According to California Assemblyman Mark “Criminals First” Leno, disincentives won’t affect the incidence of drunk driving (Sacramento Bee):

… But Assemblyman Mark Leno, a San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Assembly Public Safety Committee, said increasing fines, boosting jail terms and permanently revoking licenses don’t address the underlying problem.

“When you take away someone’s driver’s license for a lifetime, you take away their incentive to ever deal with their alcoholism,” Leno said. “I think the approach needs to be one of illness. These are not rational acts. Clearly, alcoholism is the problem.”

No, drinking too much is the problem. And sometimes the cause is stupidity.

The MADD campaign of the early 1990’s showed that some of that behavior can be changed. Increasing the cost is one way to do it.

And what of the measure Leno opposes? According to the Bee, “(Assemblyman Russ) Bogh’s AB 4 … would have permanently revoked the driver’s license of anyone convicted of drunken driving three or more times.” That doesn’t sound draconian to us.

But Leno, coddler of sex offenders, takes a similar let’s-not-be-mean approach to drunk drivers and has bottled AB 4 up in his Public Safety committee.

Leno once called a sting operation against internet sex predators “mean spirited.” In Leno’s San Francisco mindset, it seems any attempt to protect the public from, say, drunk drivers or sex offenders is DOA if actual punishment is involved.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 7:49 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under California Schemin', Nemesises ... Nemesi?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.