Folks who know me know that I have very little patience with public and political officials who go around with a sense of entitlement about them. Usually, most of us are able to ignore them unless of course they do something stupid and get arrested, suspended or kicked out of office. But sometimes you just can’t ignore them because they force their sense of entitlement right down your throat.
So, I’m getting ready to pull onto Jefferson Avenue in West Jefferson today and I see an approaching SUV, so I wait for it to pass. When it does I notice two things immediately; one, the vehicle is traveling well over the posted speed limit and two, it’s a police vehicle.
As I pulled onto the road, I couldn’t help but think that if our places had been reversed, then I would be getting pulled over about then and ticketed.
We all see it every single day, everywhere you drive, from sea to shinning sea, a government vehicle, usually, a police vehicle of some sort; state, county or local is driving faster than is legal and for no apparent reason, endangering the safety of other drivers. No lights on, no siren, just cruising faster than anyone else can.
I have to wonder what the result of such driving is. Really, I have no choice but to wonder, because after searching for some time on the interweb, I found that there is no publicly available data on accidents caused by unsafe driving by law enforcement officials. I’m sure that data is someplace but it isn’t readily available.
I myself had an unnerving encounter with a police officer a couple of years ago as I drove back to Ashe County from Boone late at night.
I was driving on NC Highway 421 when I came upon a slower moving vehicle, as sometimes happens when you drive. I checked my mirrors and saw that the only vehicle behind me was a good distance back, leaving more than enough time to pass. (I’ve been driving for more than 30 years, so I trust my judgment in these areas.) Speeding up to 65 mph, I started to pass the slower vehicle, when out of nowhere the headlights that had been a half-mile or better behind me rushed up into my rearview mirror and then disappeared below view as the vehicle drew within inches of my bumper. Fortunately, the proximity of the vehicle’s headlights to the back of my Cherokee illuminated the vehicles front and I saw with agitation that it was a police vehicle.
With the cop riding my bumper close enough to read my radio dial and the vehicle I was passing just beginning to fall behind us, I pressed the accelerator to the floor and pushed the old engine as hard as I could to get out of the way. When I finally was able to safely merge right the officer pulled up along side of me and glared over at me as if I had done something wrong and stayed there for 100 yards or more. I obviously hadn’t been doing anything visibly illegal, because he proceeded up and over the next rise and was gone. I want to point out that at no time before, during or at the end of our encounter, did the officer ever turn on his blue lights or make any indication that he was on any type of official business.
Just a short distance down the road I saw two police vehicles on the side of the highway. I slowed as I approached and looked over, like you do, and noticed that two officers had two young ladies out of a vehicle speaking with them. I didn’t get a closer look at them because one of the officers (I’m assuming my new friend) pointed the beam of his flashlight directly at my windshield really screwing up my vision for a minute or two. Not the best thing to have happen at 6o mph.
Did I call and report the incident? Well, I tried to, but since I didn’t have a vehicle number or exact time and location of the incident, “there isn’t much we can do,” I was told. This was, by the way, pretty much the answer I expected. After hanging up I realized that the exercise had been about as productive as arguing with a drunk man in WalMart, without the possibility for a spot on Springer.
Of course there is another group of ‘public servants’ that take supposed entitlement to the next degree and those are volunteer firefighters. Seems like everyplace you go since 9-11 you see pick-up trucks, SUVs and just about everything else sporting a VFD plate and an ass load of red lights and light bars and usually some sort of, “Ain’t we all heroes,” type of bumper sticker. I only know one NYFD Fireman who was at ground zero. He’s retired and has far too much class to act entitled. His humility is why he is such a good man. But many of these guys (and most are male) fly down the highway with no lights on as if they were on a call, only to be seen a few miles away stopping at the BP station for a cold drink or in the McDonalds drive through lane.
Look, I don’t want to fly down the highway, I’m well past that stage in my life and I don’t mind somebody clicking off the long miles a few mph over the limit. But flying down the road just because you can get away with it is dangerous and shows a level of immaturity that concerns me in a public official.
The NC General Assembly needs to look closely at the conduct of police departments and officers on all levels and start weeding out the unprofessional ones so that officers with integrity are the only ones left. The motto is to “Protect and Serve,” not Endanger and Intimidate.
If you are a cop or a volunteer firefighter take this to heart. We like you, we need you and we want to respect you, but blatantly rubbing you ability to drive like a crazy person without consequence is irritating to the rest of us who have to follow the law. It kind of makes me wonder what other laws they are fuzzy on following. Does it make you wonder?
