Most lawyers and judges are not scientific-minded individuals. They view scientific tests and scientific analysis the way that many religious people view their deity. They don’t understand it, but they have faith in it. When things come up that might challenge their beliefs, they stick their heads in the sand. They are absolutely certain that what they believe is correct no matter how much evidence there may be to the contrary. Obvious flaws in their beliefs are just anomalies. They trust whatever they believe, ignore evidence to the contrary, and don’t think too hard about any of it. As frustrating as it may be dealing with that mindset from prosecutors and judges as a defense lawyer, most DUI cases are tried before juries. I’ve found that DUI juries with scientists and doctors on them tend to acquit even when the state’s case seems strong. I’m never surprised when that happens.

A serious problem arises when the court prevents the jury from hearing important information that might call into question the reliability of the scientific testing in a case. It isn’t like that physician or scientist juror is going to just assume there’s a problem without any evidence of one, and judges are frequently all too willing to preclude important information about the testing equipment and methods. They claim there’s no evidence there had been an error in this case. Judges demand an offer of proof from the defense before they’re willing to admit evidence of the countless other errors the machine has made. Instead of making the state bear the burden of proving the test was accurate and admitting all of the information that might cast doubt on its accuracy, judges regularly presume the results are accurate and preclude any information to the contrary.

Take the software some jurisdictions use to view and print gas chromatography–mass spectrometry results in DUI cases, for instance. Interviewing different state experts, they’ve all admitted to me that there are numerous issues with the software. They describe different instances in which the software has mixed up samples. They claim they’re “clerical” errors and not “analytical” ones, but the errors caused incorrect results nonetheless. Moreover, the state never corrected the cause of those errors. Instead, the people performing the tests just tested the samples in a slightly different manner that seemed to fix the problem. Not a single person working for the crime lab can say why the software made the mistake, as none of them know the first thing about computer programming. The state can’t produce a single witness who can testify the issues the state never bothered fixing might be causing problems in other areas as well. Good luck finding a judge who will let you ask the state’s expert about software problems. Without an offer of proof about a known software problem in your exact case, the jury never gets to hear about the fact the software screws up constantly in a variety of different areas.

Expect the government to push the boundaries of the leeway it has been given. I envision the state qualifying certain government employees to operate a Magic 8-Ball of guilt or innocence. Specially trained officers, let’s call them “culpabilitists,” learn the highly scientific principles behind the device, and they call it something cool, like the “M8B.” They claim cops have tested it all over, that the theories behind it have been subjected to peer review and publication by cops worldwide, that there is no known or potential error of the technique or theory of the M8B, and that cops the world over generally accept it as the ultimate arbiter of guilt or innocence. Courts will let it in, though the defense attorneys will protest like we always do. We’ll argue it’s just a toy that officers shake. We’ll point out that its results are random and that, with most M8B devices, every single side of the die floating inside says “guilty.” The court will shoot us down while explaining how the science is well-settled. The culpabilitist said so, after all. The judge will look down from his podium and say to the defense, “do you have an offer of proof that the device in this particular case did not produce an accurate result?”

I kid, of course, but the government’s abuse of science and the courts’ complicity in it are no laughing matter. Although the tests the state uses to convict people of DUI are for the most part more reliable than a fortune-telling children’s toy, courts rely so blindly on flawed science and strive so hard to avoid anything that might give rise to reasonable doubts about the state’s test results that even the most deeply flawed equipment, methods, and software can achieve a criminal conviction with remarkable ease. When a person’s life hinges on science in the hands of a government that’s happy to abuse it, it’s easy to slide down a very slippery slope. That’s exactly what we’re doing. If we continue, maybe the M8B isn’t too far away.

Whereas Scott expressed concerns about the law and its potential problems in his post, Jamison’s post wasn’t really about the law at all. He focused on how people shouldn’t pick unnecessary fights with police officers or bring stupid lawsuits. Discussing the plaintiff-lawyer’s decision to file suit instead of taking less drastic action, he writes, “[a]nd we wonder why people hate lawyers so much.” Jamison almost seems to praise the opinion, noting how it’s apparently fun to read and claiming there’s a reason federal judges and clerks did better in law school than he did. He cites these paragraphs of the opinion before ending with an exclamatory “ouch:”

[T]he challenge to the post-and-forfeit fails, although not for lack of trying. Plaintiff has now provided the Court with three different versions of a prolix complaint – each longer and more detailed than the one that came before. The matter has been briefed extensively, and the Court held a lengthy hearing. Yet plaintiff has yet to articulate just what it is that is wrong with offering someone charged with a minor offense the choice to contest the charge in court or to pay a small sum and go home.

