Thursday

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.---Thomas Jefferson The art of governing is in eroding the rights of the citizenry in the name of public safety.---Me When the government comes up with new and improved ways to protect me from myself, I reflexively resist. I don't like being told what to do. I generally think I can figure it out myself. It is human nature for those with power to seek more power. Not usually because they are bad people, although sometimes they are, but because they get seduced into thinking that the power vested in them, makes them wiser than the rest of us. A few weeks ago I was entering a public venue and a security guard told me to "pat my pockets", so that she could see that I wasn't carrying any prohibited items. Apart from the absurdity of the request, I deeply resented the intrusion. Since when am I subject to search on the whim of a minimum-wage security guard? If you have ever been a member of a neighborhood association or a tenant board you have seen this in action. People who would otherwise go about their business, suddenly develop a penchant for making up rules and finding transgressors. Technology has unleashed a whole new set of tools for people in power to lord over the people who put them in power and I don't like it one bit. I never got used to the crazy idea that God watched my every move, so I sure can't get behind the government doing it. The point of all that blather is that our fair city has contracted with an outfit called American Traffic Solutions to catch traffic violators though the use of mobile camera vans and cameras at stop lights. There is an article in the evening paper today reporting that the police are just as pleased as punch about the preliminary results of this "tool". It is for our safety, don't you know. Only a cynic would suggest that there is a barrel of cash for the vendor and our city to divvy up. This creeps me out. A bunch of people, who have no law enforcement power under the city charter or state law are being paid to be snitches for the police. The more they snitch, the more they get paid. I don't have a personal ax to grind with traffic enforcement, since my one and only speeding violation occurred in 1970. I do have serious concerns about expanding the ability of the government and their enforcement arms to monitor my life. As Mrs. Sneed reminds me, I just don't like being told what to do, especially by snitches hiding in a van beside the road. Speaking of bad behavior, I may have accidentally called two guys dumb asses at the golf course today. They were a hole ahead of us. The accidental part was that one of them heard me. The course was very crowded and we spent considerable time waiting for these two fellows. They in turn, spent considerable time waiting on the guys in front of them. It was slow all around and the last thing I needed was two old buzzards inventing ways to be even slower. On the twelfth hole, we were standing on the tee box and the two guys were putting on the green. One guy, the dumb ass in question, putted once and missed. Then he putted again and missed, leaving his ball about a foot from the hole, as near as we could see. Rather than tapping it in, he marked his spot and picked up the ball. then he replaced it and crouched down to eye the putt. This is the moment when I said, "Just putt the ball dumb ass." After all, this is amateur recreational golf, not the Masters. At the sixteenth hole, the other guy, not dumb ass, came over to the Seafood King and told him that they had been waiting on the guys in front of them all day. Seafood, told the guy that he knew that. The guy then wanted to know why someone in our group called them dumb asses? Seafood offered the lamest response ever, which was something like, the offender (me) was talking to himself (me) and not them. First of all, this guy must have super sensitive hearing because he heard me from a distance of 150 yards. Secondly, I didn't call them both dumb asses, just the other guy, so he shouldn't make accusations based on faulty evidence. Beyond that though, I told Seafood that he should have told the guy to ask me, since I am the one who said it, instead of offering a transparent, embarrassing excuses, that just made him look like he's lying, which he was. He is convinced that he saved me from a lot of grief. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky