A friend shares his personal story:
In 2010, as part of my conditions of probation, I was asked to enter a drug treatment program for treatment of my dependence on cannabis.
I was reccomended a treatment center by the court system, which I went to. The guy who owned the treatment center sat down and did my intake appointment… we ended up getting pretty friendly and he came out of left field with the following request….. “if you can help me out I can help you out”. What ended up happening was I paid the guy $200 for his pocket, $200 for the classes, and he signed a paper saying that I had completed 20 hours of drug treatment………
Now, at the moment, I did it. Of course. I smoke pot… I’m not dependent on substances, I was happy to not have to sit through a bullshit class about drug dependency and DUI’s. But as time has gone on and I see how our criminal justice system works it truly saddens me and I had to speak up about it. Our criminal justice system is a RACKET, the war on drugs is a joke and if people don’t wake the fuck up and try to make a change……. we stay in the same revolving circle. […] Truly makes me sick.
Just one of an incredibly long list of rackets driven by this drug war.
A story someone posted on another forums I read:
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That brings to mind part of an episode of C*O*P*S I watched a couple of decades ago. It was just your typical “boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy moves in with girl, boy dumps girl, boy rents U*Haul truck and packs up, girl calls police and tells them that boy has lots of drugs in U*Haul truck, idiot boy gives C*O*P*S permission to search U*Haul, 3 hours later C*O*P*S admit there aren’t any drugs, boy is surprised when C*O*P*S tell boy that they aren’t moving men and boy gets to pack U*Haul a second time” story.
I swear the look on the poor schmuck’s face standing on the curb with all of his Earthly possessions piled up on the sidewalk was very memorable. One of the C*O*P*S offers him some perspective telling him it could be worse…at least it isn’t raining.
The correct answer when a LEO asks, why won’t you give me permission to search if you have nothing to hide?” is “because you people don’t clean up your mess when you’re wrong.”
Ganjawar and Child Protection Racketeering
Religious drug treatment in Texas
GOP’s holy war. Theocracy in action.
eco@mailcity.com
GEORGE W. BUSH: THE RECORD IN TEXAS
Putting Faith In a Social Service Role; Church-Based Providers Freed From Many Rules
Rackets Driven by this Drug War ecp
Crop of the Future?
Just to politically balance the idiocy of both Bush/Republican and Obama/Democrat, let’s look at Obama’s legacy in IL.
Half of the kids that start high school in Obama’s old State Senate district will not graduate, HALF, and the majority of those will be arrested and in the criminal justice system before age 25.
Chicago/Cook County, Obama’s Democrat power center, has the highest per capita drug arrests in the United States, the vast majority of those being minorities.
Obama tried to add the ephedra plant to the war on drugs.
Obama and Daley’s Chicago, in VIOLATION OF THE US CONSTITUTION, illegally banned all hand guns in the city for decades, and the State of Illinois violated the US Constitution for 30 years by banning the carrying of guns. (You don’t agree with the 2nd Amendment? Then amend it by using the rule of law outlined in the Constitution to do so, not by illegally using the power of your political party while in office to put unconstitutional laws in place and wrongly punish people who don’t follow unconstitutional laws. Cannabis prohibition would be unconstitutional IF Americans weren’t mostly idiots.)
Obama and his Illinois Democrats, in VIOLATION OF THE US CONSTITUTION, illegally kept all independent candidates from getting on the ballot for 25 years. Just using the name Democrat is a complete friggin’ lie by Obama and his Illinois minions.
Throw Bush under the bus all you want, but Obama and his liberal progressives are more guilty by leaps and bounds. Chicago is, and has been, completely controlled by the liberal progressive Democrats for decades and their government/Democrat Party machine is thoroughly corrupt to its core.
Obama will never be a Bush with a Nazi grand father or match Nixon’s treason bartering with the enemy. Obama is a chicago politician who sold out to clinton. Not even close. He never ran on a progressive ticket or said he would end the drug war. He has no ties to drug war profits or drug mfgers or military profits or jail profits as the bush klan does. No comparison.
Not even close… But i do see how GOPers believe balance is anything compared to everything is somehow the same. Like Fox balanced news I suppose. Not balanced, not even close.
