Financial "Rape" of Drivers by Wrecker Services

Well I'm on a rampage today.

This past Sunday, my sister's car broke down near South Kirkwood and West Airport Blvd. One of her passengers called the Meadows Police Department and asked them to call a wrecker service. Unfortunately for her, the service they called was Gutierrez Wrecker Service located in Rosenberg, Texas.

When the wrecker driver showed up, my sister requested that he take her car to Jeff Haas Mazda at 11222 Old Katy Road, a distance of 12 miles. She signed the consent form and told him that there was a "key-drop" and requested that he leave the car there. At the time he made no mention of the fact that he would not leave the car there if it could not be secured, nor did he tell her that he would not leave the car there unless he was paid upon delivery.

Monday morning I drove my sister up to Jeff Haas Mazda, only to be told that the car had not been left there. Upon calling the wrecker service, the driver informed her that he did not leave the car there because he was concerned that the car might be vandalized, that he had taken it to his stowage yard in Rosenberg, Texas and that he would be delivering it that morning. True to his word, the driver delivered the automobile...with a towing charge of-now get this folks-$395.00.

Yep, almost $400.00 to tow a Mazda 12 miles. It seems that the accepted official towing fee for Fort Bend County, in which the city of Rosenberg sits, is $175.00. Rosenberg is only 31 miles from Jeff Haas Mazda. So folks it appears that this "gentleman" charged my sister two towing charges to and from Rosenberg (that would be $350.00 for you mathematically challenged). I still don't know where the extra $45.00 comes from since the driver, I assume it to be Mr. Gutierrez, claims that he did not charge her for stowing the car overnight and by my calculations $45.00 is more than sales tax would be for a straight $350.00 charge.

Not being familiar with the intricacies of the car towing industry, I must say that this seems to be a rather excessive charge for towing a small sedan for what was originally understood to be a 12 mile journey.

I realize that this story is not unique in the experience of Houston drivers, but it does serve to highlight problems in a system which seems to be virtually unregulated, and inclined to extortion-like treatment of individual citizens who are caught in a distressed and powerless position.

I, in my personal experience, have never heard of a wrecker driver refusing to leave an automobile at a dealership on a Sunday simply because they were closed, when there was a "key-drop" box available. I have however been held hostage (or at least my car was held hostage) until I paid a driver $97.00 in 1997 to have my car towed the inconceivable distance of...5 miles. It was my first experience with the unregulated towing system. Prior to that my last tow had cost me around $50.00

The wrecker service industry was deregulated in 1995 and since then their has been a free-for-all in the towing industry with fees climbing at increasing rates. Prior to regulation (consent fees were never regulated in Houston) the average consent towing (one in which the driver volutarily has his car towed) ran between $55.00 and $75.00. Following deregulation, the sky's the limit, and drivers need to be aware that. Before they sign the consent form they need to make sure that the expense is totaled out.

With fees running at such exorbitant rates, I can't help but wonder if some of the surrounding municipalities are not in "cahoots" with these services. Now I'm not saying that they are, and I am not saying that anyone in this story has done anything illegal, but I am saying that $400.00 seems to be an extraordinary amount for a 12 mile tow.

Perhaps it is time for our City of Houston Council to take another look at the fee structure of these towing services.

It is unreasonable to expect a citizen whose vehicle is stuck on a main thoroughfare to "shop around" for the best rates, especially with the gradual disappearance of public telephones and the difficulty of finding a copy of the yellow pages from which to do ones shopping.

As a Conservative I believe in the free enterprise system, but for a stranded motorist there is very little freedom of choice when it comes to obtaining a wrecker service.

Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) are great words for the market place, but perhaps another version should be added caveat ereptor (let the robber beware).

Long Live Our American Republic!

Note some of the information used in this article came form the Houston Chronicle archives:

HOUSTON CHRONICLE
SUN 07/06/1997
Section: APage: 1Edition: 2 STAR

Wrecker drivers toeing the line/Fears of post-deregulation chaos fail to come true in Houston
By T.J. MILLING Staff

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Close Down Club Gitmo?? Check this out.

Folks, there is a reason that America puts people in prison. Usually it is because they represent a threat to society, but there is a cadre of Americans who don't believe that we need to have places like "Club Gitmo" (the Guantanamo Terrorist Detention Center) in Cuba.

