Drunk drivers shouldn’t be allowed to drive.
Do we all agree? All, I mean, except those that choose to drive drunk.
It’s always amazed me when someone or some entity declares a “war” on drunk driving. Those people, those organizations are right in their intentions, but dead-dog wrong in how effective the “war” will be.
A recent newspaper article declared “Holiday drunk driving crackdown under way.” Whee! And I have some swamp land that would make a nifty site for a school.
Sure, law officers can stop cars, do sobriety checks, ticket or jail drivers who are over the legal alcohol limit. But that’s not going to stop drunks from driving.
There’s tough talk around the country close to any national holiday about how anti-drunk-driving programs are going to get tough on those who choose to drink and drive. The most recent admirable slogan told the tale: “Drink. Drive. Go to Jail.”
Good for those who want to get tough on thoughtless drinkers who opt to get behind the wheel after imbibing. The talk needs to be tough. But, unfortunately, talk won’t solve the problem.
The problem is systemic, it’s ingrained in our culture, and it’s not going to go away because of a “crackdown” or a catchy slogan. Drunk drivers have been coddled for far too long in our society and the trend continues despite so-called “tough laws.”
The problem is that society as a whole does not take the problem seriously; a majority of judges and prosecutors don’t either.
The current laws in most states basically sets up punishment for drunk those under 21 caught with illegal booze that include the possibilities of: Loss of driver's license for up to six months; fines up to $500; 20 to 40 hours of community service; mandatory alcohol awareness classes.
For intoxicated drivers, the penalties can be much worse (involuntary shiver goes here), including: Fines of up to $2,000; between 72 hours and six months in jail; loss of your driver's license for up to a year.
See the problem? The penalties are way, way too lenient to do anything but make a dent in the statistics. With legal language stuck into bills that read “fines up to ….”, and “between 72 hours and six months in jail” and “loss of driver’s license for up to a year,” there’s too much judicial wiggle room.
To get drunk drivers off the road, the penalties have to be solid and really hurt. Like, for example: First offense: Confiscation of vehicle, six months in jail and a $10,000 fine.
Harsh? Yeah, buddy, and isn’t that the point? With laws like that on the books, laws which take the option for easy-out punishment away from the judicial system, Texas may have drunks walking alongside roads, but few of them would be driving on them.
Secondary issue
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters was quoted as saying that in 2007, 12,998 people were killed in crashes where a vehicle operator had a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or higher. But she’s happy that that number declined from the previous year’s dead count of 13,491.
It’s always a good thing when the number of deaths by stupidity show a downward trend.
But with all the money and publicity being thrown at the problem, the 3.7 percent decrease is no cause for celebration.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Apathy! It's going to be our doom
$990,000,000.
It’s bigger than it looks at first glance: Nine hundred and ninety million dollars.
That’s your money going bye-bye. It’s not coming back unless a whole herd of constituents in every state and every congressional district get wall-eyed mad and demand their elected leaders stop the uncontrolled looting of the U.S. Treasury.
That’s not going to happen, unfortunately. Because the electorate has become sheep for those they elect.
$990,000,000.
That’s the increase that both houses of Congress voted to give themselves for operate their respective offices: $660,000,000 in the House, $430,000,000 in the Senate.
Yikes! What are our public serpents doing? Is "common sense" no longer a commodity in government? Our elected leaders already get millions to run their offices, now they have voted themselves an increase, eight percent in the House and six percent in the Senate. (It’s not that the senators are more frugal, their base stipend is larger, so the percentage adds up to ever more bucks per official.)
Doesn’t anyone care anymore? Have we all become so anesthetized by Gummit Gone Wild! that we just don't care?
If you do care, set up a hue and cry (at the very least, manage a small “hue”) and tell your elected representative and senators what you think of the shameful way they are spending your money.
That’s the whole point, you know: It’s your money. Or have you forgotten that small fact?
It’s bigger than it looks at first glance: Nine hundred and ninety million dollars.
