How many bikers’ hospital bills would you like to pay? Only one-third of Illinois motorcyclists wear helmets, and the state Department of Public Aid thinks there oughta be a law. “Unhelmeted motorcyclists have three times as many head injuries….The University of Illinois at Chicago reports that acute health care costs for the 5,484 injured motorcyclists in Illinois during 1988 were more than $35.3 million, almost half of which came from public funds–including the already overburdened budget of the Department of Public Aid. If all motorcyclists had worn helmets, Illinois could have saved $8.2 million and millions more in long-term care and rehabilitation expenses. It is twice as expensive to treat unhelmeted riders as those injured wearing helmets.”
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“A total of 362 toxic chemicals have been identified in the bottom sediment of the Great Lakes,” according to a U.S. EPA report from last summer’s workshop on the subject. “It is estimated that remediation of Great Lakes sediments could cost $10 billion. It would entail treatment of 40 million cubic yards of material at costs ranging from $10 to $1500 per cubic yard.”
Dept. of creeping totalitarianism: The Illinois Drug Asset Forfeiture Procedure Act–passed overwhelmingly by the General Assembly last year and in effect since January–authorizes local law-enforcement officials to seize and keep up to $20,000 in property (excluding real estate) without a hearing and without criminal charges being filed. According to Robert Schofield in the Illinois Brief (Summer), “All that is necessary is a finding of ‘probable cause’ by a state’s attorney that the property was held in violation of certain drug laws. Once the property is seized, the burden shifts to the property owner to hire a lawyer, post a bond and file an action to prove that he or she did not hold the property in violation of the law. Even if the citizen wins, he or she will be out the cost of a lawyer and up to 10 percent of the bond. As with the federal law, all of the money forfeited is kept by law enforcement.”
What pets beget, according to the Anti-Cruelty Society on West Grand: “An uncontrolled mating pair of cats can beget twelve cats in a year, which will beget sixty-six cats in two years, begetting three hundred eighty-two cats in three years, then two thousand cats in four years, seventy-three thousand in seven years, and thereby begetting EIGHTY MILLION CATS IN ONLY TEN YEARS.” ACS reports that it received almost 4,000 cats and kittens during June, July, and August of 1990, of which only about 1,200 found permanent homes.
