plee0956

Tired Traveller, I want to say that for the most part I agree with your point that Prostitution should be legalized but it does (for public safety sake at least!) need to be controlled. The reason that congressmen and women do not vote it into law is because voting any other way would lose their next election for sure. Allowing Escort services allows the management that run the service say that whatever occurs between the escort and the customer is up to them which is why escort services survive even the Puritanical state of MA. So the control part of the equation would be, if a town votes to not allow prostitution in the town, then then it should be illegal in the town. I was at a town meeting in my town where a company wanted to open an adult store with books magazines and videos ... etc. The townfolk wanted to outright vote no but I stood up and recommended that we allow a zone for adult stores but zone it in an industrial zone thus allowing us to deny licensing anywhere else in the town. I argued that if we just denied the licensing we could end up in court if the company petitioning was so inclined (other towns have lost those appeals). The zone was passed but the company decided not to open in our town at that point. My point is I think we should approach prostitution the same way (make it legal, require prostitutes to license and get tested every 6 months (or more), pay the town local taxes, report income, the whole nine yards (oh and let them make a decent wage and no pimps as a bonus). P.S. the part about Nancy Pelosi and insider trading is just wrong ... Insider trading is when an officer of the company who has insider information about the company that the public does not know cannot use that information to buy and sell publicly traded shares in the company based on that information. A politician does not have insider information unless they sit on the board of that company. Martha Stewart received insider information from her friend Peter Bacanovic (a Merrill Lynch broker) who heard from Sam Waksal that his company ImClone’s cancer drug had been rejected by the Food and Drug Administration before this information was made public. She sold her shares based on that information which saved her ~ 45K. Nancy Pelosi had no insider knowledge but she had reasonable knowledge that a particular piece of legislation regarding credit card companies was being considered by Congress (by the way the public can also have this information if they wish risking death by boredom from watching C-SPAN). She bought 5000 shares of VISA stock at it's IPO of $44/share (She, like other rich investors had access to those shares via their broker). Within days the stock was over $60. She did not sell and take profits she bought more shares at 64, then even more at $84 like a savvy investor. Many other rich investors who were not in Congress did the same thing and you are not calling them insider traders. Nancy by the way is quite wealthy as she is married to a venture capitalist worth more than $21M.