# On Paying Bribes to Grease The Wheels of Civility



## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

Not that I, Dawg, would ever pay a bribe as such but all of us who have been on the planet for a while know that "mordida", whether in filthy lucre or blatant fealty to some moronic boss, is the oil that stokes the engine that makes the wheels turn and delivers food to the communal table so let´s knock off the phony sanctimony. Why is a bribe to a cop more solicitious and spineless than the the lips planted on a bosses butt over the years in order to retain a salary so one could continue to bring home the bacon? 

I would a whole lot more prefer to pay some moronic cop out in the hinterland some dollars or pesos and be on my way if I have purposefully or inadvertently transgressed against the law than be retained in some backwater hooterville where I must face some hick judge in a few days and plead before that retard with the hope of preventing my incarceration in some backwater hoosegow for an indefinite period while hillbillies who don´t know me from Adam´s housecat decide my fate over brews down on the bayou. 

I know all about these local shenanigans and ´would rather pay off Billy Bob cop any day over even a couple of hours in a slammer in the middle of nowhere awaiting "justice" at the hands of the local undertaker/Baptist Yahoo Minister/ local judge when he wakes up from his post-boozing slumber. 

Back in the 1950s, the last thing on earth you wanted to be was an African American driving a Lincoln or Cadillac with Michigan plates on the old U.S. federel highways through small towns such as that in which I as raised in South Alabama with a car jammed with family members. There was no question that you paid a bribe if you were stopped by a cop while driving above 10 MPH and were damned lucky to have had that opportunity to have chosen that bribe alterrnative to save your and your family´s ass. 

The thing that seriosly moderated the bribe system among crooked cops in the United States was the interstate highway system started in the 1950s. Before that, if you had New York license plates and were driving to Florida through Georgia, you were almost guaranteed a ticket with a "mordida" payoff or a night in the local jail. This kind of crap is as American as apple pie. 

Today, it´s the same thnig in Mexico, I drive the autopistas between Lake Chapala and Chiapas all the time, some 1,500 kilometers, patrolled by federal cops with no trouble and at very high speeds with no harassment from local hillbilly cops or anyone else. On local roads. you are fair game.

Human nature is human nature whereever you are. Learn to live with it. When the time comes, pay the damn bribe and move on. Or, perhaps, you would rather have them confiscate your car and assign you a cell for a time while stealing your wallet and taking all your money.

Keep yuor time in and through Hooterville to a mínimum no matter where you may be.

By the way; if you pay the crooked and underpaid cop assuming you have really committed a traffic violation, or waited to pay the local judicial authorities over time while cooling your heals in some backwater, where has your money actually gone?


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## sparks (Jun 17, 2007)

In the middle of nowhere ..... most likely just to keep rollin'. In the municipio where I live .... probably not


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

[_QUOTE=sparks;4205306]In the middle of nowhere ..... most likely just to keep rollin'. In the municipio where I live .... probably not[/QUOTE]_

City of Birmingham circa 1964, Dawg is over from Tuscaloosa to take part in a civil rights demonstration celebrating the arrival and a concert to be held by Joan Baez at the Birmingham Civic Auditorium that night. It´s about 2:00PM in Downtown Birmingham and Dawg is driving his old 1958 Ford Fairlane down a principal boulevard in that city with a mixed group of three blacks and two whites on our way to some conroversial interracial event which I do not recall. All of a sudden we found ourselves surrounded by Birmingham motorcycle cops who demanded we pull over to the curb, We, of course did so without hesitation. They rather brusquely inquired as to where we were headed and we told then that we were on our way to the Joan Baez concertat the city auditorium. Some racial epithets were hurled our way by these lowlofe cops but they allowedd us to proceed to the concert. This was a situation in which a proferred bribe would have resulted in oor busted crania and some time in the can. One must, in order to survive, know when to extend the dollar and when to extend the peace pipe. 

Things are not so simple nor humans so transparent. As Randy Newman wrote years ago in one of my favorite songs, "...don´t mess around with people you don´t know."


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## GARYJ65 (Feb 9, 2013)

Hound Dog said:


> [_QUOTE=sparks;4205306]In the middle of nowhere ..... most likely just to keep rollin'. In the municipio where I live .... probably not_




City of Birmingham circa 1964, Dawg is over from Tuscaloosa to take part in a civil rights demonstration celebrating the arrival and a concert to be held by Joan Baez at the Birmingham Civic Auditorium that night. It´s about 2:00PM in Downtown Birmingham and Dawg is driving his old 1958 Ford Fairlane down a principal boulevard in that city with a mixed group of three blacks and two whites on our way to some conroversial interracial event which I do not recall. All of a sudden we found ourselves surrounded by Birmingham motorcycle cops who demanded we pull over to the curb, We, of course did so without hesitation. They rather brusquely inquired as to where we were headed and we told then that we were on our way to the Joan Baez concertat the city auditorium. Some racial epithets were hurled our way by these lowlofe cops but they allowedd us to proceed to the concert. This was a situation in which a proferred bribe would have resulted in oor busted crania and some time in the can. One must, in order to survive, know when to extend the dollar and when to extend the peace pipe. 

Things are not so simple nor humans so transparent. As Randy Newman wrote years ago in one of my favorite songs, "...don´t mess around with people you don´t know."[/QUOTE]

Did you have to give bribe money to those cops?


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## sparks (Jun 17, 2007)

Thank God Civil Rights and Viet Nam are behind us .... tho I don't think our protests accomplished much in the scheme of things.

Cops didn't want money .... they wanted power. They'd just throw us in jail
Not like Mexico .... so far


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

> [Did you have to give bribe money to those cops?


Well, Gary, as Sparks wrote, these goons back in Alabama were out to exert power not collect chump change. I was relating my experience growing up in Alabama in the 1940s, 50s and 60s when the cops throughout most of the state were antagonistic and racist troglodytes, they,as one might expect of morons, were not interested in money either but in wasting you on the spot for having had the affrontery of driving around with people of another race intermingled in your car on a sunny afternoon in Birmingham in the early 1960s. To survive wherever you are understand the milieu you are inhabiting or passing through.

By the way, I haven´t paid mordida since at least 2003 and that was chickenfeed. How about the rest of you?

Maybe because of my yeas watching cops beating and torturing people, I am not so concerned with a Little bite here and there here in Mexico. We from the United States have very Little of which to be proud when it comes to pólice and political corruption.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Hound Dog said:


> By the way, I haven´t paid mordida since at least 2003 and that was chickenfeed. How about the rest of you?


I've never run into the need to pay bribes in Mexico, most likely because I don't have a car.


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