Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Last night I had a situation that I found to be quite disappointing. Just after seven o’clock in the evening, I thought I would have dinner at a restaurant on the other side of town and drove over there to dine out. Along the way, I needed to merge onto a major interstate freeway in the metro area having four lanes and busy traffic. As I drove along in the outside lane, it was after dark at the time, I saw a man walking along the hard shoulder of the roadway. I worried that a drunk might veer off the travelled portion and hit him so I pulled over to offer him a ride. Thus began a conversation that really shows how we can often allow people to be put at risk because the county does not want to offer them a modicum of accommodation.
After I picked him up, the gentleman walking around the roadway told me that he had just been released from the county jail after serving time for driving while license suspended. He did not have someone to pick him up from jail so he had no other option but to walk back home. He lived twenty five miles from the jail. The only way he could get home, since he had no money with him, was to walk along a busy interstate freeway.
We previously wrote about the virtual debt peonage and endless circle of jail and further increases of fines with suspended drivers in an article HERE.
It would have taken him until after six in the morning to walk that far. So rather than drive him to the next exit to find another ride I just drove him home.
He was 57 years old, unemployed and had no family available to drive him. He had no other choice than to walk. I asked him if the jail offered him a bus ticket or some other accommodation to allow him to return home after release. He said the jail used to give bus tickets to people in his situation but stopped doing that several years ago.
We had a good visit with each other, but the entire time we were together I could not help but wonder why the county has a system as such that a person of little means is forced to walk twenty five miles home because no effort was made to arrange for his journey. The risk this man faced from being hit by a drunk driver, stopped by the state patrol for being a pedestrian on a limited access freeway, or simply collapsing from exhaustion is certainly not something that we should accept nor something a person released from custody should endure.
I recognize that the sheriff’s office is not a taxi service and has no obligation to provide transport for released inmates after their term has expired, but couldn’t the county at least take a few more steps to ensure that someone can either pick up the inmate or try to prevent a situation where a fifty seven year old does not have to walk twenty five miles to get home?
Is this too much to ask?
By Darren Smith
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
The fraud doesn’t have to be widespread before doing something but it does have to be shown to exist. No matter what is shown here, brennen center, non partisan links and clicks to show that those who continue here to say oh yes there is wide spread fraud are flat out wrong does not matter. Just as the clicks and links that show repubs saying voter laws will help us, and in video clips of these reubs saying exactly that do not matter. The have thei narrative and reality will not get in the way of that. Sad.
I believe “most” people would agree that anyone that qualifies to vote should vote and also that we need to ensure the integrity of the voting system. Those that don’t agree with that should be given a one way ticket to Gfyistan. The rest of us should then come to consensus on the most effective means to accomplish both goals.
We could probably accomplish this in 15 minutes or less; not quite as interesting as the badgering has been but it would certainly me a more productive use of our time.
I’ll agree to that.
chester, I agree. They are often merely a control thing. A sub shop having a non compete is horseshit.
Nick – unless it’s Colonel Sanders special recipe, I guess.
Thank you chestercat.
Olly – Thanks, well said.
chester, They’re legal, if written correctly. The problem is many are not enforceable.
Nick –
I can see the point, really, if the job does cover proprietary information, but stacking roast beef on a roll seems to be overkill (or could be road kill, here in Georgia).
maxcat – it is proprietary info and there is the no compete clause. Why anyone would want to duplicate a Big Mac is beyond me, but I am sure some have tried. People have sought the elusive secret formula to Coca-Cola, pre and post cocaine.
Paul – Big Mac? Sure. Take two pieces of cardboard, add pickles, fake cheese, wilted lettuce, etc. etc.
Funny that you mentioned the pre and post cocaine Coca-Cola. I toured the “World of Coca-Cola” when some friends from Australia visited, and a tour guide categorically denied that cocaine was ever in Coke. Of course, I was the troublemaker who had mentioned it.
maxcat – your tour guide was categorically lying. When you are hook on Coke, you really were hooked on Coke. Coca-Cola is the biggest supplier of legal cocaine in the United States.
Paul –
“maxcat – your tour guide was categorically lying. When you are hook on Coke, you really were hooked on Coke. Coca-Cola is the biggest supplier of legal cocaine in the United States.”