The fundamental flaw at the heart of the plaintiff’s case is that while his papers are generously seasoned with strong language connoting wrongdoing – “force,” “coerce,” “exact,” “deprive,” and “take,” and the allegations all turn upon the city’s alleged policy of “making” arrestees pay money, there simply was no coercion, taking, or deprivation inherent in the voluntary exchange that was offered and accepted in this case. Moreover, plaintiff was fully apprised of, but elected to forego, his right to seek to set aside the forfeiture and contest the arrest.

I appreciate a good verbal bashing as much as the next guy, but only when it’s deserved. Here, I’m not impressed by the court’s way with words quite as much as I’m horrified that such a statute could exist. The opinion isn’t a righteous bench-slap against some unruly litigant, but rather a terrifying testament to the authoritarian path this country is following. There’s clearly no end to the willingness of the judiciary at all levels to justify coercive and even forceful deprivations of people’s rights so the government can efficiently take their money and exact sick institutional vengeance on them when they ruffle poor little cops’ feathers. Huh. Come to think of it, the plaintiff’s words seem pretty much perfect to me.

Curious, I found the entire opinion at the Blog of Legal Times. It sets forth facts that should make a criminal defense attorney’s blood boil. The lawyer-plaintiff is named “Mr. Fox,” and the opinion explains that he hurt the delicate sensibilities of some demure little flower of an officer by making a derogatory comment about the officer’s intelligence and competence in front of some of his little buddies. Being armed professionals sworn to serve and with a good sense of proportionality, they took a cautious approach and threw Mr. Fox in a cage. Mr. Fox was charged with something called “disorderly conduct – loud and boisterous” and watched another arrestee get hauled off to some scary place the officers called “Central Cellblock” after refusing to pay $35.00. After a few hours in the holding cell, Mr. Fox was given the same “choice,” as the court likes to call it, and he opted to pay the $35.00 ransom post-and-forfeit amount. He was given a form that explained the charged offense and indicated he was being offered the option to post-and-forfeit and that he would otherwise “not be released before [he was] presented to court on [the] charges.” Although the form described “release on bond” and “citation release” as possible alternatives, no one offered Mr. Fox either option. In all, Mr. Fox spent approximately nine hours in jail, which seems to me like quite the price for making someone who carries a gun and handcuffs for a living a little butthurt.

How any court can set forth those facts and rule the way the court in Mr. Fox’s case did is beyond me. Perhaps the most remarkable part of the opinion is the part where the court claims “[i]t is difficult to discern what Mr. Fox’s alleged injury is.” Really? Arrest? Cuffs? A holding cell? Nine hours in jail? Big scary cellies? His poor wife having to go down to the station to try to help him? People cry when they get stopped for going five miles over the speed limit. Other people faint when an officer pulls out handcuffs. Judge Jackson must be tough. Really tough. It’s quite impressive how casually she explains that “the facts as alleged show that he chose to post and forfeit the thirty five dollars – rather than proceed with his criminal case – in order to get out of jail more quickly and terminate his case, and that he was fully aware of his options.” I bet she wouldn’t care at all if she spent nine hours in a cell. She’s probably so tough that she’d demand more jail time to fully weigh her options, all the while feeling no pressure at all. I bet she’d spend months in jail rather than take the weakling’s option and fork over $35.00 for her liberty. Tough lady, that Judge Jackson. As she explains, “there is certainly no fundamental liberty interest in being released from jail before presentment the following morning.” Got that? Judge Jackson and all of her judge buddies do time all the time. What’s an extra several hours or a half day or so being treated like an animal?

Although I could probably go on indefinitely about all the things in the opinion that rub me the wrong way, a few things stood out. For one, the court explains that “[t]he long history of the post-and-forfeit process further weakens Mr. Fox’s substantive due process claim.” In other words, because the government has been doing something bad for a while, that makes it okay. It’s a great argument that I use on behalf of clients all the time. “Your honor, my client kidnaps and robs people every day, and no one ever does anything about it; you can’t just now decide to punish him!” Oh wait. Never mind. I never argue that because it’s ridiculous and would likely get me disbarred and maybe even tossed in the pokey with unfortunate folks like Mr. Fox. Anyway, the court explains how “[t]he Supreme Court has indicated that it approaches requests to strike down longstanding practices under the theory of substantive due process with skepticism.” Gotcha. I might have written it like this, though: “we’ve been demanding ransom for a while and the Supremes say things we’ve done for a while are okidokie so it’s all good.”

