TheAgitator.com
You Are No Longer Free To Move About the Country
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010Janet Napolitano said last month that we could expect to soon see tighter restrictions at bus, train, and marine transportation centers, too. Here’s a report about TSA, Border Patrol, and local police setting up a checkpoint at a Greyhound station in Tampa. Note how quickly preventing a possible terrorist attack expands to include catching illegal immigrants, and preventing drug and what sounds like “cash smuggling.” (It’s hard to tell from the audio.) Note also the complete and utter reverence the local news report bestows on these government agencies, who after all are merely “teaming up to keep your family safe.”
A liberal blogger wrote to me in an email this week that libertarians who call the TSA pat-downs a violation of their civil liberties do a disservice to actual violations of civil liberties. It’s not difficult to envision the day where anyone wishing to take mass transportation in this country will have to first submit to a government checkpoint, show ID, and answer questions about any excess cash, prescription medication, or any other items in his possession the government deems suspicious. If and when that happens, freedom of movement will essentially be dead. But it won’t happen overnight. It’ll happen incrementally. And each increment will, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectly reasonable.
I’m just going to go back to bed. Why did I even get up?
Someone needs to go to Tampa and kick Chuck Lawrence in the nuts.
QFMFT!
I really don’t care if Bush, Obama or Nixon is in charge of the executive branch. The encroaching police state should concern Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, socialists and anybody who gives a good goddam about liberty.
And people called libertarians paranoid…
We’ve already accepted plenty of this stuff while driving as well. We have plenty of “sobriety” checkpoints and “border” checkpoints (hundreds of miles from the border). Indiana even had checkpoints to see if people were wearing their seatbelts a few years ago.
It’s moving along slowly, but in the not too distant future we may be going through multiple checkpoints every day whether we’re walking, driving, or taking mass transportation. Make sure your papers are in order.
#1
That’ll teach us to check the Agitator this early. Ugh.
Any liberal who down plays the severity of TSA guidelines with respect to our civil liberties isn’t a real liberal. There are conservatives, there are liberals, and then there are political hacks. Most people are in the last category. Real conservatives and liberals call out their own for their bullshit.
The problem of incrementalism is why I’ve been amazed to hear otherwise sane libertarians and others concerned with personal liberty espousing a “Trusted Travelers” program. Why in the world are people actually requesting an increased “papers please” mentality at our nation’s airports? This is a slippery slope if ever I’ve seen one. How long before allowing TTs to pass inspection with less delay becomes requiring someone be a TT in order to fly?
Somebody forgot a “t” :-).
I don’t understand why you’re so worried. The newscaster clearly says that they are doing this to keep us safe, and the person they found to interview about it clearly shows that that citizen likes it.
@ #2: Chuck Lawrence has no nuts.
Unfortunately, a liberal is in the White House so liberals are supporting this…and you know badge-licking cons are supporting the police state.
Not only is mass transportation a target, but any mass gathering of people will be targeted. More than 30 people in a room? You just created a terrorist target, so we’ll hire a few million more state agents to frisk you and peek in your undies.
Squashing civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism security isn’t just theatre, it’s a new racket.
PS: Why are we the target of so much terrorism again?
You assume we’re not there already. You have to do that for air travel, and they’ve already said they’re expanding it to train travel (but good news, they have no plans to use the x-ray scanners (yet!)). Within 5 years, easy.
And I’ll bet you that liberal blogger will still say there’s nothing wrong with it.
I think you’ve hit on something. Since they still seem to believe, for some absurd reason, that we’re a target for terrorists because “they hate us for our freedoms”, obviously, to them, they’ve found the solution to terrorism: If they take away all our freedoms, we don’t be the target of attacks! It’s so simple!
“And each increment will, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectly reasonable”
As shown by cigarettes, which went from commonplace to vilified without anyone noticing, or SWAT raids.
Ok let me get this straight. So talking about a civil liberties issue and spreading the word that our rights are being violated, does disservice to other civil liberty issues? Since when do we live in a zero sum game?