Oh, don’t worry, I knew that! Don’t forget, I’m the history fanatic. I didn’t want to start an argument in front of a tour group with a teenage tourguide, but I knew it was crap. That was the advertising draw for Coke at the turn of the 20th Century. Besides, I had visitors from Australia who already knew I was a smart ass – I didn’t have to prove it! 😉
maxcat – I once took over two docent tours at the same museum because the docents had no idea what they were talking about. In one case, it was a single painting that the woman was misrepresenting. In the other case, it was a special exhibition in which the docent thought they had prints and I could tell they had the real deal. So I took a small group around and showed them how to tell the difference between prints and real art. They should have put me on staff; 🙂
Paul – They should have. Tours like that are fun. I tried to see if I could trip the guide/docent at Jefferson’s Monticello, but he was too good. He had all his facts right, and could answer any question thrown at him. The information was more spotty at Colonial Williamsburg, but they do try to make it more than just an amusement park.
“david – you can be a happy slave and you can be a happy prisoner.”
Paul,
I understand you believe natural rights are in themselves a social construct but that would be impossible. It’s the rights we bring with us ‘when we enter into the social contract’ that makes them natural. I have the natural right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness before I ever encounter another person. We would never be a slave or prisoner alone in nature and it would defy the purpose of the social contract to disable our own natural rights to enter into a social contract. It’s only when we establish a mutual agreement with one or more other person to define how WE will better secure those natural rights that we then begin to create all other rights.
Here is a letter from one of our founding fathers, John Adams, discussing why women, children and the poor should not be allowed to vote. I doubt any will agree much, but it makes for an interesting read, especially because his prediction at the end of the letter has proved true.
http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/adams-to-sullivan.html
“Depend upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation, as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters. There will be no end of it. New claims will arise. Women will demand a vote. Lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to, and every man, who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks, to one common level.”
The right to vote is a product of the social contract, therefore it is not a natural right. Society defines the parameters to qualify to vote and what society gives, they can take away.
And most of them are worthless.
Paul, My daughter worked @ a preschool and they had all their employees sign a non compete. Too many attorneys writing too many non competes.
BFM, DBQ is our indoor plumbing expert.
http://youtu.be/sHeAqeQWZFY
BFM, I’m with you on indoor plumbing.
That cave is starting to look really good! 😉
“Voting is a right, not a privilege. Flying on a plane is a privilege, not a right.”
Bettykath,
A 12 year old can fly on an airplane but they cannot vote; which is a right and which is a privilege?
Pasta and pizza, can’t we all agree that’s good? Ice cream?
@Nick and Olly
Pizza and natural rights seem to overlook those who love tofu.
As much as I love pizza and natural rights I am going to guess we are far from consensus on this issue.
And I think I have a better shot at unanimity with indoor plumbing. Winter is coming on and that should be a powerful incentive to side with me.
“Is there any one thing we can all agree is good without reservation”
BFM,
My experience tells me as long as there are no moral absolutes then, NO! We still might stand a chance if we could agree we have rights that cannot justly be taken away but even that is proving problematic.
This republic can survive without the sense of virtue and morality that typically comes from a belief in a higher power but we will not survive denying the existence of natural rights. Those are the last line of defense against the designs of our sinful nature. Ironically and perhaps by design, it’s the latter that will destroy the former.
” voting themselves huge salaries, perks, and golden parachutes while shipping jobs overseas, keeping wages low, and outsourcing as much as possible to the taxpayers”
Actually, capturing compensation committees so as to control salary and bonuses, privatizing and outsourcing are all ways of avoiding risk.
The trick is to find ways to encourage risk taking so we can get the good things it produces, while minimizing the excesses that can come with it.
That is not so easy. And it is complicated by the fact that we do not all agree on what the bad things are. Is there any one thing we can all agree is good without reservation – maybe indoor plumbing with accompanying sewers and public sanitation. After that it gets complicated.
As bad as things are it still beats living in a cave wishing somebody else would hurry up and invent fire.
bfm, “I have a theory too. CEO’s, entrepreneurs, innovators, pioneers, and cowboys are all risk takers. America was made great by risk takers. And some of them happen to be criminals, too. ”
Yep. America, whatever it is, was made by risk takers. Many of them have despoiled the country with all kinds of toxic and poisonous substances and devastated natural habitat resulting the extermination, or near extermination, of many species, while voting themselves huge salaries, perks, and golden parachutes while shipping jobs overseas, keeping wages low, and outsourcing as much as possible to the taxpayers. Yep, gotta love the risk takers.
bettykath – if the risk-takers are the ones who settled America, genetically what are the Progressives? They aren’t risk-takers. Are they some genetic drift?