With regard to one of his substantive due process arguments, the court explains that, “contrary to Mr. Fox’s assertion, the procedure itself is not rendered constitutionally infirm for substantive due process purposes simply because some of the people who choose to pay the money may have been arrested without probable cause.” There she goes again with the whole “choose” thing. The opinion states, “[t]he risk of an erroneous deprivation is one of the factors that the Court weighs in the procedural due process inquiry, not the substantive due process inquiry.” This is a classic way for courts to get around the fact the system does truly awful things to innocent people. Re-categorize! Who cares if innocent people are incarcerated? Lawyers need to know the difference between substantive and procedural due process.

In the court’s defense, however, at least it addresses the point in the section where it felt it belonged. With regard to Mr. Fox’s procedural due process argument, the court explains, “the post-and-forfeit procedure is adequate to satisfy procedural due process concerns.” Mr. Fox apparently hadn’t alleged the law violated any “fundamental principle of justice,” as the court doesn’t see anything unfair “about being given the choice to pay a reasonable fine to resolve the charge of a petty offense, particularly where the payer has ninety days to think it over and change his mind, and the payment, once final, does not result in a record of conviction.” The emphasis is mine, not the court’s, and that quote shows that, in the end, it all comes back to the fact the court thinks it’s a choice. Our government is run by tough people like Judge Jackson who view the choice of whether to rot in jail or not rot in jail as a meaningful one when the cost is only $35.00. No wonder I’ve never worked for the government; I’m just not tough enough.

Finally, as that last quote suggested, the court really seems focused on the fact Mr. Fox didn’t ask to have the forfeiture set aside by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia despite the fact he had ninety days to do so. If people with guns kidnapped me for being a hurtful meanie to one of them and then released me in exchange for some cash, I certainly wouldn’t be champing at the bit to become involved with my captors again. I wouldn’t want to play their game. I would want to try to empower myself. I would want to strike back and make sure no one else has to endure what I did. Maybe I’d do something pretty close to what Mr. Fox did, and I might even employ some words that are stronger than “force,” “coerce,” “exact,” “deprive,” and “take” in the process. Sadly, though, I’m just a little cream puff. Tough judges would probably see right through my arguments and shoot me down because life and liberty mean nothing to them. Silly me. I suppose I’d just hope that Jamison might feel a little sympathy for me. That seems like something Mr. Fox doesn’t have, though I really can’t understand why.

I think he’s going to fail, however, seeing how banks seem to run everything. The government happily lets them dip into its resources whenever the negative implications of their own poor decision-making come back to haunt them, and the poor graduates who are struggling with their loans don’t exactly have the kind of money it takes to elect themselves a congress. Regardless, I’m glad Senator Durbin is at least bringing up the topic.

I have student loans, and I dutifully pay them each month. I probably wouldn’t take advantage of the bill if it passed, and neither would most of the lawyers I know. Based on the lawyers I know, the people who would actually benefit from the bill are 1) people with expensive educations from top school toiling away at big firm jobs they hate because their student loans prevent them from doing the public service work they want to do, 2) people who barely got into law school in the first place and believed their guidance counselor when he or she told them law school was a good investment, and 3) struggling solos and small firm lawyers who are living from one meager salary draw to the next, buried in taxes, and unable to get credit to build a viable business.

I feel the least bad for the first group, but they are probably the ones whose situation should most make politicians wake up and listen. Believe it or not, there are brilliant lawyers with good hearts out there. They would make exceptional, tireless crusaders for the less fortunate if only they could swing it financially. Don’t we as a society want them to devote their talents to those in need? Do we want to lock some of our best and brightest into a life of dull transactional work that only matters to the rich when they could be making the world a better place?