There’s no hyperlink to the report about TSA setting up a checkpoint at a bus station in Tampa.
Oh, and this liberal happens to think that the new TSA procedures are the most egregious mass violation of the civil liberties of American citizens by the Federal government since Roosevelt rounded up Japanese-Americans during WWII.
Don’t you guys know? The only *real* ‘Civil Liberties’ issues are African-American rights! Stuff like, you know, white people trying to move around the country, Latinos trying to pay their rent with cash, poor folks living without having their doors busted down, Italian-Americans having a poker game… that stuff’s not about ‘Civil Rights’ or Civil Liberties. That’s, uhhh, something else entirely!
/sarcasm
If it doesn’t fit the script, they can’t handle it. If it doesn’t fit their worldview, they discard the evidence. People don’t think ‘outside the box’. Well, that is, until, as Radley likes to say, Libertarianism ‘happens’ to them.
I have to wonder when the public transit lefties are going to get irked by all of this, particularly if TSA metastasizes to rail transport. Americans already dislike trains, and if they make the train station as miserable as the airport it won’t be good for train travel.
Looks like that might put a kink in the Liberals’ hope for mass transit?
When the taking the train instead of driving calculation includes getting to the train station an hour early, haveing your personal belongings rifled by otherwise unemployable people and a strip search, the Chicago to Milwaukee train (which few people take now) will be fucking empty.
Why would anyone fly from Detroit to Chicago? From home to hotel you can almost drive it faster.
Oh, I see. The video is the report on the Tampa TSA checkpoint. (Running Flashblock, sometimes I don’t even notice when there’s video on a web page.)
How did the nation founded on reining in Big Gov’t and all its abuses
become the one that gropes your balls before you get on a flight.
I missed that lecture. Musta dozed off.
I do most of my traveling on my motorcycle- what I’m finding is that you’re much more immune to intrusions from bureaucrats. While they do have helmet laws, I find the helmets more comfortable and help with anonymity. I don’t get stopped at sobriety or seat belt check points.
In Missouri, the 49cc scooters don’t require plates or property taxes to be paid on them. the kids are putting big-bore kits in them and they’ll do over 50mph. Much of the scooter crowd are natural anarchists!
While generally not good for business, motorcycles, bicycles, and scooters allow much more freedom.
I will not submit to TSA checks at airports, bus terminals, etc. I’ll cross the border into Canada at the least intrusive checkpoint I can find. I’m continually amazed at people who keep saying that travel is a ‘privilege’… This is a fundamental right that we’re giving away to these horrible bureaucrats.
“If and when that happens, freedom of movement will essentially be dead. But it won’t happen overnight. It’ll happen incrementally. And each increment will, when taken in isolation, appear to some to be perfectly reasonable.”
“Dependent on D.C.” by Dr. Charlotte Twight.
I’m more liberal than most here and I can tell you that I, in no way, shape or form believe this is OK or good or anything but an intrusion in anyone ability to freely travel the country. But then, I already get snippy when Barney pulls me over on the interstate and wants to know where I’m going and where I’ve been. I quite succinctly tell him it’s none of his fucking business. As a US citizen, I’m allowed to drive from point A to point B without checking in with the Barneys.
That said, what the fuck is the TSA’s response to anyone who refuses to patted down or pass through security. They currently claim that when you purchase an airline ticket, you’ve agreed to pass through their bullshit security theatre. I don’t recall seeing that being part of the purchase of an Amtrack ticket and I checked Greyhound’s website and saw no implied consent to be frisked or patted down before boarding a bus.
This will mostly affect poorer people. Folks like me will just rent a car to drive across country until the roadblocks go up.
Do people really have a problem with sobriety checkpoints? How is it an encroachment of liberty to provide incentives for people not to drive drunk? I don’t think this is analogous to excessive TSA regulations at all.
What are your plans after the checkpoints go up?
Dirtbikes.
So, how long before this morphs into a de facto internal passport system?