One term as us senator. Wasn’t even a state politician until 97. Now lets check Texas under Boosh. Worse polution. Lowest in education and highest in poverty. But this post in question is about Bush religious rehabilitation torture centers. Not your fear factor.
Louisiana Dungeons are anti-American, anti-Humanity.
Cook County has been corrupt since Daly was busting Vietnam war protesters. Again Obama was only a state Senator since 97. Still has nothing to do with Bush religious rehabs.
Nixon’s drug war. Got refs I’ll add it? But if you want to list the hypocrisy of meth paranoia then you can add the military go go pills, truckers black beauties and models diet pills. Banning meth is a media hype to denegrate all drugs as equal like some try to do with people. Got refs? Again nothing to do with religious rehab profiteers.
Again Daly and I might add San Francisco banned guns. Corporate property management and owners ban guns and the fixed income tenants are too afraid to challenge it and where oh where is the NRA? Buying mandatory minimums for the koch for profit prison scam. Not Obama. Obama never outlawed guns. They were banned after he left. Besides every militia in past history always sided with the government. From the whiskey rebellion to Shay’s and they sided against the war protesters, pot smokers and against women’s rights. Your hero’s are coward profiteers that have no interest in your rights to own guns. I’m not against owning guns, I am against civilians having access to military weapons of mass destruction out of properly designated areas. And I’m against the right or rednecks to own nukes too. The NRA are only interested in their rights to sell them and rent out cops to guard the porta potties.
Again you lay this on Obama and he wasn’t even there. I agree most Americans are idiots. But again because Obama doesn’t overturn Nixon lies doesn’t make him an equal. Same with Bush profits on the Ganjawar, not Obama’s. Ever hear of Bush or Junior letting states rights dictate buyers clubs? No of coarse not. Holder and Obama are so far. So you think Obama is as guilty for not stopping Bush/Nixon/Rayguns as Bush/Nixon/Rayguns was for initiating and implementing the drug war? Not even close.
Same in CA only you miss again. Only primaries. Not stopping people from voting as gerrymandering and falsifying prison records or closing down polls does. Again you blame Obama when he was 8 when Daly violated the Constitution to stop peaceful protesters. Nixon tried taking guns from the Black Panthers but I don’t remember a bunch or concerned rednecks then. Obama may be one of Daly’s men but I see you have no references. Even if you did the guy hasn’t the clout or age to have done what 3 generations of Bush has. Not even close. Daly hasn’t done the Nazi crap the Bush’ have. Bidon hasn’t and he’s the biggest democrat weasel outside of the blue dawg republican lites.
My favorite pass time.
NO you just can’t stand GOPers taking responsibility for what they do. Like the 24 billion shutdown the punks of the tea party cost. Blame Obama? The House stenographer going off about the Free Masons.. already has a following. From the mental ward. Incoherent babbling is now accepted if certain words are tossed in. What ever it is, Obama did it. Bush actually did do it but Obama did it. Bush lied and started a war but it’s Obama’s fault. The Speaker got drunk and molested his errand boy because of that damn Obama. The drug war is for their profits but its Obama still waging the war.. they profit on. Obama’s problem is being too GOPerverted and trying to compromise with idiots following mentally deranged religionists. The worst of it is I wrote in Kucinich as the only democrat running. I was never fooled by Obama or Hilary or Bidon being progressives. Just GOPervert lites. Now I have to defend the ass from lies and GOPer worship?
Probably but what does it have to do with the rest of the country? Or drug war or what Bush has been doing to Americans since Prescott laundered Hitler’s money? Just another afraid of the black guy it seems to me. Here is Obama’s political timeline. 1988 – Obama is a summer associate at the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin. 8 years after Rayguns amped up the drug war. Not even a politician until 2004. No comparison. Bush is Nazi wannabe scum, get over it and stop trying to get him off the hook diverting blame to Obama.
The Obama Admin’s Anti-Marijuana Manifesto
~ Multiple DEA Raids Target Marijuana in Hawaii
~ Obama: Drug Legalization is “An Entirely Legitimate Topic for Debate”
~ Hil and Gil on the Drug War
~ Obombo’s Sublingual Attack on Ganja
~ One Drug Arrest Every 19 Seconds Oh Gilligan!