I feel the worst for the second group. They are often the first person in their family to go to college, they were idealistic, and they had no reason to distrust the counselor who didn’t tell them law school is a never-ending money pit that at best leads to a difficult, stressful, and only moderately remunerative career. Not everyone spends their time trolling the internet and viewing endless streams of comments from embittered law students and lawyers bitching about their crappy life decisions, so how would they know they might not be making a sound decision? Getting into law school was a big feat for them, something to be proud of, for sure, and they probably grew up hearing that education is important if not the secret to success. No one mentioned that in today’s crazy world, an education can also mean lifelong financial handcuffs.

The third group is the one with which I can sympathize the most. Many new lawyers open up shop because they want to, like I did, but I’ve found that most people I meet these days did it because they had no other options. They went to law school and got buried in debt. No one was hiring. To start a business, the smart ones knew they needed cash because not everyone wants the be a Starbucks lawyer. Real lawyers should have a physical office, letterhead, and malpractice insurance, none of which is free. They couldn’t get business loans because of their student loans, though, so they have to pay cash for necessary things when there’s hardly any cash coming in. What little they make is taxed because even though they’re dirt poor, they’re self-employed. They’re stuck struggling to live off the scraps the government leaves them from their own hard-earned money while the government gives what they pay to banks that bleed them dry and deny them credit because of the loans they have with those same banks, loans that are more or less risk-free for the lender thanks in part to their own tax dollars.

The system is so exceptionally screwed up that it’s mind-boggling. People argue that it would be unfair to those people who didn’t go to school for fear of taking on student loan debt if those that did could wipe the slate clean. That’s the type of thinking that leads to all types of government injustice though. People will jump on the opportunity to hurt other people if it successfully prevents those other people from benefiting from something. Think about taxes. Most people would rather suffer in poverty under an oppressive tax code than know that someone somewhere is deducting a three-martini lunch. What I don’t get is how discharging student loans is any different from bankruptcy in general. Sure, it’s unfair that people who take on more debt than they can handle get to discharge the consequences of their actions, but those people have to prove they can’t handle it and deal with all kinds of negative ramifications of their decision to declare bankruptcy.

If anything, student loans should be the kind of debt that people are most okay with discharging in bankruptcy. Imagine the government was willing to guarantee loans to people charged with crimes. Imagine every defendant could get up to $50,000.00 to pay for their defense. What do you think most criminal defense attorneys would charge for a felony? $50k! For a DUI? $50k! Today’s special on misdemeanor assault without trial fees, just for you? $50k! Like with an education, some people may get their money’s worth. Some won’t. Not everyone ends up in Harvard, and the people who find themselves with the Thomas Jefferson Law School of lawyers will probably regret their decision. The lawyers wouldn’t care because they get their excessive fee no matter what, and the banks wouldn’t care because they’ll get bailed out if too many people quit paying. Like with student loans, it wouldn’t just be an unfairly inflated loan amount, but an unfair debt overall.

I hope Senator Durbin succeeds because he’s right about things. The student debt crisis in this country is largely ignored by congress, and it’s not entirely the fault of the students. Although I’m pessimistic, something really should change. People need to wake up and quit letting the government and the banks trample all over them. Even though he probably doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making a difference, at least Senator Durbin is aware there’s a problem and is trying to address it.

People don’t just die anymore. Unless you’re a hundred years old with cancer and dementia and doctors gather around remaking about how incredible it is you’ve held on so long, death is murder.

People are murdered by their greedy next of kin. They’re murdered by corrupt businesses. They’re murdered by drugs that are fun or helpful, occasionally the drugs that stop the murderers themselves from suffering.

People are always murdered by an enemy of some kind. The enemy can be disease or lightning, but if it isn’t, the enemy is a person. When it is, we often still look for a person to blame.

The person we find is guilty. The person must die too.

The person needs to die in a cell. Or the state needs to kill him. Or her.

It’s a conveyor belt that carries the person to his or her death. After it starts, it doesn’t stop.

The state’s machinery of death must be purifying. Everyone goes in grieving and upset. They act like they’re going to come out feeling like it’s all okay because death has a face.

It’s the worst in all of us that seeks a face for our sorrows. It seeks something easier to understand and to explain at a cocktail party than the universe and our place in it. It has to be easier to grasp than the fact we’re all going to die.

The easiest thing in the world is to point fingers. Pointing a finger is simple. It seems like it might bring back the dead, but it never does. Everyone somehow feels better.

Our inability to grasp the complexity of the world in which we live and the nature of what’s surrounding us makes us look for simple solutions to the infinitely complex problems that arise when death is involved.