So happy to learn that Paul knows every Progressive in the country, as I know he wouldn’t make just a blanket statement. I now have to look back on some of the risks I took in life and call them “course corrections”.
maxcat – well, be honest, when you became a card-carrying Progressive you gave up risk-taking for yourself and everyone else. That is the forward banner of Progressism, to protect us from ourselves.
Paul – Sure, because entrepreneurs are so brave and daring. Case in point?
http://www.businessinsider.com/jimmy-johns-noncompete-agreements-2014-10
Now, THAT’S brave! Making minimum wage 16 year old workers sign…
maxcat – I saw, but did not read that non-compete article from Jimmy John’s. Not unusual for businesses to do that. Worked at a school where they thought they owned any software I designed in my spare time.
Paul – I can understand non-compete clauses in contracts if you feel that someone could gain a competitive edge on you, but a 16-year old making sandwiches for minimum wage? As someone I know said, if you live in a small town, that might cut you out of most of the jobs in the area.
Nick – I don’t know how legal they are, but I’m not a lawyer.
maxcat – I have not read the article. Usually non-competes can only be upheld if it is a reasonable distance, maybe 25 miles. And in this economy a lot of the workers at my Jimmy John’s are adults. Good way to learn the business. Move out with some capital and start up your own place 🙂
Paul – I live in a college town, where most of the Jimmy Johns workers are college students. I never realized that sandwich stacking was proprietary information!! 😉
DAvid, “They simply have to make a little bit more effort to be allowed the privilege of voting. Just like if they want to go fly on a plane, they need ID. If they want to go out of the country, they need a passport and possible a visa. What is wrong with requiring them to lift a finger for the privilege of voting?
Not only should they need ID, they should show they have some understanding of who and what they are voting for. Don’t you want to make sure they are voting for what they want? This is a MUCH bigger problem than a few thousand people not being able to vote because they don’t have ID.”
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Voting is a right, not a privilege. Flying on a plane is a privilege, not a right. Leaving the country is a right, unfortunately, coming back should be a right but its treated as a privilege.
There’s a problem with the idea that people need to have some understanding of who and what they are voting for. How is that determination made? Who decides? If my local BoE, those folks who consider me ineligible to work the polls, gets to decide, what are the chances that they will consider me ineligible b/c I want to vote for someone other than an R or D, or none of the above? Why is it any of their business? With the billions being spent to misinform us, who knows what we’re really voting for?
bettykath wrote: “Voting is a right, not a privilege.”
Prove it.
The word “right” is used loosely in regards to voting. If you attempt to be precise as to right or privilege, it would be a misnomer to call voting a right.
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Here are the definitions generally used to distinguish between a right and privilege:
A right is an inherent, irrevocable entitlement held by all human beings from the moment of birth. For example, the right to life.
A privilege is conditional and granted by government. For example, the right to vote, which in our country in modern times is granted only to those who are 18 or older.
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Because government decides all the terms for voting, then voting is considered a privilege and not a right. Who is allowed to vote is determined by government.
When our country did not allow women to vote and did not allow slaves to vote and did not allow native born Americans to vote and did not allow 18 year old white men to vote, there were no rights violated.
It is solely up to government who is allowed to vote. If the government says 18 year olds can vote, then they can. If the government says we will have equal voting, then everyone gets one vote. If government says property owners will get an extra vote, then that is what happens. If government says the electoral college will elect the President, then that is what happens. If government says no, the popular vote will elect the President, then that is what happens. If the government says that the Vice President presides over the Senate but is not allowed to vote except in the case of a tie, that is what happens. The Vice President’s “right to vote” is not being violated. The government says he does not have the right to vote, and so he doesn’t.
Nobody’s right to vote are being violated because of the rules that government sets up. If the rule is that you must have ID, nobody’s right to vote is violated. If the rule is that you don’t have to have ID, then that defines the right to vote without ID. But in strictly technical terms, it is not a right but a privilege because it is an entitlement conferred by government.
If the government made it mandatory for everyone to vote, then the right to vote is an obligatory duty. Nobody’s right not to vote is violated because the right not to vote would not exist.
The point is that voting is more of a governmental privilege determined by government and not some inherent right of mankind. The Democratic Party has fooled so many with their fallacious rhetoric about voting being some champion cause for a basic fundamental human right.
David –
You really work hard to be sure that you’re right, don’t you? Even if you have to twist words into pretzels.
“A right is an inherent, irrevocable entitlement held by all human beings from the moment of birth. For example, the right to life.”
If I read you correctly, then, one of Jefferson’s inalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness, is really not a right, since that isn’t really inherent now, is it?
