They've even fucking infiltrated Halloween!

So, I volunteered to work a booth at my daughters school Halloween carnival last night. I remember having a great deal of fun at Halloween carnivals when I was a kid. The canided apples, the cake walk, the hay ride, the haunted house. All the people in their monster masks and vampire costumes. It was a time for scary fun!

But, by far, the scariest and most un-fun thing I have ever encountered at a children's school Halloween carnival is what I encountered upon arrival last night.



That's right...the Alabama State Trooper Weed Hunting Chopper complete with terrifying, jack-booted, thugs. They literally were wearing knee-high leather jackboots. They had up their 'official' "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" tape and they had a State Trooper motorcycle on display.

I wanted to climb in and have my daughter snap a picture of me....that would have been the ultimate coup.....but they were only letting small children in.

What were they trying to say exactly? That we should be terrified of them because they are monsters? I can agree that they are terrifying monsters...although I refuse to be terrified. If that wasn't the message they were trying to convey then what were they doing at a Halloween Carnival? A place for elementary school children to dress up scary, eat candy til they puke and goad each other through the haunted house, play bingo and hope they win a cake on the cake walk. What were they doing there?

"Let me see your papers!"

Yesterday when I arrived at the place where my husband works to pick him up I was met with this scene.







Five state troopers. Blue lights flashing everywhere. Four at the entrance on the left-hand side of the road and one on the right-hand side. The one on the right was gone by the time I took these photos. There were about 8 cars pulled over on the right side of the road and about that many more pulled off inside of the entrance to the plant making navigation tricky and creating a traffic jam. I wonder if they asked the plant owner if it was alright to block the entrance/exit to the plant?

I pulled into the turn lane and stopped because I wasn't sure if they were checking people going into the plant or not. I sat there a few minutes but no trooper came over to the car or waved me on. I finally decided to turn in. I figured if they had plans to demand my papers then they could come in and get me. Why make it easy on them?

As I sat and waited on my husband to come out I wondered if they had plans to check the workers about to get off for insurance as they left the plant. People at this plant work for very low wages and the vast majority of them work for health insurance coverage, like my husband, and take home very little every week. They can't afford car insurance. It simply isn't in their budgets. Now, some asshole is bound to say, "Well, they shouldn't be driving then." But that is a simpleton's view of the situation. If they aren't able to drive then they aren't able to work and if they aren't able to work then they wind up on the taxpayers tab. Which would you rather them do?

A few people came out of the plant, saw the nasty scene of intimidation that awaited them and went back in to warn others. My husband said the news spread like wildfire and that people were scared. These people work hard all week for next to nothing and when they get off work after a nine hour day the last thing they want to deal with is the Nazi paper checkers.

I wondered why the state troopers weren't sitting outside the entrance to Stillwaters checking papers and it hit me that the people in Stillwaters would 1)Never put up with that kind of harassment and intimidation and 2) The people who live at Stillwaters have enough money to afford insurance so the troopers would be unable to make money off of them. Instead they staked out a place where poor people who can't afford insurance work. Doesn't that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

When people started to leave there was a huge traffic jam because the troopers were checking workers as they left. Pretty soon it became evident that doing so was creating a traffic hazard and they began to let workers leave without demanding their papers. I know there were a lot of people who breathed a huge sigh of relief.

What has happened to us in America that we allow this kind of harassment and extortion of the working poor? When did it become OK for police to demand our papers? This isn't Russia or East Germany...it's America....but I no longer recognize it.


Cross-linked at
Daily Dixie
Mama's Apple Pie

Flexing the Police State Muscle

If you live in Alabama then you probably already know that this week State Troopers, city police and county cops are out in force on our highways and byways. Suppossedly this is for the safety of the public and to "take back the highways." I say that explanation is a big ol crock of shit. This is nothing more than a massive revenue grab and a flexing of police state muscle to show us lowly citizens who's really in charge.

The following is from the Montgomery Advertiser

Troopers issued 5,989 tickets on Monday, the first day of the five-day "Take Back Our Highways" campaign. An extra 200 troopers are on the state highways during the blitz.

Of the 5,989 tickets issued Monday, 3,281 were for speeding and 944 tickets for seat belt or child restraint violations, Teague said Tuesday.

Whitney Beshields, an 18-year-old high school student from Mobile, was among those pulled over Monday by troopers for not wearing a seat belt. She told the Mobile Press-Register that she was in a rush and forgot to buckle up.

The crackdown "is really not a bad thing," she said. "They are just trying to make sure everybody is secure, that everybody is safe, because there are a lot of things going on right now."

In addition to the traffic violations, troopers made 101 non-traffic arrests, such as for illegal drugs, and issued 200 warnings.

The figures by the Department of Public Safety do not include tickets issued by city police and county deputies.

State Public Safety Director Chris Murphy planned the crackdown - including putting officers on the road who normally handle administrative duties - because Alabama's traffic deaths were going against the national trend.
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The above statement from young high-school student Ms. Beshields scares me badly and makes me sick to my stomach. It shows how eaisly accepting citizens are of police state tactics, the loss of our rights and liberties and so forth. "Oh, they're just trying to make us safe." BULLSHIT!

They do not have the right or the legal authority to "make us safe" by forcing us to wear seat belts. That is not their job nor the job of the legislature which passed the seat-belt law. If I want to be unsafe and the only person I am putting in harms way is myself then that really ought to be my business.

And, if this is really about safety then what happens on Saturday when Police State Week is over and everybody goes back to their desk job? Does anyone really think that all drivers will start obeying speed limits, using turn signals, wearing seat belts and carrying insurance? No...of course not. When the police are out of sight they will also be out of mind.

No, this isn't about making us safe it is about taking our money, it's about police finding ways to invade your privacy and search your vehicle and it's about making the public think it is about "safety" so they will swallow it hook, line and sinker. It is also about getting the public used to seeing that many cops so that when martial law is declared at some point in the future no one will notice anything out of the ordinary.

"Oh...those guys in riot gear with huge automatic weapons on every street corner.... don't worry about then....they're just there to make us safe."