Sometimes no one needs to pay.

How do you turn that into a campaign slogan though? How do you convince people to give you power when all you give them is a little bit of truth?

Truth is free. It’s out there already. Why should people elect you to give them the truth? That’s why Google is there. Give them promises instead.

If truth is what you want to give them, then you probably don’t care about power anyway.

It’s wrong to want to hurt people. It’s hard to let go. It’s harder to know that bad things happen because good people do things without meaning bad. Sometimes without doing bad.

The system doesn’t care though. The system processes people through the system.

If we shut down the conveyor belt, no one else would die because of it. Lots of people would live.

It’s wrong. Right now, it’s wrong. We’re killing people because we want to kill people. We don’t have to do it. We don’t have to do anything.

We are slaves to our imaginations. We have an imperfect system, but we let it make irreversible decisions.

None of this should even be worth writing, yet the conveyor belt rolls on.

Nowhere is it worse than with sex crimes. We’ve criminalized everything, and we’ve ratcheted up the punishments. The system now hands out life sentences like it’s giving candy to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. The luckiest defendants get probation, but it may be debatable whether they’re luckier at all. The government pries into and controls every aspect of their lives. They take lie detector tests about their most intimate details. They go to therapy and group meetings where they’re made to feel like slime. They’re kept away from minors, even their own children, and they’re told where to live, with whom to associate, and what technologies they can and can’t use. Many are forced to spend their whole lives reporting to someone. So the public can know about the miserable life they’ve been ordered to lead, we make them register too.

With regard to registration, I’m almost a little proud of my state. In Arizona, we’ve only made sex offender registration mandatory for certain offenses. For other offenses, it’s up to the court. I say I’m “almost” a little proud, however, because registration is only permissive in theory. In practice, courts begin with the presumption everyone should have to register. On occasion, they even say so. Better safe than sorry, right? Judges worry defendants might do something bad to someone if they don’t have the added stigma of publicly humiliation. To prevent theoretical future harm to presently unknown victims, courts do very real harm to the poor defendants standing in front of them.

People can find themselves standing before a judge and begging not to have to register for all kinds of things. Judges have discretion to order registration for defendants who masquerade as a minor in an adult film, for adult business violations that amount to little more than zoning, for strip club owners who don’t adequately keep minors out, for people who offend others with their sex acts, for guys who take a leak by the side of the road, and for adultery. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. An Arizona court’s authority to order registration is actually broader than you’d probably ever imagine because a defendant can be ordered to register for any crime committed with sexual motivation. Drive drunk to get laid? Steal a Hustler from a gas station? You may have something else to worry about. After you plead guilty, the government may go tell your friends and family and neighbors you’re a convicted sex offender.

No matter how absurd the charges may seem, what judge wants to risk it? Sexual motivation may be a broad concept, but it still means the crime somehow involved sex. Sex is scary. What if the defendant is really bad deep down and just got caught doing something not so bad? Being safe rather than sorry means we have to ruin lives. You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. Plenty of good eggs get broken in our quest for security. We can pretend we only ruin bad guys’ lives, but that’s not the way it works. People know that deep down. They just don’t care.

The problem is at the root of our culture. In fact, it’s the foundation of most people’s outlook on the world. We don’t care about freedom or virtue. We care about quality of life, and we want to preserve it. We’ve developed the erroneous belief that the power of the state isn’t the biggest threat to our well-being, but rather the source of it. We are capable of holding that belief because we’ve been so stable for so long. It’s also because the bad things the government does happen to people who seem different from us. In criminal law, that means we pretend the government’s evil deeds are only focused on people who’ve done something wrong. That way we don’t feel bad for them.

All of this keeps getting closer to home for ordinary Americans. The government expanded what’s illegal little by little, then lots by lots. We aren’t all officially criminals yet, of course, but we will be soon at this pace. Even when we get there, people may still be thinking better safe than sorry because we won’t be catching everyone. By the time the government creep has crept over all of us, the punishments will be so harsh we couldn’t fight it if we wanted. We won’t see the error of our pathological thirst for safety until the government is so big and bad it’s undeniable to even the dumbest among us that the government has always been the real threat to our safety. Until then, not being sorry is here to stay.