~ President Obama takes a dump on California
~ Obama Doesn’t Need Congress
~ Drug Czar linked to deception
~ IRS Targets Medical Marijuana Businesses
~ Obama spent nearly $300 million busting Ganja â„ž ops.
~ The Human and Fiscal Cost of the Ganjawar
As it shows, Obama’s biggest fault is trying to act like bush and carry out bush policy. Diverting attention or trying to balance them is not only false, its silly.
Nixon Threads
~ Nixon lied to schedule Ganja #1
~ While Nixon Campaigned, FBI Watched John Lennon
~ Nixon’s Drug War – Re-Inventing Jim Crow, Targeting The Counter Culture
~ Nixon’s Treason
~ Shafer Commission Report on Marijuana and Drugs
~ When leaders act contrary to conscience
~ Nixon Lie Keeps on Killing…
~ Anslinger-Bush-Hearst-Nixon-Hitler-Nalepka Déjà vu
~ Nixon’s 40 Year War On Drugs… Drugs Won!
~ AMA Calls For Ending Nixon’s Lie?
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face!
It’s just a god damed piece of paper!â€
– George Bush
Booshammy Links
~ Bush’s Faustian Deal With the Taliban
~ Poverty? Dubya Says Blame the Hippies!
~ Bush Crimes Against Humanity
~ Anslinger-Bush-Hearst-Nixon-Hitler-Nalepka Déjà vu
~ GOPerverts ARE the Oligarchy
~ AWOL Bush
~ The Enron, Bush, Baker, Rockefeller connection
~ Sympathy for the Devil
~ Bush Crime Family & LINX
~ Bush. Religious drug treatment in Texas
~ George Bush: Chapter -XV- CIA DIRECTOR
~ Drug Kingpin George Bush Press Conference
~ George Bush Crack Kingpin of the 80’s links
~ George Bush does not deserve an honourary degree!
~ Bush CIA
~ CONFIRMED: Dubya not allowed into Canada
~ DUBYA’s Driving Record
~ 3 strikes and your out Mr Bush!
~ Looking behind the Bushes
~ Reefer Madness,Anslinger,Hearst,Bayer,Farben II,Demonization
~ I.G.Farben,Dupont,Ford,Hearst,Frankenfoods,Prohibition
~ Same buSHT Different Day! Just Say No to Walters/Thugczar!
~ Bush Cabal Hides Patriot II Police State
~ Busht Hypocrisy & Double Standards
~ realchange[Bush Jr.’s Skeleton Closet
~ bushandcheneysuck
~ Busht: Timeline of Treason
~ Bushladen and the Terrorists Carlyles Groups
~ Bush Announces Tougher Line on Cuba
~ Bush Family History with Nazism
~ GW Bush Has Executed 131 Inmates
~ Bush/CIA/DEA Drug Smuggling
~ GWBush Cocaine Cowboy 1 year gap in Bush’s Guard
~ Bushit or Sadamn? Flip a Coin
~ THE BUSH-CHENEY DRUG EMPIRE
~ Bush/Quayle/Lilly Pharmaceutical Sellout!
~ Fellow Conservatives: Our Position Is Hypocritical
~ ACTION ALERT::: Jeb Bush Fungus/Life of a Drug Lord
“If the people knew what we had done,
they would chase us down the street and lynch us.â€
~ George H.W. Bush to journalist Sarah McClendon
“It is the SACRED principals enshrined in the UN Charter to which we will henceforth pledge our Allegiance.”
– President George Herbert Walker Bush
– UN building, Feb. 1, 1992
There are as many (if not more) prohibitionists in power as Democrats, as prohibitionist GOPers. However, both parties are equally to blame for the drug war and the atrocities that go along with it; so this partisan bickering is a waste of everyone’s time because the real fight is not left vs right, it is liberty vs tyranny. And if people don’t soon recognize that fact our future will be VERY bleak.
When it comes to fraud, anything probable is likely. A system of punitive law, defined by a lack of complaining victims, turns probable into certain. Adding the next twist, the intent to persecute, the process whereby someone is prosecuted for being a member of some despised group, takes it to the next game level, complete with lots of fast paced action, violence and mayhem.
