Defrocking the MADD Mothers
MADD is no longer a mom and pop lobbying group. It has a net worth of exceeding $25 M. Candy Lightner, the founder who lost her daughter to a drunk driver, was deposed following arguments over the direction of the organization. It now is a lobbying group run by executives that pay themselves $100,000 plus salaries, it has a huge force of paid telemarketers which for huge fees raises tens of millions each year, without accounting for what it gets in government grants from NHTSA.
All revenue now do not stay with the local level but go from the local to the national which decides how to allocate. The current chief executive is a male, not a "mom."
MADD has spent almost two out of every three dollars raised on further fund-raising, forcing the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) to downgrade its evaluation of the organization to a "D." MADD has spent twice as much
on fund raising as AIP finds acceptable. It has numerous employees, a large bureaucracy, and a huge retirement fund. It has turned from a public service organization devoted to reducing traffic fatalities into something else.
It perpetuates itself by continually promoting new legislation against alcohol and impaired driving. Its latest promotion is to lower the legal alcohol level for the second and third offense, so that with the second offense the legal and presumptive limit would be a .05, from a .08 on the first offense, a real sliding scale. There is talk about seeking even lower levels. That
would get the female social drinkers with one glass of wine off the road.
The organization is also promoting interlock devices for the first DUI arrest as part of the MVD/Admin Per Se quiver of arrows. If everyone quit drinking or driving, they would be out of business.
So think about that next time a high school student solicitor comes to your door or you receive a solicitor by phone or mail. Also think about how lowering the legal limit on the second offense to a .05 might, or might not, reduce the number of DUI trials. That will probably be coming our way. It has been adopted as the law in the state of Maine.