First post

I have never posted anything yet. I have been a little uneasy about trying "blogging" because I am highly unfamiliar with the ins and outs and I expect therefore to make some basic and pretty foolish mistakes. I also tend to hold opinions which seem to differ from those of many others. I look forward to any interesting and positive comments.
I'm sending this opinion out as a trial balloon, to see what responses I'll get and simply to begin learning the basic process of posting and receiving comments.
Recently in my part of the world there is a great deal of attention being paid to gang violence. Politicians are making frenzied pronouncements as to how they will stop this violence. I think there is one basic premise which they are ignoring.
Gangs are presumably profitable, whether through drug dealing, weapons sales, illegal sale of alcohol or tobacco products, extortion, or whatever else they may do. It seems to me that it is essential for these profits to be "laundered". If this money laundering could be stopped, gang activity would dwindle because the profits could not be used. I expect that this will never happen because the practices used by gangs to launder their money are also widely used in supposedly legal business activity and in government financing. Businesses and government want these practices (often a matter of "creative accounting") to continue, as they find them useful.