Major General Smedley Butler said war is a racket. He even wrote a book about it. Maybe that’s why Tricky Dick Nixon, performing his role as some arch movie villain who intentionally leaves clues, called his act a war on drugs, instead of something that made sense.
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One of the things about the momentum of re-legalization that keeps me from dismissing my attitude that but for needing to dot the Ts and cross the eyes that it’s a done deal is all of these strange bedfellows. I really find it annoying to wake up so many mornings out of 10 and Prof. Kleiman snoring like a little tugboat. It’s even worse because of his constantly dreaming that he understands cannabinoidian reality. How can someone be acknowledged by so many other people as an “expert” while being such an knucklehead? (those are scare quotes!) I would have thought the two concepts to be mutually exclusive.
High Marijuana Taxes Could Derail Legalization Plans
For crying out loud, back around the turn of the century Steve Forbes was a genuine foaming at the mouth sycophant of prohibition. I even checked to see if he had passed away without my noticing.
“How can someone be acknowledged by so many other people as an “expert†while being such an knucklehead?”
Obama was acknowledged as a Constitutional expert by most of the liberals and progressives in this country, and they friggin’ elected him twice. How? Idiocracy.
No-Kluman acts real coy when asked if he tokes, but it’s obvious to anyone who does that he most certainly doesn’t. Otherwise he’d know a thing or two that experience teaches the rest of us.
This happens a lot. I’ve seen more than one person coerced into attending rehab who clearly didn’t have a drug problem. I remember being in an outpatient rehab one time, it was a fairly intensive program for people with serious drug problems, dope shooters, compulsive crack smokers, alcoholics and the like. Half the people in the program were still incarcerated but allowed to attend as part of a pre-release program.
Then there was this one guy who clearly didn’t belong there. He was a truck driver and hadn’t used any drugs, with the exception of the occasional drink, for 18 years (his career as a trucker). Then he went on vacation to Jamaica where he smoked a couple of joints. Upon return he got drug tested and needed to complete rehab in order to keep his license.
While not outright fraud like the guy in Pete’s post, its still unethical. These programs are not free, healthcare dollars should be spent on those who need them. There is already not enough treatment slots to meet the demand, there should be a minimum requirement that the patient actually has a drug problem before they are enrolled in drug treatment.
Not only is this a huge racket, but there are other harms with this approach that is more difficult to put a dollar value on. Take kids who get caught with a little weed and get sent to rehab.
If you are truly interested in preventing drug use, its probably not a good idea to stick a kid who got busted with a little weed in an intensive program with junkies and crackheads. People make friends in these programs, which means that kid who previously only smoked a little pot suddenly has people who are heavily into “hard” drugs in their social circle. There is also heavy pressure to conform to the group and self-identify as an addict. Less of a problem for a middle-aged truck driver with years of abstaining, but I’ve also met people in these programs who are young and there drug use was perhaps problematic, but certainly not addictive. Yet by the end they were convinced they were in the early stages of addiction, and powerless over their drug use.
The following article is really worth reading in full, here’s the beginning:
Does Teen Drug Rehab Cure Addiction or Create It? By Maia Szalavitz
A racket, yes. One that goes back a long ways. A few more examples of note can be found here.
Click on any of those editorial cartoons from alcohol Prohibition and you’ll find that the spiritual ancestors of today’s prohibs were, then as now, dancing hand-in-hand with the same forces they claimed to oppose, symbionts in a circle of lies, hypocrisy, corruption and needless, tragic death.
Not much changes; the lesson is always there for the wise to read and the fool to ignore. A pity there’s so much money to be made in foolishness…
It would be nice to know what politicians are vested in the re-hab scam.
http://tinyurl.com/mnn7woy
All the ones that support the War on Drugs!!
Nice pic, Clay, btw.
