Posted on January 7, 2009 by John Steele
I like the new year because it is a great time to take stock of the past 12 months, and make the pro forma attempt at the new resolutions that may or may not make it past Jan. 15th. Based on historical evidence, people in strained relationships often include breaking up/divorcing as one of their new years resolutions. Few people wish to begin the process of splitting up their assets and children right before the family centered Christmas period. Which I think is sort of ironic.
There are many new laws to greet us for the new year as well. Few of them seem reasonable, but that rarely stops our state legislature. (They can’t even stop a crook from appointing a new senator!) Rather than overhauling our inept and broken system of child support enforcement, they keep adding fines for crimes committed by people unable to pay the old fines, and forcing first time DUI offenders to get expensive devices in their vehicles in order to get to work. You can always count on our state to raise the costs of living right as the economy is tanking and people are losing their jobs left and right. While I am sounding rather grumpy, consider that the state has increased its fine for people convicted of violating an order of protection. I’m sure that will deter crime. “Gee, I was going to violate that order of protection and beat my loved one, but that $200 just holds me back”.
It reminds me of the while .08 BAC idiocy a few years ago. Statistically, its not the people with a .10 BAC clearing out sidewalks and killing people, its the idiots driving with a .25+ BAC (or old people). But rather than punish those people extra hard, we simply make criminals out of people who had some wine at dinner, while statistically an 80 year old, or someone with .25 BAC is the real threat out there. Don’t hear much about restricting older drivers do you? I think I will save my grumbling about the state child support enforcement agencies for another time. Suffice it to say, there are serious issues there as well.< ![CDATA[
Posted on January 7, 2009 by John Steele
I like the new year because it is a great time to take stock of the past 12 months, and make the pro forma attempt at the new resolutions that may or may not make it past Jan. 15th. Based on historical evidence, people in strained relationships often include breaking up/divorcing as one of their new years resolutions. Few people wish to begin the process of splitting up their assets and children right before the family centered Christmas period. Which I think is sort of ironic.
There are many new laws to greet us for the new year as well. Few of them seem reasonable, but that rarely stops our state legislature. (They can’t even stop a crook from appointing a new senator!) Rather than overhauling our inept and broken system of child support enforcement, they keep adding fines for crimes committed by people unable to pay the old fines, and forcing first time DUI offenders to get expensive devices in their vehicles in order to get to work. You can always count on our state to raise the costs of living right as the economy is tanking and people are losing their jobs left and right. While I am sounding rather grumpy, consider that the state has increased its fine for people convicted of violating an order of protection. I’m sure that will deter crime. “Gee, I was going to violate that order of protection and beat my loved one, but that $200 just holds me back”.
It reminds me of the while .08 BAC idiocy a few years ago. Statistically, its not the people with a .10 BAC clearing out sidewalks and killing people, its the idiots driving with a .25+ BAC (or old people). But rather than punish those people extra hard, we simply make criminals out of people who had some wine at dinner, while statistically an 80 year old, or someone with .25 BAC is the real threat out there. Don’t hear much about restricting older drivers do you? I think I will save my grumbling about the state child support enforcement agencies for another time. Suffice it to say, there are serious issues there as well.
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