Want to see a photo of an aluminum can of soda that exploded in my fridge? (Not from freezing.) This is not supposed to happen, ever. I am a strong supporter of recycling. Did you know the aluminum can you put in the bin becomes part of a new can within six weeks, and saves 95% of the energy? Alas, the thrust is toward making the cans a little cheaper (and weaker) each time. They only hold their shape because of gas pressure.
I have far more interesting news. The band, “Blue Crows”. It being Friday, we played Jimbo’s. The original deal was we played until 9:00 p.m., but I had to help kick band people out after 1:00 and leave the others for the staff. There were not really any new faces but those who came stayed longer than usual. Lots of $5 bills in the tip jar.
As par with musicians, one thing led to another and we had a sax player (Charles) and a lead guitarist (Al) stand in for huge chunks of the evening. It is still a new club (Jimbos) so everything that walks in the door is new. We had total crowd response thanks to stunning, if unfamiliar, interpretations of basic Blues patterns. Even Jo, the barmaid, (who said she could sing but never showed me) was up on stage. The ice is broken, we have played and found a club that loves what we do. Just three miles away.
There was a client in the office today talking about police power, only he didn’t know that was his stance. He pointed out that most criminals were not caught at the end of a long police chase, but by “accident”. I am the arch-opponent of such things, not because I side with criminals, but because these “accidents” usually mean a roadside stop. Freedom cannot co-exist with Law and Order based on police power. Of the two, I support Freedom. I maintain it is not the business of the police who you are or where you live or when you were born. Unless, of course, you break the law, but there are already enough powers and legislation about that. We don’t need any more.
I also believe that Freedom is indivisible. You are not free when enough secret or public records have been created that you can be investigated without your knowledge or permission. It should be made more difficult for the police to “check your identity”, so they won’t do it without a damn good reason.
Nor do I identify with the police who successfully find an outstanding warrant during a checkstop. I side with the hundreds of innocent people who are put through the meat grinder during that highly illegal activity. The Constitution forbids arbitrary search and it is therefore illegal for the police to do so. Some people have a lot of difficulty understanding what “arbitrary” means. Be clear that whatever it means, it includes when the police stop you for an expired tag and then take your driver’s license back to the squad car and run your identity. That, people, is an arbitrary search. Illegal.
Does anybody know if there is a book written about the rise of police power as related to the automobile? That would make great reading. Too many people don’t draw the association between the erosion of freedom as paralleled by increased police powers to “enforce” motor vehicle law.
A good example is police radio. No, it was not a result of any police “concerns” about dispatching a unit to your neighborhood burglary. To hell with your concerns. It was designed to prevent criminals from simply dashing across the county line. Back in the Bonny and Clyde days the Feds had to get involved to enforce a law across jurisdictions. The Constitution made it precisely so to prevent the consolidation of abusive powers by the authorities. Is that clear enough for you? The Constitution limits the power of the authorities and expands the rights you have against authorities.
With a radio, the police could park one car at a convenient location and, by radioing ahead, snag the bad guys before they made it to safety. Usually after the customary but rarely necessary high-speed chase. It was never intended that the radio be used to stop ordinary folk and shake them down. But the police quickly learned to use this awesome power against everybody. Through motor vehicle laws, the police found the nearly ideal method of invading privacy.
You may have to think this one through, but in record time as far as lawmaking goes, it became a requirement to have Identification papers rather than just a license to drive. The vehicle had to be registered although in most cases it was replacing an unregistered horse and buggy. The real breakthrough for the police came when General Motors began a deliberate policy of selling expensive cars on credit payments, around 1928 I believe. That was the strong-arm the police were seeking.
Almost overnight, the automobile became the second most expensive item the average man owned, after his house. The police still needed a warrant to kick in the door of his house, but this automobile thing was new, here was something that could be systematically abused without Public outcry. There was no tradition of tort law protecting motorists. The radio could be used for everything from calling “backup support” when television cameras were nearby, to “running” identity checks which can only be the result of you being presumed guilty.
The police found to their delight that they could pull over a motor vehicle for almost any reason and the owner was invariably terrified of having his property impounded. The ideal situation for an illegal and arbitrary interrogation. The Public was apathetic to anyone stopped, why they simply must have done something wrong, mustn’t they? Driving laws quickly became so complex that most people looked the other way and were just glad it wasn’t their turn. Now, the police could get almost anyone into a corner where it became both expensive and personally dangerous to stand up for their rights.
I would strip the police of this power instantly, to be replaced by traffic cops whose job it was to enforce traffic laws and nothing, repeat, nothing else. If they encountered a non-traffic crime, they could call the police, just like anybody else. Heck, they could even use a radio, right?
One enterprising bureaucrat even cooked up that totally false phrase that has no basis in law, but has since stuck in the brain of every ill-educated member of our society, that driving is “a privilege, not a right”. That saying is total bunk. Driving is, in fact, a right that can be suspended, but never really taken permanently away unless you pose a hazard, and even then, the law which does so is not a motor vehicle statute. For anyone who cares to look it up, all motor vehicle laws are statutory, and my guess is that 80% of statutory laws are unneeded and many are beneath contempt. Some people are never “old enough” to drive, vote, or consent to sex, while others don’t need any help from the system whatsoever. Most people I know don’t.
Now for today’s trivia. Around 25 years ago today, I read specifications for an entirely new device. It was a CD player called the Sony CDP-101 and carried a price tag of $899 in Seattle. It had all the features and identical buttons as a tape deck. I rejected it for the same reasons I would today. It was read only and it was the old “album scam” all over again. Where you had to buy the entire disk to get one or two favorites.
What is more, everyone knew the price would drop and also, Sony had begun the long, slow decline from a reputable company to a leader in consumer rip-offs. You know, selling you your own warranty, unique transformers for every item which cost 2/3 as much as a new unit to replace and the evil that Sony pioneered: quoting the product weight without the hefty, bulky power supply.
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