That’s your money going bye-bye. It’s not coming back unless a whole herd of constituents in every state and every congressional district get wall-eyed mad and demand their elected leaders stop the uncontrolled looting of the U.S. Treasury.
That’s not going to happen, unfortunately. Because the electorate has become sheep for those they elect.
$990,000,000.
That’s the increase that both houses of Congress voted to give themselves for operate their respective offices: $660,000,000 in the House, $430,000,000 in the Senate.
Yikes! What are our public serpents doing? Is "common sense" no longer a commodity in government? Our elected leaders already get millions to run their offices, now they have voted themselves an increase, eight percent in the House and six percent in the Senate. (It’s not that the senators are more frugal, their base stipend is larger, so the percentage adds up to ever more bucks per official.)
Doesn’t anyone care anymore? Have we all become so anesthetized by Gummit Gone Wild! that we just don't care?
If you do care, set up a hue and cry (at the very least, manage a small “hue”) and tell your elected representative and senators what you think of the shameful way they are spending your money.
That’s the whole point, you know: It’s your money. Or have you forgotten that small fact?
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Stirring memories
Big Pines Lodge down on Caddo Lake in East Texas burned to the ground recently. The news flooded my brain pan with memories that had been stored away for almost 20 years. It was enough to almost make a grown man cry.
Big Pines Lodge. Great view of the river channel. Incredible catfish served family style. Jalapeno hushpuppies that looked like snake-devils and tasted better than anything offered up the angels. The coldest beer on the planet served in Mason jars. Displays of fishing lures I didn't need but wanted to buy anyway.
You can forget all that and people would have still showed up. To see and be seen. It was impossible to walk in the front door, saunter pass the fishing tackle and pickled eggs and gimme caps and not see a bevy of people you knew.
It could take a while to mush on through the howdys and the hand-shaking. It was not unlike a murder of politicians descending on a busload of voting virgins. Everybody was glad to see everybody.
One favorite memory: A business acquaintance was taken out to Big Pines for a catfish dinner. The man, a competitive weightlifter from New Jersey, politely declined catfish and ordered a steak with a side order of shrimp.
After a beer or three, this man with a neck the size of a Mac truck tire, started mouthing about how he couldn't fathom how anyone could eat "bottom dwellers" like catfish. "Man," he said in his heavy Joisey accent, "catfish are scum-suckers, eating things on the bottom that other fish wouldn't touch."
He simply wouldn't shut up. It was more than embarrassing.
I finally persuaded him to take a single bite of Big Pines catfish. After having a 16-ounce steak and enough shrimp to feed a homecoming crowd, he ate 12 fillets.
Every Christmas for the next several years, I would get about five pounds of uncooked catfish fillets with hushpuppy makings from Big Pines and ship them to New Jersey (with dry ice, of course).
From a former resident and a person who lives for the resurrection of good memories, please rebuild Big Pines.
Don't try and make it bigger, prettier, better. Just use an old snapshot and follow your heart.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Going home
When I have a stressful week at work, I just walk behind our office and stare at a field that I want to believe used to be a cow pasture.
The cow pasture has sour dock growing wild. (I don't think anyone cultivates sour dock.) My grandmother used to chop it up in salads, or get a bunch of them and squeeze the juice onto salads and fresh-picked green beans. It's like lemon juice only it is from a weed. I walk around the cow pasture and cogitate and suck dock juice.
Everybody has their own way of "going back home."
The cow pasture has sour dock growing wild. (I don't think anyone cultivates sour dock.) My grandmother used to chop it up in salads, or get a bunch of them and squeeze the juice onto salads and fresh-picked green beans. It's like lemon juice only it is from a weed. I walk around the cow pasture and cogitate and suck dock juice.
Everybody has their own way of "going back home."
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Whatcha gonna do about it?
Thieves are spending your money
As a revelation, it was as strong as watered-down tea.
In a report to Congress, the nation’s new Wartime Contracting Commission reported that poor management, weak oversight and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.
What? Contractors gouging the U.S. gummit in time of war? Getouttahere!