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
ID? I Don't, Do You?
Let’s talk about identification for a minute.
As many of you know, during my hiatus, Governor Bev Perdue vetoed the GOP led House Bill 351 to require voters to produce a photo ID at the polling place.
“North Carolinians who are eligible to vote have a constitutionally guaranteed right to cast their ballots, and no one should put up obstacles to citizens exercising that right,” she said.
While I am in total agreement with that statement, as I think most reasonable people are, I don’t agree with the Democrats’ definition of obstacles or the Republicans’ rationale for wanting the law in the first place.
You see for most Dems, the obstacles they are referring to are rooted in barring Black Americans from voting by way of violence and intimidation. This was a very real problem at one time in America but today, not so much. The only issues at the polls these days come from fanatical followers of candidates who try to harass people wearing the opposition’s campaign buttons. Nobody is standing outside with ropes and axe handles.
I have voted in two states in my life; West Virginia (my birth state) and North Carolina (my chosen home). I have also voted absentee when I was in the military. Not once in all the elections I have participated in have I ever seen anyone turned away because of what they were.
Did someone around me falsify their identity to vote? Maybe, but I doubt it. I have seen people turned away because they were not on the roll where they tried to vote and in fact, I was turned away once because I went to the wrong polling place. That was my fault and I found the right place and was still able to vote.
However, that is the GOP’s main concern; that someone will vote under someone else’s identity.
Look, when you can get the registered voters to come out and vote like they should, then worry about non-registered voters faking their identity. Until then, false voting is the least of our worries as a democratic republic.
In NC in 2010 with only 66 percent of the population even registered to vote, less than 50 percent turned out to cast ballots. Nationally, only 41 percent of registered voters cast a ballot and in 2008, our last general election, only 65 percent took the time.
Apathy is the problem, not voter fraud.
What makes you pro ID folks think that if you can’t get registered voters out that you have to worry about the people who don’t even take the time to register?
As for me, my opposition to the bill is that once again a governmental body is trying to find yet another way to get my name on an official list. And we all know if you’re not on the list you don’t get in. We also know that if the government has you on yet another list, you’ll be easier to find, when they start looking for people like you.
This type of bill is nothing more than another cow patty on the slippery slope to loss of personal freedoms.
If I am a registered voter, with a voter registration card in my pocket and I show up at my polling place, the only thing the government needs to do is check my name off the list and point me toward the polling booth.
I find it confusing that otherwise reasonable Republicans and TEA Party folks I know think that somehow more governmental control is a good thing. I find it frustrating because these folks are the same folks out there screaming that we need smaller government with fewer intrusions into the lives of citizens.
If we allow our governments, national, state and local, to start requiring official identification for voting, how long will it be until we have to provide ID to travel from one state or town to another, to buy a car, to buy food? How long until cops can stop you in the street and check you ID to see if you are local or not?
Think that sounds crazy? Think of it this way; law enforcement is permitted to set up license checks on government owned roads. Why? Because the roads are owned and maintained by the government and so they have the “legal” right to ensure that the people driving on it have the proper papers and insurance coverage.
Now look into the future a little; a man is walking down the street in an upper-class neighborhood. He’s just walking on a sunny weekend day with no destination in mind just walking around enjoying the view; let’s say he’s in Charlotte or Charleston, SC. Now he might be dressed casually, but not expensively, he is stopped by a police officer who asks him for his ID and health insurance information. The man doesn’t have any and is detained.
Don’t think it can happen?
Town and city streets and sidewalks are on government owned land, the public is permitted to use them, but they are owned and maintained by the government. Just as the government is allowed to stop you on the highway they own and ask to see your papers, the same principle can be used to stop you on city sidewalks. If national health coverage becomes law someday, they could cite you if you don’t have it when they ask for your ID.
Some people say this can’t happen, I say tell that the people of 1940’s Germany or 1950’s Russia.
The government is going to use any means at their disposal to control the citizenry, because a docile, controlled and well documented population is easy to manipulate. If we allow them to continue to put us on list after list after list, and force us to carry special IDs for various reasons we are allowing them to make cattle of us.
Like voter ID? How do you feel about a national ID card? That’s the logical conclusion to all these bills to track who you are and where you go. Then there will be no place to live free and unmolested.