If you please, I would prefer Jefferson’s ideas and ideals to yours, even if he only paid lip service to slavery. He remains one of my heroes.
chestercat1 wrote: “If I read you correctly, then, one of Jefferson’s inalienable rights, the pursuit of happiness, is really not a right, since that isn’t really inherent now, is it?”
You do not read me right. The right to happiness (which Jefferson substituted for Locke’s term property) is an inherent right that everyone is born with. Nothing I said should make you think otherwise. The government does not grant you the right to happiness. You are born with that right.
David –
What, then, ensures that right to happiness? Is it, as you believe, flying on an airplane rather than voting for someone who you might believe would “secure these rights”? Jefferson, for one, did not believe, that they were miraculous and intrinsic. In fact, his words were, “to SECURE these rights, governments were instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” What is consent of the governed other than voting?
chestercat1, government secures these rights, but voting is not the only way to measure the consent of the governed. A government can have no voting at all, and if the governed are happy, that is government with the consent of the governed. Families usually are run this way, without voting. The leader of the family measures his success by the happiness and prosperity of those he governs.
Look, I’m not against voting. I think it is an appropriate way for government to gage whether those being governed agree with the policies and actions of government. But we should not confuse this vehicle of voting with the idea of inherent rights.
When our country was founded, many states required a person to own fifty acres of land in order to vote. Until 1807, in New Jersey, women and free blacks could vote if they owned property. When the property requirement was taken away, the vote was limited to white men.
The idea of a bicameral Congress, with our Senate being two from each State, was Madison’s solution of satisfying the idea of having votes based upon property. The House had the vote based upon population, but the Senate had the vote based upon property. Originally, Senators were voted into office by the State legislatures. Was that a violation of the rights of the people to vote? I don’t think so. But later the Constitution was amended so that the people voted for Senators. Either way is fine. Voting rights are whatever government decides it to be.
These are rational solutions for the best way to run government. There is nothing inherently special about voting. It is a way that government measures the consent of the governed, but it can be done in a number of different ways.
Aren’t children also governed by government and affected by our laws? Why not give them the vote too? Why not lower the age to 13, or maybe 16? If they are old enough to drive a car, why not also be old enough to vote? Are we violating their rights by not giving them the vote? I don’t think so.
David –
Should we back up and say that it was well and good in 1787? I’m aware of how and why the Senate was set up, and who was allowed to vote. I’m also aware of which amendments gave which people the right to vote, including the one which gave me that right. It’s not one I’m giving up easily, and if you don’t feel that there is anything “inherently special about voting”, then by all means, don’t. You are very cavalier about my, or others, rights.
Speaking of voting age, 16 is legal in Scotland. I also have a problem, now that we’re on “age of consent” issues, with 18 year old men and women being old enough to die for their country but not old enough to drink. I understand MADD’s viewpoint, but the drinking age was 18 when I went to college, and in talking to college students in Athens now, it doesn’t seem as if drinking has lessened. Oh, they don’t do it in bars any longer, but rather in dorms or at home.
maxcat – those states who took your viewpoint and lowered the drinking age found a significant rise is alcohol related traffic accident deaths. So most of those states went back to 21.
David – I’m sorry. I cannot, in good conscience, continue to debate this. That ANYONE could be for restricting a vote is beyond me. To equate John Adams, writing with the sensibility of an 18th century man with today’s United States is too much of a stretch for me to believe, and I’m a great fan of Adams as well.
Paul – I didn’t know that. Perhaps we could learn and raise the allowable age for dying in military deaths to 21 as well.
chestercat1 wrote: “Jefferson, for one, did not believe, that they were miraculous and intrinsic.”
Of course rights are not miraculous. I don’t know anybody who believes that. But Jefferson did believe certain rights are intrinsic, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He did not believe voting rights were intrinsic, nor did he believe people had a natural right to inheritance.
David – You answered part of my post, yet ignored the next sentence of the Declaration. I’m not at all surprised, though.
chestercat1 wrote: “David – You answered part of my post, yet ignored the next sentence of the Declaration.”
I have no idea what you are trying to say. I think I mentioned agreement with it, perhaps in another post. It is hard to know which post you are talking about since you did not reference it.
david – you can be a happy slave and you can be a happy prisoner.
Paul C Schulte wrote: “you can be a happy slave and you can be a happy prisoner.”
How true. Many slaves did not want to be freed. They had good masters who took care of them and treated them well. Hebrew slaves were required by law to be released every 7 years, but if the slave did not want to be freed, he had to become a slave for life. He was called a bond slave.