Bless her heart, Meri Ulrich, U-K’s resident misguided do-gooder, is again stumbling along without a clue.  Whether obsessing over celebrities as if they matter, pounding this site with pathetic whining over dead girls long decomposed, and now wielding her virtual axe to smash anyone daring to offend her Temperance League brigade, Meri seems to live in a world isolated from reality and insists on dragging the rest of us into that black hole with her.

If Meri doesn’t want to drink, fine.  I drink rarely these days, but I would never attempt to prevent others from doing so, or pass judgment with a snooty sneer on their free choice.  Do some people “make a fool of themselves” after drinking too much?  Most certainly.  Yet, visit any bar, any night, and 95 out of a 100 people attending do not.  Those are good enough odds for Meri though.  If she sees you with an alcoholic drink, you are automatically one of the 5, not one of the 95.

One the other hand, how many people have I met that could really, really, really use a stiff drink to loosen up their priggy self-righteousness?  Many – I’m guessing Meri is one.  The axiom that one should not trust anyone who doesn’t drink, while not absolutely true, has some great wisdom in it.  Alcohol has a tendency to loosen the tongue, and hidden aspects of a person’s true personality can be revealed given a few drinks.  The self-righteous prigs look down their noses as if their excrement doesn’t smell, but we all know it stinks just like ours.  Base a decision to trust those prigs on the façade they present to the world and you will almost certainly get screwed by the real scum behind the mask.

Meri focuses her rage on everyone who has ever had a drink then driven.  I expect, since she doesn’t make it clear, that one would have to wait a day or two after that drink to qualify as a safe driver again in Meri’s world.  The facts simply do not support her hysteria.

When MADD was founded, by Christie Lightner here in Texas years ago, it made sense.  A distraught mother who had lost her child to a drunken driver, her motives were pure and the mission worthy.  Christie left the organization long ago and now campaigns in support of alcohol manufacturers.  In 2002, she told the Washington Times, “[MADD] has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”

MADD has become a corrupt, money-hungry scam organization focused on one thing – growing its contributions.  It is now has a $46 million annual budget, of which more than $12 million is spent on salaries, benefits, and pensions for its staff (dang, no employer I have ever had offered pensions).  The organization has long ago exceeded its mandate to rid the highways of drunken drivers.  In a calculated campaign to increase its fund-raising, it now supposedly supports a “zero tolerance” policy – like the one our Meri seems to have bought into.

I guarantee that I can drive better after drinking one beer than the average stressed out executive, harried soccer mom, secretary applying her make up, teenager on a cellphone, delivery driver in a hurry, ding-a-ling bobbing along to loud music, and many other crazies on the roads.  Yet, MADD would have me in jail and doesn’t care at all about those other, more serious threats.  Any benefit from tougher drunk driving penalties was accomplished long ago.  Every legitimate study shows there are no further benefits to be gained, but that has not stopped MADD from continuing to extort millions of dollars from Americans and honest businesses.

Here are the facts, a complete profile is available at http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/17.

“In a three-page 1998 report, sociologist and MADD national board member Ralph Hingson claimed that lowering the nationwide drunk-driving arrest threshold from .10% to 0.08% blood alcohol concentration (BAC) would save 500 lives a year. Despite being thoroughly discredited by highway traffic safety experts -- the U.S. General Accounting Office labeled his claim “unfounded” in its 1999 report to Congress -- MADD continued to cite his research and repeatedly used it to convince many states to adopt “.08” legislation.”

“MADD also promotes its Victim Impact Panels (VIP). Many judges around the country require that anyone convicted of a DUI go to one of these panels, where offenders pay MADD a fee to hear victims or relatives of victims of drunk driving crashes relate their stories.  But a study of VIPs in New Mexico found that ‘female repeat offenders referred to VIPs were significantly more likely to be rearrested compared with those not referred, with the odds of re-arrest more than twice that of females not referred.’”

“Though MADD, in response to the study, asserted that VIPs were intended for first-time offenders, the study also “failed to demonstrate any effect of VIPs on recidivism rates for female and male first-time DWI offenders or for male repeat offenders.’”

“MADD continues to promote these ineffective programs … because they bring in much-needed revenue while allowing members <i.e. contributors> a chance to vent and air their grief.”

“Another noteworthy case was the 2000 battle over two California ballot initiatives … that sought to permit an automobile accident victim to sue …the insurance company if legitimate claims weren’t paid promptly. Considering that victims of drunk drivers stood to gain an important legal tool, most Californians expected MADD to lead the charge in favor of these new measures. However, MADD aligned itself with a group of out-of-state insurance companies, which collectively ran a $1 million-per-week advertising campaign against the propositions.

“MADD defended its position at the time by arguing that drunk drivers themselves, if convicted only of lesser charges, could sue insurance companies under the proposed law. Even after California ’s Attorney General disagreed, ruling that <the laws> could never give drunk drivers new rights, MADD never budged from its bizarre contradictory position. The organization’s motive? Money, plain and simple. MADD’s 1999-2000 annual report acknowledges Allstate Insurance Company donated an amount in the “$250,000 and above” category. Nationwide Mutual Insurance gave over $100,000 that year.

“In 1994, Money magazine reported that telemarketers raised over $38 million for MADD, keeping nearly half of it in fees. In that same year, the group spent more than $2 million on travel and conventions. Compare that to MADD’s paltry lobbying budget (a four-year total of only $636,000 from 1991 to 1994), and it’s not hard to see why the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) consistently gives MADD poor grades for its high bureaucratic costs. Indeed, MADD funnels about 50 cents of every dollar back to its fund-raising efforts, which is about one and a half times what AIP considers acceptable.”

“In March 2004, MADD expanded its attack on responsible adults by calling for a ‘mandatory provision in every separation agreement and divorce decree that prohibits either parent from drinking and driving ... with minor children in the vehicle.’ Violating this provision, it argues, should result in penalties including license suspension, jail, or even the ‘termination of parental rights.’"  

There are other sources of information on the scam and corruption of MADD, I simply used the first I found with Google.  I’ve read exposes in the past with more facts – look them up yourself.  The bottom line is that MADD’s mission was accomplished long ago – drunk driving deaths are rare anymore.  MADD skews the facts by lumping any remote connection to alcohol into the numbers they tout.  Researchers have documented their lies.

And researchers have documented that lowering the legal limit to .08% is excessive – they found no effect on driving ability at that level.  But MADD outgrew its mission, and like any for profit company, its goal is to increase contributions every year.  They quickly learned that the few hard core drunk drivers that remain in America – who account for almost all of the fatalities (which aren’t many) – could not fund that budget.  They had no choice but to expand society’s definition of “drunk driver” to include anyone who has ever had a drink and driven.  Since that includes most Americans, they milk us to fund their high salaries and cushy pensions.

And fools like Meri, with their priggish self-righteous snobbery, lick it up and spread the lies.  Don’t believe it.  Google MADD about MADD to learn the truth and tell the alcohol Nazis to find a new victim.

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