Here's a cookie for Scott: "The war on drugs has created more problems than it has solved."
It's an op-ed by George Jurgensen, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Delaware. It's also part of an ongoing series in the paper, a "public discussion of policy regarding illegal drugs" on the op-ed page that was prompted by a former "tough-on-crime' state prosecutor announcing, on his retirement, that "the war on drugs has failed." (See earlier, "Two cheers.")
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It's April in Delaware, so it's still Homecoming season for corporate America. More than half of America's publicly traded corporations in the U.S. are incorporated in Delaware, including a majority of the Fortune 500. In exchange for a small kickback to the state franchise tax, these businesses receive the protection of some of the most corporate-friendly laws in the world, as well as access to Delaware's "Chancery Court" system, 
Only a tiny percentage of the businesses incorporated in Delaware are actually headquartered there. Many don't employ a single resident of the state. (This is another First State distinctive: Most states suck up to corporations in the name of "jobs," but in Delaware it's all about the franchise tax.) But like college kids at Thanksgiving, they all return to their nominal home for their corporate annual meetings. March-May is "tourism" season in Wilmington — which I suppose does create some jobs, at least for parking valets at the Hotel DuPont.
Back when I worked as a corporate gadfly, I spent all of April in that hotel's "Gold Ballroom" — which really has to be seen to be believed. The decor puts the "gilded" back in the Gilded Age. It's like a pagan temple to Old Money, the walls festooned with garish, pseudo-Greek murals of "Prosperity" and "Fortune." In terms of restraint and class, it is to ballrooms what Mr. T's neck is to jewelry.
Whenever possible, I try to follow Oscar Wilde's advice to "Think with the liberals; eat with the Tories." Annual meeting season was always a good chance to eat with the Tories. But because I also think with the liberals, there will always be those among the Tories who will accuse me of "the politics of envy." We have all this, they say, sweeping one bejeweled hand about the Gold Ballroom. And you don't so you're just jealous. Well, no. A hungry man may envy a man who is well-fed, but a morbidly obese man crippled by his own corpulence isn't envied by anybody. ("Still sounds like sour grapes to me," says the fat man. "Mmmmm, grapes.")
Anyway, annual meeting season still draws not only shareholders, but crowds of protesters to Wilmington every year. I suppose that's good for the local economy too. After all, the dude with the giant inflatable rat has to eat lunch somewhere, right?
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A corporation, of course, is not an individual. Nor is it a part of the State.
Yes, yes, I know. This is obvious and elementary, and I don't want to belabor the point, but I do have some libertarian readers, so let me repeat that.
A corporation is not an individual. A corporation is not the government.
But it does exist.
See, there are actors and entities in the world which are neither individuals nor states. Like corporations, small businesses, unions, churches, families, schools, civic organizations and, well, Libertarian Parties.
I was once having a long discussion with my friend the Lt. Col., who was upset that I seemed overly fond of the Catholic principle of subsidiarity. The Reformed framework of sphere sovereignty, he argued, was more elegant and avoided all the hierarchical, medieval baggage of "higher" and "lower" implied in subsidiarity. Just then we were interrupted by another friend who happened to be a libertarian and I remember being, in a way, envious of him for not having to worry about such things. If you can reduce the world into a simple system of two and only two categories of actors, it's probably a much easier place to think about.
At least until a corporation moves in upstream.
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