The difference between prohibition and temperance is what Rockefeller was banking on when he and Hearst created booze prohibition to remove home distilled ethanol from the farmers and Ford’s new car built from the ground. By expanding the Woman’s Christian Temperance League along with his own lobbyists they fabricated a message similar to what they would do again in 1937 for hemp and cannabis. Lincoln was a Temperance League member and knew the dangers of prohibitions. The objectivity of of the League was not to ban alcohol, but to eliminate the harmful aspects such as domestic violence, public drunkenness and kids being around it. There were the same zealots as sabet and calvina with Carry Nation and Emily Murphy in Canada continuing with cannabis. Prohibition proved to be the opposite of Temperance in that it brought in kids, women and violence. More than just domestic and public brawling. Prohibition in its short span of less than a decade accomplished only one thing. It removed the farmers ability to grow their own tractor fuel to this day. No one was arrested for possessing alcohol, just for manufacturing and distribution. Unlike America’s longest war on cannabis where mostly those in possession are arrested. Since Nixon it has become a growth industry for the prisons, rehabs, piss tasters and probation. The courts are in shambles and the competition is still kept off the market shelves or have been granted to Big Pharma as with distilled alcohol, sativex and patents on cannabinoids. Prohibition has always been sold by wealthy industrialists and and their cronies in Washington.
Al Capone and Watergate
Why Do YOU Think They Call it DOPE?
* Cannabis Hemp: The Invisible Prohibition Revealed
* The Elkhorn Manifesto
* Marijuana and Hemp: The Untold Story
* The Nation of Apathetic Puppets By John Pilger
* Maintaining Dysfunction
Racketeering knows no bounds, not even among different species. A domestic cat has been arrested in Moldava for smuggling pot into a prison. Smuggling tactics employing cats are a growing trend in other parts of the world. So far, the cat isn’t talking.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24578678
Another cat has his tongue
I wouldn’t talk either,,you know how much pussy he won’t get if he becomes a snitch?
Oh puh-lease. A cat trained to do something useful? Just how gullible do those people think I am?
Once knew a meeting associated with one of the AA halls in Seattle. The Chairperson at that meeting would sign your attendance card for your entire probationary period for $100. He carried a pouch with pens with three different shades of ink just for that purpose, and would pre or post date meetings as needed.
How’s this for a racket. Let’s say evangelical Christians decide to create a captive audience for an extended religious sermon, to convert the wicked and so forth. So they make some drugs illegal, and they force various non-conformist drug users and related heretics into religious re-education camps in place of the usual punishments, like incarceration and a lifetime of religious stigma for drug use.
The opportunity to do so is there, or it used to be until a few Circuit Courts of Appeals decided otherwise. Given any opportunities, fraud and rackets are inevitable, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so we can presume the evangelical drug treatment racket exists somewhere, or has existed at some time. The trick to breaking up a racket is to describe how it works, otherwise a racket’s stated good intentions are going to cover up the real deceits.
Hi Ted Nugent!
Supreme Court Sides With Feds On Marijuana Prohibition
http://tinyurl.com/ko36oj4
The highest court says there’s not enough evidence to warrant taking a second look at marijuana’s Schedule I status. ‘snip’
The very fact that 20 states now have medical marijuana programs with over a million patients using marijuana as a medicine makes marijuana being a schedule 1 drug hypocrisy enough to justify rescheduling marijuana,,this is proof positive that corruption knows no boundaries or strangers,,even the Supreme Court is corrupted.
I thought that Nixon’s commission 41 years ago recommended that MJ be normalized. Totally weak!
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Here’s a list of blue ribbon panels which came to similar conclusions. The earliest published results were from The Indian Hemp Commission in 1894.
Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy
More Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy
Common Sense for Drug Policy
Who the heck would expect this bottom line from a Federal government analysis of drug laws called, “The Facts About Drug Abuse” by The Drug Abuse Council, 1980
Final Report Of The Drug Abuse Council:
When I look at that list and the same results time after time after time it makes me wonder, why the heck do politicians think that they can find a blue ribbon panel to produce the results that they want? It’s obvious that they’re all dedicated fans of E.D. Yahtzee. They just don’t seem able to grasp that a scientist with the bona fides required to sit on a blue ribbon panel just isn’t going to produce scientific studies with results to order.
I’m kind of surprised that the prohibitionist parasites have not yet attempted to re-define the meaning of the phrase “blue ribbon panel.” All they have to do is have the ONDCP start issuing blue ribbons to “scientists” that do deliver studies with MTO results.
Almost 120 years worth of studies that agree, “Prohibition is bad, mmm-kay?” and they’re still acting as if the evidence supports the ongoing embrace of the proven epic failure of prohibition as public policy. It’s mind boggling.