These naive souls, like John Edwards, believe that:

"The War on Terror is a slogan designed only for politics, not a
strategy to make America safe. It's a bumper sticker, not a plan."

Considering the violent record of Radical Islam over the past 30 years, this kind of political opportunism and/or intentional ignorance is inexcusable.

The reason that "Club Gitmo" (a name coined by Rush Limbaugh) exists is because throughout this war against the Global Islamic Jihad, our troops have encountered and captured some thoroughly bad individuals. A case in point is reported today by AP via Yahoo News:

Russia: Ex-Guantanamo detainee killed
By JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW - A man formerly held in the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was killed Wednesday in a shootout with security agents in a restive North Caucasus republic, Russia's top security agency said.

Ruslan Odizhev was killed amid gunfire that erupted when agents tried to arrest him and another man in Kabardino-Balkariya, a region near Chechnya that is plagued by violence linked both to crime and to religious tensions, the Federal Security Service said in a statement.

The service, known by its Russian acronym FSB, said Odizhev had been held at Guantanamo Bay and was believed to have been a supporter of the Taliban. Odizhev was one of seven Russians released from the detention facility in 2004; his whereabouts recently had been unknown.

The FSB did not specify why agents were trying to detain him, but said he was a suspect in the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk and that he took part in a 2005 insurgent attack on police and government facilities in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkariya.

So here we have a perfect example as to why those individuals who keep demanding that we close the Guantanamo facility closed deserve to be scorned as Left-wing, moon-bat, buffoons; bantam weight intellects unworthy of respect.

No individual in America who fully understands the nature of those we are fighting and who believes in maintaining the security and integrity of our nation could seriously say the things that Democrats like Edwards, Obama, and Clinton have been saying unless they value their political careers more than the lives of their fellow citizens.

There is nothing more contemptible in public service than those who would seek to promote themselves over the safety and security of the American people by telling lies. This is nothing but coldly calculated political posing by those who prefer deception to truth and sloganeering and name-calling to genuine debate...in other words, Liberals.

Close Club Gitmo? I don't think so.

Long Live Our American Republic!

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Seems Kay Bailey Hutchison Has Seen the Light

Well, I found this one on the Houston Chronicle webpage...originally buried on the Houston local page but strangely resurrected to the front page when people began to complain. Funny how that seems to happen only to articles supporting Conservative causes. Of course there is no Leftward bias in the Houston Chronicle...and Bill Clinton was the most moral President in US history too.

Anyway, even though they resurrected the story from the back page, the headline is confusing enough to make Conservatives cringe.

Hutchison to defy GOP on immigration bill
Hutchison to vote against reviving stalled immigration bill

June 21, 2007, 6:40PM
By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who has been under
intense pressure from the White House and Republican leadership to support a
sweeping immigration overhaul, nevertheless announced today that she will vote
against reviving the legislation when it returns to the Senate floor next
week.

She was joined today by the state's other senator, Republican John
Cornyn, who had been expected by the bill's supporters to take such a stance.
They had aggressively lobbied Hutchison in hopes of adding her vote to the 60
necessary to revive the stalled legislation.

"I could not support (bringing the bill to a vote) in its present
position," Hutchison, criticizing the legislation as amnesty for illegal
immigrants, said today.

As No. 4 in the Senate GOP leadership, Hutchison is the highest-ranking
Republican to break from her party on a domestic policy issue of signal
importance to President Bush.

"Until major changes are made that reject amnesty and a more open, fair
process emerges for debating one of the most crucial issues facing our nation, I
cannot support this immigration bill," she said.

One might be forgiven for believing that Kay Bailey was voting with the Democrats from this poor example of journalism displayed by the Chronicle. What Senator Huthchison is doing is listening to her voters and standing against the GOP leadership. She is very much doing the will of the real GOP, those of us who voted Republican to prevent this kind of insanity.

To say that Senator Hutchison is "to defy GOP on immigration bill," is absolutely disceptive and incorrect. The fact is that a majority of Republicans in Congress, in both Houses of Congress are against this Amnesty Bill. There is a very good reason for that; most Americans are against this Amnesty Bill.

Unfortunately we Conservatives are battling three groups in preventing 20 million lawbreakers from getting illegally awarded citizenship.

