The Liquor Talking

It’s Thursday, April 19, 2012 and as usual, lots of crummy weather for the opening week of turkey season.

Still the season is upon us and I am not the only one happy about it:

Naturally, we have yet to harvest any birds. I mean what kind of lunatic takes his/her bird during the opening weekend? That’s just nuts! This part of the season is more shopping than hunting. Of course the wife can do without the alarm clock going off at 4:00 AM, but that’s just for a while longer.

1. Turns out Montana has a law that requires police officers to report the race of people they give traffic tickets to. On two of the four copies of the ticket, there is a box for the officer to put in the recipient’s race. On the other two copies, this area is blacked out.

   Apparently, this information goes up to some database in the sky and is used to determine if an officer is giving more tickets to members of certain races. I guess it’s to combat racial profiling.

   

   According to our police chief, the info is blacked out on the citizen’s and the court’s copy because police aren’t allowed to ask the question and have to guess. This is to prevent people getting pissed should the officer guess wrong.

   Okay, I can kinda buy that. While I personally don’t care what race someone else thinks I am, I can appreciate that some people are sensitive to this sort of thing. I think if I were still a cop and had to participate in this data mining mission, I’d put everyone down as “unknown.”

   But, that’s just my inner passive-aggressive coming out.

   This bugs me in a couple of ways.

   This racial profiling thing…

   Some call it “racism.” Some call it “playing the odds.” Other still call it “doing what works.”

   A few years ago, I got pulled over because someone with a truck similar to mine had driven off without paying for $60 worth of gas. A quick look at my fuel gauge confirmed that it wasn’t me. At that time, $60 would be more than enough to fill up. Since I had less than a quarter of a tank, it was obvious that it wasn’t me.

   I assumed that would settle the matter. The cop however wanted to look inside my truck to include the toolbox in the back.

   Now, his reason for wanting to search my truck was obvious. I had long hair, a beard, tattoos and a general appearance of someone who might have a crate of AK-47s and a few pounds of dope.

   I was being profiled. Not racially profiled, but profiled all the same.

   My declining his request led to a rather terse discussion of why he wanted to search my truck and why I didn’t want him to. It finally boiled down to his willingness to obtain a warrant or in the least, have a K9 unit come by to give a quick walk around.

   After wasting about 20 minutes of my time, the cop decided to let me go.

   Okay, I don’t begrudge the cop for pulling me over. I can assume that my truck vaguely matched the description of the one involved in the gas theft. I also can’t blame him for wanting to search my truck. At first glance, I do at times look like someone who might just be up to no good. My unwillingness to engage in unnecessary discourse could be construed as my having something to hide.

   A good deal of police work involves intuition and instinct. I can see how the cop might have confused me for a ne’er-do-well ruffian as opposed to someone who simply doesn’t like other people nosing about his stuff.

   

   But I think what really troubles me is that the authorities appear to be hiding the fact that they’re collecting this information. Blacking out the section on the recipient’s copy of the ticket is a clear indication that they don’t want the recipient to know what’s in that section. Like I said, I can kinda buy the police chief’s explanation, but when it comes to information gathering, I’m thinking that honest transparency is the way to go here.

   But, since it’s a racial thing, it’s impossible to have a rational discussion on the matter.

2. I get nervous whenever liberals start talking about fairness.

   

   Which is why I’m pretty tickled about the senate republicans blocking imposition of the so-called “Buffet Rule.”

   The rule basically would have imposed a higher tax burden on people earning more than $1 million dollars a year.

   Not to be confused with the “Buffet Rule” which allows one to take all they can eat, but requires that they eat all that they take.

   

   Okay, so it looks like the President has tripped back into the universe where Spock has a beard. Apparently, the republicans voted “once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few Americans at the expense of the middle class.”

   So maybe one of my more liberal readers can help me out here. How exactly does raising taxes on wealthy people help the middle class? I don’t see anything here about reducing taxes on the middle class. If it’s about reducing the deficit, I’m again not seeing how taxing the wealthy can even put a minor scratch in $15 trillion we’re in the red.

   But it’s about fairness isn’t it? Wealthy people can afford a bigger tax burden, so it must somehow be logical that they should.

   While we’re at it, those bastards should pay more for other things too. How fair is it that Warren Buffett and his lot pays the same $3.66 a gallon for gas as the rest of us poor stiffs? How fair is it that they pay the same for snuff when it’s abundantly clear that they can afford to pay more?

   We’re all about the fairness, right? Since it’s logical they pay more in taxes, because they can, doesn’t it follow that they should pay more for other stuff too?

   

   Well shucks then. I guess I’m not understanding this fairness stuff at all.