I don’t think I want to go along and if you have half a brain and some healthy skepticism about the motives of government and their desire for total control, you won’t go along with it either.
As many of you know, during my hiatus, Governor Bev Perdue vetoed the GOP led House Bill 351 to require voters to produce a photo ID at the polling place.
“North Carolinians who are eligible to vote have a constitutionally guaranteed right to cast their ballots, and no one should put up obstacles to citizens exercising that right,” she said.
While I am in total agreement with that statement, as I think most reasonable people are, I don’t agree with the Democrats’ definition of obstacles or the Republicans’ rationale for wanting the law in the first place.
You see for most Dems, the obstacles they are referring to are rooted in barring Black Americans from voting by way of violence and intimidation. This was a very real problem at one time in America but today, not so much. The only issues at the polls these days come from fanatical followers of candidates who try to harass people wearing the opposition’s campaign buttons. Nobody is standing outside with ropes and axe handles.
I have voted in two states in my life; West Virginia (my birth state) and North Carolina (my chosen home). I have also voted absentee when I was in the military. Not once in all the elections I have participated in have I ever seen anyone turned away because of what they were.
Did someone around me falsify their identity to vote? Maybe, but I doubt it. I have seen people turned away because they were not on the roll where they tried to vote and in fact, I was turned away once because I went to the wrong polling place. That was my fault and I found the right place and was still able to vote.
However, that is the GOP’s main concern; that someone will vote under someone else’s identity.
Look, when you can get the registered voters to come out and vote like they should, then worry about non-registered voters faking their identity. Until then, false voting is the least of our worries as a democratic republic.
In NC in 2010 with only 66 percent of the population even registered to vote, less than 50 percent turned out to cast ballots. Nationally, only 41 percent of registered voters cast a ballot and in 2008, our last general election, only 65 percent took the time.
Apathy is the problem, not voter fraud.
What makes you pro ID folks think that if you can’t get registered voters out that you have to worry about the people who don’t even take the time to register?
As for me, my opposition to the bill is that once again a governmental body is trying to find yet another way to get my name on an official list. And we all know if you’re not on the list you don’t get in. We also know that if the government has you on yet another list, you’ll be easier to find, when they start looking for people like you.
This type of bill is nothing more than another cow patty on the slippery slope to loss of personal freedoms.
If I am a registered voter, with a voter registration card in my pocket and I show up at my polling place, the only thing the government needs to do is check my name off the list and point me toward the polling booth.
I find it confusing that otherwise reasonable Republicans and TEA Party folks I know think that somehow more governmental control is a good thing. I find it frustrating because these folks are the same folks out there screaming that we need smaller government with fewer intrusions into the lives of citizens.
If we allow our governments, national, state and local, to start requiring official identification for voting, how long will it be until we have to provide ID to travel from one state or town to another, to buy a car, to buy food? How long until cops can stop you in the street and check you ID to see if you are local or not?
Think that sounds crazy? Think of it this way; law enforcement is permitted to set up license checks on government owned roads. Why? Because the roads are owned and maintained by the government and so they have the “legal” right to ensure that the people driving on it have the proper papers and insurance coverage.
Now look into the future a little; a man is walking down the street in an upper-class neighborhood. He’s just walking on a sunny weekend day with no destination in mind just walking around enjoying the view; let’s say he’s in Charlotte or Charleston, SC. Now he might be dressed casually, but not expensively, he is stopped by a police officer who asks him for his ID and health insurance information. The man doesn’t have any and is detained.
Don’t think it can happen?
Town and city streets and sidewalks are on government owned land, the public is permitted to use them, but they are owned and maintained by the government. Just as the government is allowed to stop you on the highway they own and ask to see your papers, the same principle can be used to stop you on city sidewalks. If national health coverage becomes law someday, they could cite you if you don’t have it when they ask for your ID.
Some people say this can’t happen, I say tell that the people of 1940’s Germany or 1950’s Russia.
The government is going to use any means at their disposal to control the citizenry, because a docile, controlled and well documented population is easy to manipulate. If we allow them to continue to put us on list after list after list, and force us to carry special IDs for various reasons we are allowing them to make cattle of us.
Like voter ID? How do you feel about a national ID card? That’s the logical conclusion to all these bills to track who you are and where you go. Then there will be no place to live free and unmolested.
I don’t think I want to go along and if you have half a brain and some healthy skepticism about the motives of government and their desire for total control, you won’t go along with it either.
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