Although there’s plenty of lip service given to the contrary, with one defendant after another, courts start with the assumption they’re going to impose registration. Rather than start with the idea that a person should be left alone unless there’s good reason to think the public might need registration to be protected from him, they start with a mindset that somehow justifies the public humiliation of other human beings as a default because of a vague fear they might regret something sometime in the future. It’s a symptom of a diseased worldview. It’s all about thinking we’re better off safe than sorry.

We may well end up a nation of single mothers by the time people figure out there’s something wrong. I should look on the bright side, though. Fathers won’t be able to see their kids because the terms of their sex offender probation won’t allow it, but luckily, kids can keep up with their dads online through the sex offender registries.

To get a client released from custody, I needed to get her accepted into an approved rehab facility. She could only get into the approved rehab facilities by doing an intake appointment. The facilities only set intake appointments for people who are out of custody.

Initially, I would encounter similar situations and become angry. I assumed they were caused by incompetence and thought the people in charge would fix it if they knew what they’d done. Although my anger began to diminish as I encountered those situations over and over again, it flared back up when I finally realized that the people in charge often not only knew what they’d done, but did it for a reason.

These days, when I see a Catch-22, I assume some bureaucrat planned it. I’m right more than frequently than you might think. I regularly see just how far the government will go to create an unfair situation that ensures a certain result without actually having to demand that result. Government incompetence, though pervasive, isn’t universal. Sometimes, things that appear to be incompetence are actually cleverness, albeit evil bureaucratic cleverness.

It would’ve been too easy for the government to just say that it didn’t want my client released. We all know that’s what it wants, but people might get upset if it came out and said it. It figured out a creative way around that problem.

Creating a Catch-22 may seem needlessly complex, but it usually gets the desired result. At the very least, it ties up a defense lawyer for a little while, and it doesn’t make it look like the big bad government is refusing to release people who need to be released. It’s a win-win-win situation for everyone except the real human being involuntarily caught up in the system.

I almost feel as if I should be impressed by the irritating creativity the government musters from time to time.

Unlike those sentencing options, I’ve never much liked the idea of court-ordered fines. It’s easy for me to understand why restitution, supervision, and even incarceration are available options to a sentencing judge. I’m not inherently skeptical about a judge’s motivation in ordering any of those as part of a sentence. That isn’t the case with fines.

I think there’s something fundamentally wrong about a judge with a cushy job and lots of power ordering a poor defendant to give money to a taxpayer-funded court. It’s always struck me as problematic that a judge can lawfully order another person to pay the judge’s employer. It only seems worse to me taking into consideration the fact Arizona has elected judges in many jurisdictions as well as strange things like judicial productivity credits. I think it’s ridiculous that we give the power to order fines to people whose re-election hopes and salaries can hinge on the financial situation of the entity to which the fines are going. It should come as no surprise to anyone that courts frequently bury defendants in all types of fines, surcharges, fees, and assessments. If I can punish you by making you give me and my boss your money, why wouldn’t I?

Yesterday afternoon, I saw a typical exchange between a judge and a defendant as I waited to get a new court date from the clerk in a misdemeanor jurisdiction. It went something like this:

Judge: You haven’t made any payments on your fine.
Defendant: I don’t have any money. I can’t find work. My kids are hungry.
Judge: That’s what you said last time.
Defendant: I’m really trying, I promise. The economy is bad. I’m trying to find work.
Judge: What’s changed between this time and last time?
Defendant: Nothing. I was trying to find work then too. I’m bound to find something sooner or later. Please give me more time.
Judge: You said that last time. Why shouldn’t I just throw you in jail and get it over with?
Defendant: My family needs me. We can’t even afford a fridge. Or a stove. We’re behind on rent. I need to find work.
Judge: I’ll give you one more chance. No matter what, you’re going in next time unless you pay your fines in full
Defendant: Thank you, I promise I’ll do my best.

Given the court and the hour of the day, I imagine the defendant owed the fines in an old DUI case. He had probably been ordered to pay the minimum fine and surcharge, which total over a thousand dollars. He probably had to pay a couple hundred dollars for mandatory alcohol screening plus hundreds more for the recommended alcohol classes. He probably had to pay for his own incarceration costs too. Because of the conviction, if he wants to drive, he probably has to pay about a hundred dollars a month for the mandatory interlock device, and he’d probably have to pay hundreds of extra dollars each year to have special SR-22 insurance. Like with most people, his DUI at some became a money pit. I’m sure it also made it especially tough for him to find work, as lots of jobs won’t hire people with DUIs.