Tangentially topical; If you think we reformers in the US have a problem with government deliberately fostering the prohibition racket, watch what reformers in Japan have to put up with.
A nation that once was a major hemp producer has suffered from a case of US-induced amnesia about what hemp is for decades, and its’ reflected in their own laws…adopted (at gunpoint during the Occupation) from us.
Bad enough we’ve fouled our own cultural nest with prohibition; worse that we poisoned the rest of the world with it as well.
When it comes to cannabis/marijuana addiction, where are the bodies? Not those who are coerced into ‘treatment’ via drug courts, but those who are genuinely suffering from addiction to compounds found in the cannabis plant. Those who suffer incapacitating mind and body altering withdrawal when various cannabinoids are withheld. Where the hell are they?
So, over time, I’ve asked various friends, “Do any of you recall any relative, friend, friend-of-a-friend, acquaintance — anybody — being admitted to any rehab facility due solely to marijuana addiction?” The answers came back, without fail, “Nope, never”. And believe me, the people I’ve asked would know (as would I).
The prohibitionists have have created this canard. Kevin Sabet regularly warns of the horrors of legalization and automatic addiction increases like it was the 1920’s.
Liars all.
I think the number of “volunteer” marijuana addicts runs appx 10% of the totals mj addicts in treatment,,60>70% are court ordered and the rest are either work related or family intervention,,I think I got that from a Huffpo article last spring.
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Actually it depends on how you define the word “volunteer.” In most States anyone facing a criminal charge for possession of cannabis is going to be advised by his attorney to “volunteer” to go to rehab before being convicted.
i think this has been posted on dwr before, but it’s absolutely on topic for the rackets…
https://www.aclu.org/prison-profiteers
(more coming up as well so check back)
“And you call yourself a scientist!”
http://my.firedoglake.com/acmerecords/2013/10/18/sabet-slays-science-with-propagandists-sabre/
And another excellent article from the same source at mLaw:
will it be modern madness or reefer madness?
It talks about the same kind of sociological aspects of re-legalized cannabis affecting awareness of just how lying and corrupt our political system is that we reformers have been arguing about for years.
Here’s a taste:
“While any sentient being can see that the debate is hopelessly tilted toward ill-conceived and dangerous support for maintaining federal prohibition by these highly vested parties, we have to remember the deep and ever metastasizing psychological and philosophical toll exacted on our country’s body politic when our citizens chose to use cannabis. Because of this, the editors of mLaw want to go on record to state our belief that:
The use of cannabis by otherwise law abiding, thoughtful, intelligent, productive US citizens is in fact a threat to our current society in general and modern America in particular… (Emphasis is the author’s – k.)
And, although cannabis’ relative safety as a recreationally used substance is not the only concept that an American cannabis user is confronted with upon ingesting this “useful substance†(term coined by writer Thomas Pynchon), this fact does dovetail into our awareness at mLaw of what we view as the most dangerous quality of cannabis: this being, that cannabis users become aware through their personal usage of the substance that they have been surrounded by both liars and cultural custodian know-nothings for their entire lives, which is a paradigm shifting danger that threatens lying and bullying law enforcers, legislators, clergy, educators, health professionals, business owners, media kingpins and parents across this great land.
To be quite clear, it is the awareness of the boldfaced and agreed upon hypocrisy that underpins our nation’s prohibition of cannabis that is in itself paradigm shifting. Of course, appreciating this hypocrisy stoned can be of interest and worthy of speculation about its ramifications, but it ain’t necessary to be high to appreciate the gross hypocrisy and the conscious choices made by those who cooperate with prohibition (as referenced above) that is required to continue the despicable and amoral charade.”
And it gets even better. Go see, it’s worth the mouseclick…
And, as always, I have to marvel that it is those who’ve been accorded the status of pariahs who have been sounding the warning regarding the evisceration of our rights and freedoms and the wholesale corruption of government at the highest levels…while those entrusted to do on the basis of their ostensible moral purity and ethics have been the fastest to grab the modern-day ‘thirty pieces of silver’ for pimping whatever credibility they had in supporting a morally corrupt policy.