Nanny State Gone Wild
From Reuters:
Coming to fast food restaurants in the not-too-distant future: agents of the nanny state monitoring overweight customers for excess calorie or fat consumption. As obesity increases and health care costs skyrocket, you think I'm kidding?
Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk, a spokeswoman for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said on Wednesday.Note that this operation targets not only those who---in the judgment of the state---may become drunk drivers. It targets drunks in order to save them from themselves, before they jump off a balcony or walk into traffic. Government agents "infiltrate" bars, monitor the behavior of patrons, and conduct sobriety tests on the premises.
The first sting operation was conducted recently in a Dallas suburb where agents infiltrated 36 bars and arrested 30 people for public intoxication, said the commission's Carolyn Beck.
Being in a bar does not exempt one from the state laws against public drunkenness, Beck said.
The goal, she said, was to detain drunks before they leave a bar and go do something dangerous like drive a car.
"We feel that the only way we're going to get at the drunk driving problem and the problem of people hurting each other while drunk is by crackdowns like this," she said.
"There are a lot of dangerous and stupid things people do when they're intoxicated, other than get behind the wheel of a car," Beck said. "People walk out into traffic and get run over, people jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss."
She said the sting operations would continue throughout the state.
Coming to fast food restaurants in the not-too-distant future: agents of the nanny state monitoring overweight customers for excess calorie or fat consumption. As obesity increases and health care costs skyrocket, you think I'm kidding?
posted by The Cunning Realist at Wednesday, March 22, 2006
17 Comments:
Texas is the only state in the Union that I can say with 100% that there is no way in hell I'd live there. Too many crazy politicians there.
This is neither Republican nor Democrat, neither conservative nor liberal - this is, as you say, nanny state gone wild. Once upon a time you could make predictions based on that sort of category: e.g. Republican/conservative would find this governmental over-reach, Democrat/liberal would sort-of stand up for individual rights to alter consciouslness while stressing about how that might affect communal obligations.
But here, as seems to be the case so often any more, laws and policies do not seem to be implemented with any sense of broader implications, historical precedent or the fact that they are serving as precedent - and without the benefit, therefore, of any notion that there is some sort of individual liberty issue here, or indeed that there are philosophical/political implications and underpinnings at all. I had tended to put Texas as a majority Republican/conservative polity which therefore wouldn't go for this sort of thing - it's more a Democrat/communitarian wing approach - but I guess I'm just not getting it where current politics is concerned.
One appropriate response within my current control, however, would seem to be to have another glass of wine, which I intend to do immediately. And please keep up the good work.
I'm sure it's no coincidence that the sting occured in Irving, TX, headquaters of MADD. And as reported by the local NBC news affiliate, among those arrested were hotel guests drinking AT HOTEL BARS WITH NO INTENTION OF LEAVING. This isn't just nanny state, it's police state.
You can mark it down as Republicans in this state trying to tell everyone to go to Church. Please note, our Governor signed a bill IN A CHURCH! This is a huge baptist state, you may not realize it unless you are here, but Baptist churchs and the bible thumpers are everywhere. MADD probably had something to do w/it, but this had to come from higher up in the chain of command.
Want to stop drunk driving? Put em in jail for a minimum of 2 years, no jury trial BS. Then no drivers license when they get out for another 2 years. Video recorders in each patrol car would pretty much take care of this issue toot sweet.
Um, isn't arresting drunks at a bar like handing out speeding tickets at a race track? I understand the point about public drunkeness including bars. But really. It's a BAR!
Ya know, I'm coming to the conclusion that I would be a lot happier if I stopped expecting things to make sense.
(Picking jaw up from ground)
Wow. With any luck these arrests will get thrown out of court. Maybe some intrepid lawyer will consider this an "illegal search and seizure" or the bar owner will claim that its a violation of his property rights. How can a bar stay in business if the patrons are all going to be arrested for drinking? With regards to DUI, don't the cops have to prove intent?
I'm a firm believer in the 2nd amendment, but with this sort of logic, why aren't they going around arresting people who own guns? After all they might shoot someone.
And this is Texas, which is supposed to be "conservative" country. What current day rightists mean by "conservative," though, and what the likes of W F Buckley and Barry Goldwater meant by it, are two different things.
... I'm a liberal, always have been, but the former kind of conservative has always had my respect, for the respect THEY have shown for the instutitions of our constitutional democracy. These new right wingers, though, are another matter.
Actually the TABC has been doing this, as funding permits, for at least 40 years. Usually most bar patrons get quiet and try to turn invisible when the TABC walk in.
Texas is nothing, I went to University of California, Santa Barbara. The Isla Vista foot patrol were a bunch of NAZI's. If you looked at them wrong, they tossed you in the drunk tank. Happened to me. I actually heard a story where cops were walking by apartments and looking in students windows. One kid had passed out on his floor, so the cop says, "my experiemce and training told that this individual was unable to care for himself."
He proceeded to kick in the door, and arrest the kid after waking him from his drunken sleep to haul him off to jail. And oh yeah, they searched his house and found drug paraphenalia and booked on that too. Unf*****believable these people.
I wonder if they use the same intoxification levels for public drunkenness as for driving. The designated driver program would be farce if they did.
Why bother with the bars? Why not infiltrate the political fundraisers and government xmas parties? Lots of drunks there.
KPA
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Undercover agents have "infiltrated" 36 bars and arrested 30 drinkers. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission says"We're doing it to stop drinkers before they get in a car, even if they're not going to get in a car, maybe they'll walk out into traffic and get run over, or maybe they'll jump off of balconies trying to reach a swimming pool and miss, anyway bars aren't exempt from laws against public intoxication".
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