Jak's View From Vancouver

Drunk Drivers Need To be Stopped

A very disturbing report was issued today, showing that we are losing the battle against drunk drivers.  We are losing it most especially against repeat drunk drivers:

"Repeat drinking drivers were responsible for 6.6 million drunk-driving trips in Canada last year; that adds up to about 90 per cent of all drunk-driving activity,” a research scientist said. “Clearly this group isn't getting the message."

We MUST do something about this.  I have several ideas:

a)  injury and death caused by a drunk driver must be treated as assault causing grievous bodily harm and murder respectively;  there can be no excuse for some lesser offense such as vehicular manslaughter.  After all the publicity, a drunk driver -- especially a repeat offender -- knows in advance that driving while drunk is as dangerous as flashing a gun around in a drunken state.  It is a premeditated offense and should be treated as such;

b) assuming no injuries or death, a first offense of drunk driving should carry a jail sentence, a long period of banning from the road after the jail sentence has been served, and a substantial fine;

c) driving while banned or a second drunk driving conviction should carry a ten year minimum sentence and a lifetime ban from driving;

d) driving drunk a third time should carry a mandatory life sentence.

e)  we should adopt a 0% alcohol limit while driving.  You can drive as much as you want.  You can drink as much as you want.  You cannot do both together.  Period.

I have no sympathy for ANY drunk driver under ANY circumstances, ever.  If they rot in jail at least the rest of us will be safe from their criminal negligence.

Stairs II

'Tis The Season

Sorry for the lack of posts.  I've been really quite lazy this holiday.  It is the first year for a while that we have chosen to stay home, and it is amazing (a) how much needs to be done around here and (b) how lazy one can get when naps are available.   I'll be back!

Imagine ...

... life with John Lennon around for the last 27 years.  It's easy if you try.

Free Enterprise My Ass

The true free enterprise economic system has been moribund in the US for decades.  When so much of the economy is tied up in the anti-competitive government-managed military-industrial-financial complex, then "free enterprise" becomes no longer  a part of reality, simply a useful rhetorical tool.  This has been going on since before World War Two.  But we may soon have a real date to hang on to as the "Death of Free Enterprise Day".

Within the next week or so, we expect the Bush Administration to enact regulations that will fix (i.e., mandate) low interest rates for those house buyers who are classed as sub-prime even when their contractual obligations call for those interest rates to rise steeply in the next months.  In other words, house buyers in the US are being told that it doesn't matter that they purchased a house they could not afford;  someone else will come along and help them pay the bill.  No worries.  Of course, for those tax-payers (and their grandchildren) who will be told to pay these bills there might be some worries.

The Democrats are pushing much the same interest-rate freeze proposals.  Hillary Clinton, for example, came out with hers this morning. 

Both the Democrats and Bush will say they are doing this to help the poor Americans who dug this hole for themselves, to help save them from inevitable foreclosure.  They will say it is the duty of hardworking American taxpayers to pay up to help this unfortunate group save their homes.  Such bullshit this all is.  Both plans in reality seek to save the grasping financial markets from meltdown. 

Both the Democrats and the administration know that the real losers in any genuine sub-prime meltdown are not the new homeowners (who will simply return to their lives in low-rent apartments) but the finance companies who will never be able to sell the repossessed houses at the prices the companies paid for them.  It is the finance companies the American taxpayers will be bailing out -- again!

Thought for The Day

"Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it until it comes to have a separate and integral interest.  To regret deeply is to live afresh."

-- Henry David Thoreau