How convenient!

While the members of the motorcycling community are being required to tax the limits of our energies and finances just to get an audience with some staffer of one of our Legislators, in the hope that they will listen to our position on issues such as the helmet law and pass it on to their boss; the taxpayers attempt to provide the State with an adquate police force to patrol the roadways is being used to provide the Governor (and God knows who else) with a lobbying network far more substantial than anything the motorcycling community could hope to afford.

Talk about a mis-match! Sugar Ray Leanord vs. Larry Holmes would be a more even match than this one. (This is just one of the reasons we believe supporting the fight for motorcyclist rights on the streets and in the courts is so important. The courts may, for the most part, be corrupt and also subject to the whim the the Governor, but the paper trail left in the wake of their malfeasance is an everpresent threat to their continued success. Once in a while we can even win one in the courts.)

Look at it from a Legislator's point of view.

On the one hand you have this "colorful character", commonly referred to as a "biker", showing up at your office to ask for a restoration of his rights, and on the other a "respected member of the community" An "Area Commander" for the CHP.

In their world, where bikers are equated to everything from drug dealers to white slave market entrepenuers, which of those images do you think is going to get and hold their attention?

This isn't just a matter of the Commissioner showing up at committee hearings and speaking for or against a particular bill (a practice which itself is questionable). This is a matter of assigning scores of "California's finest" to go to their Legislators and explain the "statistical truth" of these issues -- statistics made-up by the Governor and spoken by these spit-shined professionals as if Gospel.

The ramafications of these kinds of practices are mind-blowing!

And we can't blame the area commanders for their part. They are just trying to keep their jobs. If they don't go out a lobby for the Governor, they will lose promotions . . . or could even be reduced in rank and put "back out on the streets."

We can't even blame the new Commissioner, Dwight "Spike" Helmick. He's "just following orders." He worked his whole life to get in a position where he could do the most good, just for the opportunity to, instead, participate in crap like this.

This practice is just one of the elements at work to convert California into an absolute "Police State", and the tax-payers of this State need to give it at least some of our attention.