I’d love to live in a city where I could hit the subway or train 24/7. DUIs are fundraisers for the state, right? Anyone know where those funds are applied?
Is this for real? (Source: HPD officer’s pay tops $172,000 (Houston Chronicle, 4/23/2006):
“Houston Police Officers Make Big Money on DUI
Each drunk driving arrest puts money in the pocket of Houston, Texas police officers who boost salaries up to $172,000 a year through overtime.
Police officers in Houston, Texas are earning massive salaries by arresting individuals for drunk driving. As part of a Driving While Intoxicated Task Force, Officer William Lindsey, Jr. earned $172,576 last year — $7,000 more than the city’s mayor, Bill White. Sergeant Edward Robinson made $161,722.
The task force uses state and federal money to pay overtime for operations intended to curb drunk driving. Officers earn one-and-a-half times the normal salary to attend court proceedings or work patrols and roadblocks on days off or long shifts. Lindsey’s overtime amounted to $100,000 and Robinson’s to $76,055 in 2005. The Houston Chronicle calculated the average salary of the eight task force members at $103,000.
In general, task force officers work late at night, from 9pm to 7am from Wednesday through Saturday. For each arrest, they must make a court appearance where they earn the extra pay. At times, three or four Houston officers will testify during a single drunk driving trial. The state police general practice is to send just one officer to a trial.”
Massive DUI arrests are almost as nauseating as the war machine’s exploitation on a smaller scale. From a distance, it all looks the same to me. The state makes a shi$ ton of money and rationalizes their gain and your loss by emphasizing that this is, afterall, all about our safety (and nothing else could be more important than that!): “Hey, we’re just looking out for you. That’s our job.”
You’d think a wild gang of terrorists were conspiring to steal our cars and go racing on our sidewalks plastered out of their minds, mowing down packs of innocent women and children all day when you consider the colossal fines the state is collecting. The law makes sense, but, how it is applied seems to be increasingly exploited for the state’s gain, not our safety. It’s heading toward no tolerance and we may arrive there during our lifetime.
I fantasize about ending our war efforts and using that money to create a world-class infrastructure. See how many DUIs you get, then. Cars are a massive waste of energy. They should really be a luxury and not a necessity for traveling throughout the U.S.
We could be making this country a paradise with all of the money our so-called leaders are pouring into the middle of a desert in the Middle-East. I’m a little exhausted with watching the PNAC go right down their hit list (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria…blah, blah, blah and yawn) with nary a word of dissent.
You’d think in an open society of free, educated people there’d be an uprise against the boldly sinister political minions, the corporate slaves who drive this once great nation to endless, needless wars.
It’s like the dumbest Dr. Seuss book you’ll ever watch unfold.
We sit back and laugh having been through the movie before, perhaps (?), and watch the retards play our future out. Otherwise, people would be buying tanks and flamethrowers and killing these fu#$ers, right? We might conclude that our indifference, our savage servility is the noblest choice, after all.
Who knows? It’s a fascinating ride, either way, but, I’m pretty sure the revolution won’t be televised because there’s not going to be one.
