I've been behind on Politech recently, but this story made me irritated enough to catch up on things. The Gilpin County Sheriff's Office in Colorado, a rural area not that far west of Denver, recently set up a highway checkpoint where motorists were stopped and, at least in some cases, not allowed to leave until they gave breath, blood, and saliva samples for the benefit of a private research firm. A report by Ernie Hancock says the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was involved as well. A Denver Post article is here: http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_6922089 More: http://cw2.trb.com/news/kwgn-invasive-checkpoint,0,2092732.story http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57733 http://freedomsphoenix.com/Discussion-Page.htm?InfoNo=024006 The Post says the private organization in question is the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, or PIRE, in Calverton, MD. Their Web site seems to be down but can be viewed here: http://web.archive.org/web/20050826173038/www.pire.org/ This seems to be a fine opportunity for Politech readers to let PIRE executives and Gilpin County supervisors know what they think about police abusing their authority at the demand of a private research firm. Gilpin County email addresses: rbaker@co.gilpin.co.us, scate@co.gilpin.co.us, pubcomment@co.gilpin.co.us PIRE email addresses: langevin@pire.org, info@pire.org, mblackston@pire.org The thoroughly-misnamed PIRE is a major DC government contractor (and in fact its offices are within walking distance of the Beltway). It specializes in funneling over $35 million of taxpayer money a year into its own coffers through law enforcement contracts of dubious utility, mostly dealing with drugs and alcohol, from sources including the U.S. Department of Justice. 100 percent of its budget appears to come from government contracts or grants. Although PIRE pretends to be a "nonprofit" organization -- at least that label helps to collect those fat taxpayer-funded checks from the DOJ -- in reality it spends about $1.35 million a year on lobbyists. Not a bad 30-fold return on investment. And its employees are paid six-figure salaries that would be handsome even by for-profit standards.* PIRE seems to specialize in devising new and intrusive ways of government meddling in personal lives. One PIRE success story helps to coerce retailers to card octogenarians who dare to try to buy a bottle of Cabernet. ("This method of enforcement gives retailers the necessary incentive to comply with the statebs law regarding the sale of alcohol, given that their next customer could be part of a compliance check. The Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) has developed a detailed document to assist in the development and implementation of compliance checks." See: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/dotpartners/chapter_5.htm PIRE is an ardent supporter of the War On (Some Politically Unacceptable) Drugs, also known as an excellent way for Feds and contractors to fleece the public in a war that will never end, eviscerate the Fourth Amendment, and create a police state with perfectly legal no-knock raids. One PIRE researcher who focuses on "middle-school-based drug prevention programs" and has written a paper claiming anti-drug programs in schools actually work: http://www.nida.nih.gov/Meetings/Prevention/PrevBios4.html PIRE also supports higher taxes on alcohol and firmly opposes lowering the minimum drinking age to be akin to Europe or Canada (something that would probably do much to limit abuse). See: http://www.higheredcenter.org/thisweek/tw010629.html http://resources.prev.org/documents/BeerTaxesNewsRelease.pdf I'm sure that PIRE will be delighted to hear from the members of the public that pay its executive salaries. And if course if they have apologized for the Colorado incident, and pledge never to rely on such underhanded tactics again, I'd be delighted to send along a response from them. -Declan * Robert Carpenter, PIRE's CEO, was paid $221,785 in 2005 Ted Langevin, a VP/CFO, was paid $200,760 Joel Grube, a PIRE research director, was paid $237,075 Ted Miller, a PIRE research director, was paid $192,444 Jan van der Eijk, IS director, was paid $194,532 Paul Gruenwald, a science director, was paid $212,437 Robert Saltz, an associate director, was paid $191,527 Genevive Ames, a staff director, was paid $183,770 I've put PIRE's 2005 990 form here so you can see for yourself: http://politechbot.com/docs/pire.pacific.institute.research.evaluation.finan... _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE