San Diego California DUI lawyer commentary

Ever been afraid of stupid people in large groups? Who hasn't.

This is why, though one's own beliefs coincide with many pagan groups and even the Satanic church, one can’t join them. Eventually, if they get big and powerful enough, they spawn True Believers.

True Believers should scare you. They are zealots who insist their agenda is right, but moreso, their lives are such empty wastelands, they have nothing better to do than focus on converting the rest of us to their way of thinking.

Since they can’t change our minds most of the time, they change local, state, and federal laws around us. These changes are usually not based on scientific fact or anything really plausible, but on the opinion or the belief system (BS) of the True Believers themselves.

It’s very sneaky. Using the legal system, they’ve managed to force every other citizen around them to conform and obey to a set of rules in which not all of us agree. Consider the penalities for having a tiny amount of marijuana on your person in just about any US locality, but that you can travel from one state to another and get a hookup for good pot in just a few hours. That’s quite a disconnect between those who fight for stronger pot laws and society at-large.

When you think of True Believers, your first thought might be of the neo-conservative movement and/or Xtian fundamentalists. If you’re under 30, you may be surprised to learn that, once upon a time, religion didn’t play a part in politics at all. Separation of church and state was the norm. Then Jerry Falwell started his Moral Majority - which was neither, based on the number of preachers, priests, and pastors who are regularly caught up in prostitution, drinking/drugs, embezzlement, homosexual, and/or child-abuse scandals - and suddenly ultra-conservative groups were going after harmless drugs like marijuana and MDMA, a woman’s right to choose, and the latest on their agenda, pushing for a Constitutional amendment to deny gays the right to legally marry.

But when you think of True Believers, have you considered Mothers Against Drunk Driving? Any reason not to?

Do you know what your local, federal and state laws and propaganda are regarding drinking alcohol and various stats? Get the scoop.

To maintain all the rights you hold dear now, start paying attention to what organizations like MADD are doing in your own community. If the drinkers and/or smokers got their act together to fight city hall, there may be NO bans on ANY vice whereever you live.

The “DUI crackdown”, along with the accompanying loss of constitutional rights, has been unjustifiably justified by the numbers of deaths on the highways caused by drunk drivers. As the U.S. Supreme Court in Michigan v. Sitz said, DUI “sobriety checkpoints” appear to violate our Fourth Amendment right to be free of suspicionless stops by the police — but this illegal intrusion on our privacy is “outweighed” by the “carnage” on our highways of 25,000 deaths caused each year by alcohol. Where did these statistics come?

Years ago, the statistics kept on traffic fatalities included a category for “alcohol-caused” deaths. To justify such things as sobriety checkpoints, lowered blood alcohol levels and automatic at-the-scene DUI license suspensions, however, these statistics were subtly changed to “alcohol-related”. Not “caused”, but related. This meant that a perfectly sober driver who hit and killed an intoxicated pedestrian, for example, would be involved in an “alcohol-related” incident. Similarly, a sober driver who is struck by another sober driver carrying an intoxicated passenger chalked up another “alcohol-related” death. Further, if the officer believes the driver to be intoxicated but chemical tests show he is not, the death is nevertheless reported as “alcohol-related”. In fact, if the tests indicate the presence of any alcohol at all, say .02%, the fatality will be chalked up as “alcohol-related”.

In 1999, the federal General Accounting Office (GAO) reviewed these figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — and issued a report stating that they “raised methodological concerns calling their conclusions into question ”. The statistics, the GAO report said, “fall short of providing conclusive evidence that .08% BAC laws were, by themselves, responsible for reductions in alcohol related fatalities.” In other words, the statistics weren’t even valid when applied to alcohol-related fatalities, much less alcohol-caused deaths.

So what are the real numbers? The Los Angeles Times also decided to investigate the validity of these statistics. In 2002, NHTSA’s figures claimed 18,000 deaths on the nation’s highways attributable to drunk driving. The Times found that only about 5,000 of these involved a drunk driver causing the death of a sober driver, passenger or pedestrian. (Research by other groups, such as “Responsibility in DUI Laws, Inc.”, indicate the figure is actually under 3,000.)

5,000. A fraction of the number being used by the government and political pressure groups like MADD. Despite this irritating little truth, MADD, law enforcement and federal and state governments continue to use the same false statistics to justify the passage of unfair and unconstitutional DUI laws.

Get MADD now. Why leave it up to old people who are afraid to evolve into 21st century ways of thinking.

You may want to purchase a copy of Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do. The book is back in print, more relevant than ever, and only $9.95 on Amazon.com. A well-informed society doesn’t allow the government to exceed its boundaries.

www.SanDiegoDrunkDrivingAttorney.net/articles