? He gave as an example one junkie where after talking to her it turned out her parents had thrown her to the street after her sister was killed in her car, so he paid to fly her halfway around the world and went with her to her parents graves so she could get it off her chest. less than a year later she was clean and working.
Recreational "party" drugs like pot should frankly be legal but when you have people that will literally go commit a crime just to get thrown in prison because they can't get their drug of choice on the outside? There is something in that person's life they simply cannot face. Sadly one of the guys i hung out with in HS is now living under a bridge somewhere, it turned out his mom was getting him fried at the age of 8 and fucking johns in front of him. can anybody blame the guy for staying stoned?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Keynes is widely misunderstood. He once said that it would be better to build totally useless pyramids than to have high unemployment, but he wasn't actually suggesting that we should do that. It's obvious when you think about it, because there are a million and one productive things that could be done with the same labor. The actual idea is that it's better to pay someone to work in a soup kitchen than it is to watch crime skyrocket if you leave them to starve and they resort to theft.
If (as would seem obvious from this case) the DEA is not engaged in anything productive, you don't have to make them unemployed. You just have to eliminate their current positions and instead set them to work patrolling the streets in gang neighborhoods at night to suppress actual crime.
Yes, thank you for the better summary. While the DEA has in the past, and likely will in the future done some stupid and mindless things, it doesn't appear that this is the case in this instance. Additionally, it would seem that for a self admitted tinkerer who nets $100,000 per year on his hobby, he could put a little more thought into the product, seal off the iodine in sintered glass or some other method that allowed water to pass over the crystals but did not allow for removal or tampering, continue to sell the products and make the DEA happy.
But it's more fun to rant and whine.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Ranting against the DEA for any reason is well justified considering the damage it does to our country. Glenn Greenwald debated Bush's drug czar recently and really laid open the festering wound that is prohibition. The video is here:
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/15/debating_bushs_drug_czar_on_legalization/singleton/
(Glenn Greenwald should run for president)
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
And that is why Portugal's approach to drugs, treating it as a medical and mental health issue, is working and ours isn't.
After all the money spent on the War on Drugs, the US still has the addiction rates that we had at the turn of the 19th century. If we only had as many freedoms.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Yah but not one of particular use to terrorists as Iodine tri-whatever is too unstable to make a useful explosive. You start making large batches and it will go off randomly while drying or large parts may fail to detonate.
It's much less of a public safety threat than a gun. The expected harm caused by a man with a pistol far exceeds that of a bomber with this stuff.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Well, not sure from TFA :
So...? With my basic maths that makes a turnover of $156,000 in a "few months". If we take that to be four months - that's $468,000. I tried to work out what materials costs would be - iodine crystal is $8 per ounce (http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs1/1467/index.htm) but couldnt find out how much is in the bottle... making max 20% turnover as profit seems a bit tight (we're assuming this is less than 100K this year). Most people operate on significantly higher margins.
On another note, 100K US = around 65K UK - I don't think that many people I know would bitch about this as a yearly income and don't earn close to that! Certainly wouldn't class it as "hard up" or struggling as in TFA. Of course they said it's less now though...
The issue with the phosphate was the effect on plants and other green organisms. Algae and bacteria blooms, that kind of thing. What is so much worse about zeolite A, sodium carbonate, citrates, and sodium silicate?
Blar.
Oh, it does diminish it. You're just so manipulative to your poor kid that he probably doesn't realize it.
When people ask me if I'd like to do something I can't say no to ... I say no. Just to force them to cut the crap if they're going to do something by fiat of authority or power relationship.
Buy with a credit card--"May I see ID sir?" "No" "Well I can't run it then." "Oh sorry, you should've said it was store policy up front"
"Would you please come with me to the checkpoint" "No" "You have to, it's the law" "Oh...I didn't realize it was an order"
"Boss: Would you like to write an updated document on..." "Not really..."
Some people say this makes me a jackass. I say it clearly brings to light that the other party is acting unethically. Most of the time when people do this--it isn't civility, it's so that if there's ever any dispute they can shut it down by saying "they voluntarily agreed to..."
You'd be surprised how vastly more civil people can be when they actually don't hide power relationships between each other. Especially because the person in authority now thinks twice about using it and if it's really worth it. The person without it understands their relationship in the structure--and now can actually clearly see those rare times when they do get asked a genuine *question* and they are capable of communicating freely. Being truthful liberates both sides.
Particularly in cases like this where you're dealing with people in a hurry or otherwise preoccupied and the interaction is not likely to convey that "under the table message".
What you do with your kid isn't polite--it's manipulative. You permit him the gentle illusion of choice and hope it's easier for him to comply than directly challenge you. He's four. Maybe you should teach him to respect you by demonstrating the same respect for him.