1. Democrats who know that this huge influx of new immigrants will flock to vote for their socialist policies as they are more accustomed to socialism than they are free enterprise.
2. Foolish Republicans like our President, John McCain, and the Liberal RINO's who are gullible enough, or are arrogant and uninformed enough (ever notice how the two seem to go hand-in-hand?) to believe that by sucking up to the illegals, they will convince them to vote Republican. And last but not least,
3. Big corporations in the Dairy Industry, Hotel and Restaurant Business, Agricultural Industry, The American Chamber of Commerce and others who see illegals as a source of cheap labor.

This is corruption of the worst order and it cuts on both sides of the aisle in Congress. It is pandering to special interests in the most blatant way.

The President is fond of saying that "these people do jobs that Americans won't do." Well, if he means at a poverty level wage with no benefits, he's right. The problem with that statement, or should I say problems, are numerous.

First it makes the assumption that illegals are only working in low-paying jobs. That is a blatant lie and to prove it all one has to do is to look at the meat packing plant where they rounded up 200 illegal aliens working at the plant. The very next day, all of those jobs left behind by those illegals were taken by American citizens.

Second, it continues the lie that Americans won't do the kind of labor that illegals perform. That is absurd. I have been alive long enough to remember when American citizens did perform all of those jobs, whether it be cleaning peoples houses, housekeeping in hotels, or digging sewers. All of those jobs have been done by American citizens and they would be again, if the businesses were forced to pay wages high enough to attract Americans to those jobs.

Now maybe a few overweight Americans might have to go out and mow their own lawns instead of paying some guy to do it, but as far as I can see, only good can come from increased exercise. Besides if you still don't want to mow the lawn, you can pay an American citizen a few bucks more to have it done for you.

Kay Bailey is standing up for what she and most of America knows to be right. It is a matter of security, it is a matter of freedom, and it is a matter of preserving our culture.

I thank God for the few great individuals we still have in Congress like Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn (both of my senators...HooYah!) and Jeff Sessions. There are others, but I cannot list them all. So I will just express my gratitude to all of those Representatives and Senators with the guts to withstand the pressure from so many quarters and to do what is right.

A nation without borders is no longer a nation. The President and his happy band of insipid mouth-breathers up there in Washington DC are out of step with Americans and out of touch with their base. They have taken up the cause of their political enemies in hopes of currying favor and they have insulted their base.

Mr. President, Karl Rove, Tony Snow, John McCain,and the rest of you betrayers of our trust and our nation, we are not "xenophobes," we are not "fear mongering" Mr. President Bush, we are not "anti-immigrants" Mr. Fred Barnes and Mr. Mort Kondracky and it is an insult for you to say so.

We are pro-America, pro-Constitution, and pro-obeying the law. If you can't understand that then you need to go. Right now, even considering the good things that President Bush has done, I am about ready to call for his impeachment for betraying the trust we citizens gave him in getting him re-elected for a second term.

Secure the borders 1st, then we'll talk; anything else, well that's a bunch of BS.

Long live this American Republic!!???

Oh yeah, and Kay, You go girl!

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The Proper Means of Handling the Illegal Alien Problem

June 10, 2007 at 10:24 AM

I really grow weary of the John McCain/Ted Kennedy/George Bush (MKB) cabal of illegal immigration apologists lobbing insults at those of us who are simply calling for the enforcement of our immigration laws as written.

We have been called "nativists," "xenophobes," and "anti-immigrationists." As in the case of all ad hominem attackers, this occurs because they are unable to defend the undefendable. None of those who oppose this push for amnesty have a greivance against immigration. It was immigration which built this nation. We are all the sons of immigrants. What we oppose is the flagrant defiance of our laws by illegal immigrants, local governments and our federal authorities. We oppose the abject refusal by some in our government to simply enforce the law.

The MKB bill is nothing but amnesty for law breakers, and the same empty promises of "enforcement" as we were given 20 years ago by the Reagan administration and the Congress of that period (another "lame duck" Republican President with Democrats in control of both Houses of Congress). The concept of the "Z" visa is the most repugnant and absurd suggestion that has been made by any law making body is some time. It is rewarding law breakers at the expense of those who have abided by U.S. immigration laws and used the proper procedures to obtain admittance to our nation.

In an earlier time, when "political correctness" wasn't the dominating influence it has become in our nation today and when men of state were still "men" and unafraid to act for the good of our citizens and our nation, the approach was quite different.

