Tuesday, June 30, 2020

First misfire of the year

I forgot to post something yesterday. I have no excuse. I just forgot.

Sorry about that. I hope you found something else to entertain yourself with.


I'm gonna say something and you can feel free to disagree with me but as Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts."

First, some facts:
Society is tasked with electing legislators.
Legislators are tasked with creating laws.
Police are tasked with enforcing laws.

Those are factual statements, not opinion. let's see where those facts take us.

Society:
We chose our legislators based on our own personal opinion, our own personal ethos and our own desire to have the life we want to have. Most of us vote for people that we think will represent us and do what we want done.  There are other people who vote for the person that they think is going to do the best job for others. They vote for someone because they think that person is going to help the less fortunate.

Legislators:
Once in office, our legislators are influenced by three things - their personal beliefs, their desire to get reelected and money. Those three things are not listed in any particular order of influence because it is my opinion that it varies with the individual legislator.

Some legislators are strongly influenced by money. It is not a question of whether or not they can be bought, it is a question of price. And the more influential the legislator, the higher the price. This is why there is a $9 billion dollar lobbying industry. This is also why we pay taxes to our legislators. The more taxes they collect, the more money they have to spend on their special projects.

Police:
Police forces are not tasked with preventing crime or resolving civil matters. They are not in place to watch over our persons and property nor are they in place to resolve our disputes. They are not bodyguards, they are not security guards and they are certainly not our parents.

Police are tasked with identifying and detaining individuals who have committed a criminal act. They are then tasked with delivering those individuals to the courts for determination of guilt or innocence.

So what am I getting at? Simple, really: Why are we only focused on the police? Why are we not looking our laws that require the police to arrest people? Why are people being arrested for drunk driving when they have done no harm to anyone? Why are people being arrested for selling single cigarettes, aka "loosies" when the only harm being done is someone is selling something and the state isn't getting a piece of the action?

Stop blaming the police for doing their job and start looking at the laws we have put in place. Maybe if the police didn't have to arrest every person they came across, no matter how meaningless the alleged "crime", they wouldn't be getting into fights with everyone.

Imagine if Rayshard Brooks was woken out of his drunken stupor and all the cops did was take his keys and issue him a citation.

Imagine if George Floyd was given a summons to appear in court to answer to the charge of uttering instead of being arrested.

Imagine if the frightened white guy who calls the police every time he sees a black kid walking through his neighborhood was told by the dispatcher, "Call us back when you actually witness a crime. Someone walking through your neighborhood is not a crime."

We need to change the laws. We need to stop our state and federal legislators from trying to run our lives and get back to common sense. We need to make the position of state and federal legislator a part-time position and stop them from legislating for the sake of legislating. And the single most important thing we need to do is we need to make it illegal for lawyers to run for office.

I'm done know. Feel free to disagree with my opinion but you gotta admit, the facts all point to a system that is a problem at the top, not the bottom.


Well, that should make up for my failure to post.

Now it's time for me to eat some dinner, watch some hockey and then game 1 of the 2018 World Series.

You can visit these if you want:

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