Short for "GeologicalScienceBlog", subjects will include Geology, Climatology, Environmental Science, NASCAR, Beer, Property Rights, Politics from a Christian Conservative/Libertarian viewpoint, and random thoughts. My background is two degrees in Geology (BS, MS), 8 years of geology/environmental employment and almost 8 years of teaching Geology and Environmental Science on a Junior College level. <68>

Sunday, December 18, 2005

I Broke the Law!

No, I'm not talking about that time! The statutes of limitation have expired on that one anyway.

What I did was sell a single MARTA token to a fellow passenger years ago. And I didn't even know it was illegal (the statutes have not expired on this one). In my case, the guy's dollar bills were too wrinkled for the machine to accept, so I reached in my pocket, grabbed an extra token and the change and accepted his wrinkled dollar bill and we were both on our way to work (or home, whichever it was). I thought I was being a Good Samaritan. How wrong I was! There are other Good Samaritans within the MARTA stations sometimes. One time in a station, my token got jammed in a turnstile and wouldn't let me through. Seeing my situation, a black man strode out of the crowd with a transfer ticket and suggested I try another turnstile (and he wouldn't accept payment along with my profuse "thank you"s).

Currently, there is a poor schmuck on trial here in Atlanta on charges of selling a single MARTA token. The idea of the law was to prevent the sale of tokens stolen en masse from machines. But this poor guy's story was that another passenger was having trouble with the machine, so he sold the person a token for face value (75 cents, I think, it has been a while since I have ridden MARTA, as I don't work downtown anymore).

It just seems to me that if someone was selling stolen tokens, they wouldn't sell them one at a time, rather they would offer "quantity discounts". It seems to me that if they were selling a single stolen token at a time, that would be very inefficient. It would also require that the person stand at the machine for long periods of time, which would attract adverse attention. Was the guy in question standing at the machine for long periods of time? Did he have bags of tokens at home? I suppose there could be other "shoes to drop", but at this time, it looks like this poor dude is being put through the ringer for essentially nothing.

And because he is white, there is no one there to holler "racism" at this excessive treatment. It wouldn't be racism if the "perp" was black, either, but some would take that path.

You would think the judge could just "put the fear of God" in his heart, then tell him to "get outta here!", in the spirit of Christmas, but it appears that the judge is hellbent on trying this poor guy, who has the facial expression (on camera) of a whipped dog (I feel that way sometimes), who can't believe what he is being put through for trying to be nice to someone.

We need to pray for this guy (if we are being told the entire story) and we need to pray for this judge, to "soften his heart". There are violent criminals that get better treatment than this guy.

I may add an article link later.
Posted by: on-the-rocks / 7:30 AM
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