President Ike Eisenhower realized the threat to our nation that illegal immigration posed way back in the fifties, but unlike our current President, he was willing to do something about it. His solution involved the replacement of the then INS commissioner with retired General Joseph "Jumpin' Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and a veteran of the 101st Airborne, the removal af INS agents who had close ties to those businesses that prospered from the steady influx of illegal aliens, and finally the institution of "Operation Wetback," a broad sweep by INS agents through the Southwestern US arresting all illegals they could findand deporting them, not just across the border, but deep into Mexico where their return would be far more difficult.

The Christian Science Monitor reminded America of that effort not quite one year ago in an article entitled, "How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico." [Link]

"Profits from illegal labor led to the kind of corruption that apparently worried Eisenhower. Joseph White, a retired 21-year veteran of the Border Patrol, says that in the early 1950s, some senior US officials overseeing immigration enforcement "had friends among the ranchers," and agents "did not dare" arrest their illegal workers.Walt Edwards, who joined the Border Patrol in 1951, tells a similar story. He says: "When we caught illegal aliens on farms and ranches, the farmer or rancher would often call and complain [to officials in El Paso]. And depending on how politically connected they were, there would be political intervention. That is how we got into this mess we are in now."

Bill Chambers, who worked for a combined 33 years for the Border Patrol and the then-called US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), says politically powerful people are still fueling the flow of illegals.

During the 1950s, however, this "Good Old Boy" system changed under Eisenhower - if only for about 10 years.

In 1954, Ike appointed retired Gen. Joseph "Jumpin' Joe" Swing, a former West Point classmate and veteran of the 101st Airborne, [actually, this is incorrect he was commander of the 11th Airborne Division, 1943-48] as the new INS commissioner.
Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.

One of Swing's first decisive acts was to transfer certain entrenched immigration officials out of the border area to other regions of the country where their political connections with people such as Senator Johnson would have no effect.
Then on June 17, 1954, what was called "Operation Wetback" began. Because political resistance was lower in California and Arizona, the roundup of aliens began there. Some 750 agents swept northward through agricultural areas with a goal of 1,000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Another 488,000, fearing arrest, had fled the country."

Now I don't know about you, but it looks to me like Ike's program met with unparalleled success. It is unfortunate that we lack men with the strength and character of Eisenhower and General "Jumpin' Joe" Swing today. It appears that but for a few stalwart soles in the Senate and House, we are being governed by men who favor convenience and fear such strong action.

The MKB "Comprehensive Immigration Bill" is a give-away and a "cop out." It is another case of Congress attempting to look as if they are accomplishing something when they are not. The bill lacks teeth for enforcement, and offers no means by which the stronger provisions could be enforced even it the will to enforce existed. It is paying lip-service to solving a real and growing security threat and a real and growing threat to the very culture in which we live.

It saddens me that "Neocons" like Fred Barnes and Bill Crystal, who see only dollar signs for business, consort with gutless "compromisers" like John McCain and Trent Lott and those like Ted "the Chauffeur" Kennedy and President "Compassionate Conservative" Bush who see only political advantage, in order to foist this "amnesty bill" and that is precisely what it is, on the American public.

The reason for the harried pace imposed on the Senate debate this week and the rush to pass, is all too clear. As citizens begin to learn the details of this immigration monstrosity, they are beginning to protest to their members of Congress and these members of our government "of the people, by the people and for the people," don't want to hear them. They know that there is only a limited window of opportunity for successfully passing this bill and that window is rapidly closing…as it should be.

Ike showed the way back in 1954, and Duncan Hunter has led the way with the fence he has caused to be constructed on Kalifornia's Southern border. The money has already been appropriated to construct the remaining 800 miles of fence, but nothing has been done even to begin construction. All America requires is a leader with the courage to "lead," rather than a fool who is more concerned with what the press might say than he is in enforcing our laws, or people who are more interested in providing business with low wage workers than they are in securing our borders.

I find it interesting that for 10 years this policy worked, and that this policy ended not with the Democratic Administration of Jack Kennedy, but with the institution of the "Good Old Boy" administration of Lyndon Johnson, who was by all accounts one of the most corrupt politicians in American history.

We could certainly use another Ike right now.

Long Live Our American Republic!

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