Kristin Davis rose to notoriety as the madam who provided New York Attorney General and Gov. Eliot Spitzer with the escorts that led to his demise. Davis ended up going to jail for providing a business populated by and for consenting adults. Spitzer’s penalty? Possibly getting a show on CNN.
Now Davis herself is running the Empire State’s top slot in Albany, on a platform this is simple and straightforward in libertarian sanity: She wants to legalize (and tax) marijuana and prostitution. For a state as deep in the red as New York, that’s no joke. She has also proposed liberalizing gaming laws and called for gambling casinos in the Catskills.
I built a multi-million dollar escort service from scratch before pleading guilty to promoting prostitution. Prostitution in New York is estimated to be a $5 Billion a year business. Legalization and a reasonable tax rate could bring $ 1Billion in new revenues to New York State each year. Legalizing Marijuana would reap another $2 Billion a year. Then New York could balance the budget and still cut property and income taxes.
The article goes on to say,
Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie sat down with Davis to talk about her platform, the hypocrisy of elected officials, and her coming web-based reality show, Madam Governor, which will document her campaign.
What is the first thing that happens in a revolution?
Natan Sharansky, the Russian political prisoner turned Israeli politician always said, “politicians should go to prison before they are in office.”
I’ll just warn her on the effect of casinos on a state budget – we have lots of them in Iowa now and we’re deep in debt. As long as Democrats and Republicans control the legislature, they just find new schemes to get rid of that money. Not that we shouldn’t have gambling, people should be free to spend their entertainment dollars how they wish, but its not a paneca for budgets.
She comes across as a credible candidate, although perhaps a bit heavy on a couple issues and light on a couple others. Maybe she and Wayne Root should talk about a Presidential ticket possibility.