The discussion I heard really bothered me, just like it always does. I hear it all the time. The court, which has ordered a fine, is demanding payment. The defendant, who probably couldn’t even afford decent representation, is stuck trying to pay what most people would consider an enormous amount of money. I’ve found that judges rarely show even the slightest hint of understanding in such situations. I often notice quite the contrast between the shabbily-dressed defendant with work-worn hands and the judge with an expensive watch and delicate hands peeking out from beneath his black robe. I think about how sick it is that a guy who’s walking home to his house with no fridge because he’s too poor to get his license reinstated or buy appliances could be ordered by a judge who’s probably driving his Lexus back to a big home in Paradise Valley to pay a fine to a court housed in a multi-million-dollar building. The court doesn’t need his money. It means the world to him and his family though.

I think the message is supposed to be that crime doesn’t pay. It’s too bad that message is false. Crime does pay. If you get away with it or if you’re the government, that is. Regardless, even if the message was true, it wouldn’t matter. That guy with the DUI lost his license. He went to jail. He attended court then classes then victim impact panels. His life was disrupted and he and everyone around him suffered. Now, some rich guy is threatening to mess up his life and his family’s life a little more because he’s too poor to line the coffers of the rich guy’s even-richer boss. With the crime long since past, the message is not that crime doesn’t pay, but that the system and the people in it can be very, very cruel. It may not have the same ring to it as crime doesn’t pay, but at least it’s true.

From now on, I will purchase whatever I want no matter what it costs. The days of budgeting and saving are over. I will make sure I open many accounts and make my finances as complicated as possible. I will borrow more than I can afford to pay back. I will borrow it so quickly that nobody can reduce my credit limit in time. I’m going to do my best to figure out some way to set my own credit limit too, and if I’m successful, I’ll set it so high that my creditors’ heads will explode.

My plan will not have any negative repercussions because I know from the news that I have all of Washington behind me. After reading the news, I know that democrats and republicans in congress alike will put consumer credit reporting agencies under investigative scrutiny when they drop my beloved credit score. You hear that, Experian? Equifax? Transunion? Downgrade my rating and some powerful people are going to restrict your influence before you know what hit you. Democratic Rep. Barney Frank and Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer will be on it right away, calling for you to have a smaller role in determining my creditworthiness. Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich will tirelessly investigate if there’s some way you guys could have benefited financially from your decision, and a bunch of other democrats will get severely peeved about mistakes you made estimating the deficits caused by my unbelievably complex financial plan. Everyone will agree that your ratings are worthless because you failed to predict the financial crisis I created.

Washington will see that none of the consequences of my actions are my fault at all. Again thanks to the news, I know that our wise leaders will see that my terrible credit score and subsequent difficulties purchasing more jet skis and Margaritaville Frozen Concoction Makers are no reflection of me, but rather of the influence of the Tea Party movement. Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz knows a bunch of tyrants when she sees them, and you just can’t bargain with those jerks. I’m sure they’ll play some part in blocking the more comprehensive bargain I’ll want on my debt ceiling after I start to feel the crunch.

The news tells me that Democrat Senator Tim Johnson would jump to my aid. He’ll accuse those who might hold me accountable as being “irresponsible”, citing the horrific “spillover effects” I might experience, like increased interest rates. The agencies and creditors’ game of political punditry simply will not go unnoticed. Even Obama will jump to my aid by disputing the naysayers’ political judgment and challenging their competence. With the amount of spending I’ll be doing, I’m gonna be way too big to fail. I can do whatever I want because what I want is so important that I shouldn’t have to worry about details like whether I can actually afford it.

My plan is foolproof, so please, don’t bother telling me how I’m wrong. The news is clear. With Washington on my side, I’ll be just fine.

How much braking power do you have? How much acceleration do you have? How does the road surface feel? How does your car feel? Do you have enough grip? Can you push it more, or are you at the edge? Where is the edge? How do you know you’re there? Are your inputs smooth? Where is the weight of the car? Front or back? How is it affected by throttle or brake? Do you need to change it? How and to what extent? Where’s the best line? Can you see it? Where are the other cars? There are countless things to consider, and those are just a few. As you get better on the track, the things you begin to notice on public roads are astounding.

