Madam-Turned-Pol Kristin Davis: Can NY Stand a Gov Who's Convicted *Before* Taking Office?

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," she writes. "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."

Additionally, she wants to legalize gay marriage because the state shouldn't discriminate and highlight the inequities of a criminal justice system that treats the politically powerless far worse than the politically powerful. Read more here.

Davis' official campaign site is at http://www.kristindavis2010.com/

Davis has enlisted the aid of legendary political operative Roger Stone for a campaign which has no chance of knocking off presumptive gubernatorial shoe-in Andrew Cuomo. But her run gives voice to a series of issues that deserve to be heard now more than ever. And her run gives form to a vision of smart governance and policy that is not simply provocative but utterly persuasive.

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.

Shot by Dan Hayes and Meredith Bragg; edited by Bragg. Approximately 5 minutes.

Go to http://reason.tv for downloadable versions. Subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel for automatic notification when new material goes live.

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[bigboss686]

EXACTLY, I'm personally for the legalization of drugs, but I've always found it kind of hypocritical that libertarians say we need to make it legal. So that we can tax and regulate it..........WTF?

If you legalize it for the sole purpose of taxing and regulating it all you're going to do is turn it into the tobacco industry.

[Sunfadedlovejaded]

ELLIOT SPITZER SHOULD BE IN PRISON!!

[felpaluche]

amazing for a woman

[randellmd]

next they'll want to legalize murder, rape, robbery, pedophilia, extortion, and the like. Legislate all immorality. how idiotic are people getting.

[nicktesla45]

She's got my Vote !! I say Down with all the Hypocrisy will also bring up revenues into the state . 

[ikill4klondikebars]

The only real way around this would be that legalizing it would allow people to grow it themselves which would take the product away from the cartels. And really, it's pointless to keep it illegal. Saying you can't smoke a plant is like saying you can't eat a tomato. All the fruits and vegetables we eat grow naturally on this planet. As does weed. Granted you likely wouldn't go out and smoke poison sumac, but still.. The founding documents of this nation were written on hemp paper.

[bigboss686]

I see reading comprehension isn't your strong point, that's sad. Fact of the matter is that the housing bubble shows that Vegas was indeed built on Keynesianism, trying to build an economy on drug legalization, prostitution, etc. is essentially the same thing, it relies on irresponsible behavior to feed it, when people save their money and behave responsibly, such places suffer economically.

BTW the fact that Vegas elects Harry Reid also shows I know what I'm talking about ;-)

[sleedolfine15]

I do love fantasy--The Lord of The Rings, The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter,etc,but only good fantasy--fantasy somehow connected to reality & your theory about how the world works fail that test--especially if you(and Obama) believe Keynesianism actually works. Heck,I doubt that even Lord Keynes's ghost believe in it anymore. Vegas's prosperity predates any bubble because except in bad time like these when people lack extra income for luxuries ,Vegas always makes money & will again.

[bigboss686]

LOL I know your feelings are hurt by the truth but that's just the way it is, suck it up and deal with it. The fact of the matter is that most of those places curtail almost every other kind of libertarian thought process. BTW Las Vegas is a terrible example because it was primarily not libertarian philosophy that put it where it was, it was the leftist bubble economy through the Fed/real estate. Keynesian economics lies do not equal libertarian philosophy

[sleedolfine15]

You're like the person who walks into a room where a lot of tall people are eating sandwiches and say," Hmmm.there are a lot of tall people eating sandwiches,therefore eating sandwiches must be the cause of people being tall" The fact that something is happening someplace does not mean that everything which happens at the same time establishes a cause & effect relationship. By the way,Vegas was,until the economy fell apart,both one of the most libertine & prosperous cities in the US.

[bigboss686]

And yet every area that has lax or no laws on those things is pretty much a left-wing juggernaut in every other area of governance. Abusive tax codes, vast welfare states, curtailing of free speech etc. All are omnipresent wherever those things are legalized, yet there's no correlation according to you LOL.

I think people should have more freedom to do with their body what they like, however I'm under no illusion that that will solve all these social problems part and parcel