There is no doubt that wartime increases the opportunities for thieves to do their handiwork. It’s also no doubt that the gummit penchant for handing out tax dollars allows heretofor honest contractors to start stealing. (But, then again, if they steal now, how honest could they have been previously.)
And, it’s no doubt our elected public serpents continue the practices which allow the stealing because:
1) Few in gummit ever think of tax dollars as “money given in faith by the citizens to do honorable work”;
2) It’s not a practice in Washington-on-the-Deficit to actually check to see if money is being properly spent, and;
3) The penalties for falsifying invoices and records, lying and stealing is akin to a wrist-slap for a murder charge.
The 111-page report details how billions have been misspent in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past eight years. It also details how many corporate thieves are serving time in the federal penal system: Zero.
It would be a cinch to write 2,000 words about projects pushed by lawmakers and lobbyists, and approved by federal employees, and supervised by contractors, which were bogus or sustained overcharges equal to the cost of a moon landing.
But not today. Anger and facts don’t cohabitate well together.
Well, maybe just one example.
At a U.S. base in Iraq, tax dollars were used to build a $30 million dining facility. We’re talking mess hall, here, folks. Not Le Petite Café at Trump Towers. The report said the facility was the result of bad planning and botched paperwork. No mention of fraud or pending charges.
Oh, almost forgot: The existing dining hall had undergone $3 million in renovations in June 2008.
The report also notes the new building project is too far along to stop.
Which brings us to another project: The U.S. embassy in Baghdad. More than $100 million for the world’s largest embassy.
Haysus Crisco Shortening! What are government officials thinking? Oh, excuse me, they are not thinking at all.
They’re just spending. Your money.
One more example before my head explodes: At one base in Iraq, the report noted that military population has dropped to just 62 soldiers. The number of contractors at the base number 338.
Your tax dollars are paying the bill.
What are you going to do about it?
As a revelation, it was as strong as watered-down tea.
In a report to Congress, the nation’s new Wartime Contracting Commission reported that poor management, weak oversight and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.
What? Contractors gouging the U.S. gummit in time of war? Getouttahere!
There is no doubt that wartime increases the opportunities for thieves to do their handiwork. It’s also no doubt that the gummit penchant for handing out tax dollars allows heretofor honest contractors to start stealing. (But, then again, if they steal now, how honest could they have been previously.)
And, it’s no doubt our elected public serpents continue the practices which allow the stealing because:
1) Few in gummit ever think of tax dollars as “money given in faith by the citizens to do honorable work”;
2) It’s not a practice in Washington-on-the-Deficit to actually check to see if money is being properly spent, and;
3) The penalties for falsifying invoices and records, lying and stealing is akin to a wrist-slap for a murder charge.
The 111-page report details how billions have been misspent in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past eight years. It also details how many corporate thieves are serving time in the federal penal system: Zero.
It would be a cinch to write 2,000 words about projects pushed by lawmakers and lobbyists, and approved by federal employees, and supervised by contractors, which were bogus or sustained overcharges equal to the cost of a moon landing.
But not today. Anger and facts don’t cohabitate well together.
Well, maybe just one example.
At a U.S. base in Iraq, tax dollars were used to build a $30 million dining facility. We’re talking mess hall, here, folks. Not Le Petite Café at Trump Towers. The report said the facility was the result of bad planning and botched paperwork. No mention of fraud or pending charges.
Oh, almost forgot: The existing dining hall had undergone $3 million in renovations in June 2008.
The report also notes the new building project is too far along to stop.
Which brings us to another project: The U.S. embassy in Baghdad. More than $100 million for the world’s largest embassy.
Haysus Crisco Shortening! What are government officials thinking? Oh, excuse me, they are not thinking at all.
They’re just spending. Your money.
One more example before my head explodes: At one base in Iraq, the report noted that military population has dropped to just 62 soldiers. The number of contractors at the base number 338.
Your tax dollars are paying the bill.
What are you going to do about it?
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