Thinking back about every lap, every group meeting, and every time I’ve had someone else in the car giving me pointers, there’s one thing I’ve never heard anyone mention: the speedometer. Looking down at your speedometer is the last thing you want to do. In fact, it’s a totally useless instrument because the data it provides is pointless. You don’t know when you’re about to lose control based on the speedometer. It doesn’t tell you when or how to brake or to apply throttle. If instructors told wannabe racecar drivers to drive based on the speedometer, every lap would result in a giant pile-up after the first few turns.

The things that make someone a better driver are things that involve awareness. Doing anything well, and safely, requires awareness more than anything. Sadly, though, being aware is a subtle thing. A police officer can’t sit by the side of the road with an awareness-meter, stopping every person who doesn’t meet the minimum standard. You can’t cite someone for inattentiveness unless it’s manifested in some sort of physical symptom that’s prohibited by law. Like most subtle things, awareness isn’t valued by most people. The average driver doesn’t pay attention to much of anything. Most people drive by following traffic signs and signals. Most people are terrible, dangerous drivers who are completely ignorant of their own surroundings.

We have too many rules. I pass hundreds of signs every day telling me what I can’t do. Those signs don’t travel at highway speeds. They don’t have motors and weigh tons and have deadly morons driving them, but we’re legally obligated to obey them. People look out for signs and the iron-fisted bean-counters who sit by the side of the road enforcing them. They couldn’t care less about other motorists. The only thing most motorists lack more than awareness is courtesy.

I put a few thousand miles on my motorcycle last week, riding from Phoenix to Boston. In every single state, I saw someone do something perfectly lawful, extremely common, and unsafe beyond belief. In most states, I saw dozens of people do things like that. Passing one billboard after another telling people to “look out for motorcycles,” I got cut off or had my lane otherwise invaded over and over again. Motorists know an officer won’t stop someone for not looking out for motorcycles. On the other hand, everyone knows you can get a ticket in a split second if you start looking out for motorcycles and inadvertently ignore that little needle in your dash, one of the few things in your field of vision that really doesn’t matter.

I abhor speed limits. When I argue against them, most people roll their eyes as if I’m suggesting we go back to the middle ages. They fear we’ll descend into anarchy. They imagine everyone going as fast as their little cars can go, and it scares them. The idea doesn’t bother me at all. If it gets one person’s head up or results in one person paying a little closer attention to something other than a speedometer and a bunch of worthless signs, I’m all for it. Awareness is never a bad thing in driving or in anything else. It shouldn’t be as uncommon as it is, and the first step to increasing it is to take away worthless security blankets like speed limits. I’d sure feel a lot safer without them.

I’m going to exercise some self-control, luckily, and write more than bad jokes. You see, representative Weiner wants to take leave from the house of representatives. I’m disgusted, and it isn’t because of the photos. It’s because other prominent politicians, like “Democratic leader” Nancy Pelosi, are saying things like this snippet from the article linked to above: “Weiner ‘has the love of his family, the confidence of his constituents and the recognition that he needs help. I urge Congressman Weiner to seek that help without the pressures of being a member of Congress.’” Ugh.

Not only is my mind constantly in the gutter, but I’m apparently not very compassionate either. I just don’t have it in me to feel bad for a guy who votes for his own pay-raises, makes a bigger salary with better perks than anyone I know who actually does something useful for society, and who seems to be able to merely “take leave” from his cushy taxpayer-funded job after getting busted for disseminating pictures of his junk. I can’t help but think that, if he was your average American, after this kind of public debacle, he wouldn’t have the love of his family or the confidence of anyone save those lucky ladies who got to check out the goods and liked what they saw.

It’s two different worlds for the rulers and the ruled. If I was publicly humiliated after doing something like that, I’m pretty sure my clients wouldn’t take too kindly to me taking a few months to find myself. I’d be going to court and doing my job despite the snickers from everyone who knew. If necessary, I’d be finding myself when I wasn’t taking care of my other responsibilities. Everyone but the ruling elite would probably find themselves in the same situation.

Why do we put up with this? Personally, I don’t care what he sent or to whom he sent it so long as he continued to do his job. I do care about one of the luckiest men on earth being able to use a ridiculous sex scandal as an excuse to take a vacation from his great job to work on what the lemmings who elected him probably believe to be a character flaw. Try that the next time you do something stupid and wish you could avoid showing your face to people that know. It makes me sick, but then again, maybe I just have Weiner envy.