“Do people really have a problem with sobriety checkpoints? How is it an encroachment of liberty to provide incentives for people not to drive drunk?”
Sobriety checkpoints catch few drunks but many more seatbelt, insurance,
etc violations, and are more based on collecting revenue than upholding safety.
Also the idea of having a flashlight shined in your face and having
to prove your innocence and explain what you’re up to is not exactly, er, American.
What they have in common with TSA patting you down before a bus trip
is obvious, excess gov’t intrusion under the guise of “safety.”
I’m hanging on to the hope that they will run out of money before this comes to fruition.
Wait, what?
They ran out of money already?
Years ago?
Damn…
“I have to wonder when the public transit lefties are going to get irked by all of this, particularly if TSA metastasizes to rail transport. Americans already dislike trains, and if they make the train station as miserable as the airport it won’t be good for train travel.”
I’m a public transit lefty, I’m outraged. The REASON I’m a public transit lefty is because I can pay for my bus and train rides with completely anonymous cash, but to drive I need a driver’s license, and it irks me to see how libertarians don’t see how our dependency on the automobile is what lead to so much expansion of government’s involvement in our daily lives.
#26 | SinoMatt
‘Do people really have a problem with sobriety checkpoints? How is it an encroachment of liberty to provide incentives for people not to drive drunk? I don’t think this is analogous to excessive TSA regulations at all.’
I have a big problem with cops setting up checkpoints so they can cash in on federal grant money and make buckets of overtime pay to fuck with me for no reason. Can you cite ONE study showing that these checkpoints have made us safer? Like DARE, it’s easy money to cops and there’s an anecdotal benefit. The reality (as LOTS of incidents show) is much different.
I wonder how many asset forfeiture cases were initiated because of some bullshit sobriety checkpoint?
“Do people really have a problem with sobriety checkpoints?”
Yes.
One big difference between a police state and a free country is that in a free country the police cannot interfere with someone’s liberty unless they have some objective reason to believe that that particular person is doing something illegal. When the SCOTUS upheld DUI checkpoints it was saying that the police can stop and detain you even if they have no reason whatsoever to believe you are doing anything illegal.
I am old enough to remember when the phrase “your papers please” was part of mocking movie charicatures of Nazis or KGB agents.
This is outrageous! If I didn’t see the video, I don’t know if I could believe it. Just think back 10 or 15 years and how things were then. You couldn’t have made this stuff up in your wildest dreams, unless you were referring to a passage in the book “1984″ or something. I don’t support illegal immigration, but since when does the Border Patrol and Ice take an interest in buses traveling the state between Tampa, Orlando, Pensacola, New Orleans, or wherever. Who are they looking for? “Bolseros”? And the TSA is going to firmly implant themselves everywhere. Bus stations and trains. This is just the beginning. A trial balloon of sorts. “Let’s see if the American people will put up with it.” The automobile has always symbolized American freedom. That is true now more than ever. How long will it be before they come after that?
Remember, “they hate us for our freedoms”.
This keeps up, and soon they won’t have any reason to hate us.
‘it irks me to see how libertarians don’t see how our dependency on the automobile is what lead to so much expansion of government’s involvement in our daily lives.’
I thought it was the volstead act (searching vehicles), the drug war, the war on terror, homeland security, asset forfeiture, and bullshit taxation that ‘led to so much of government’s involvement in our daily lives’… Public transportation might allow some of you city guys the ability to be anonymous and free, but that’s not the case for most of us. buses and trains are practically non-existent where I live and there’s very little bang for the buck with regards to public transportation in most of the country.
Look, Marty, a car is a two ton machine that goes 60MPH and can cause great harm if handled carelessly. That’s why we license drivers. But over the last 60 years we’ve subsidized car-dependent living, and therefore gave the government this enormous lever over our lives.
Since we constantly have to drive, we constantly have to carry the license. So, a driver’s license is a de-facto ID card. And it already is a de-facto internal passport. No matter how you travel, you have to show it when you check in at a hotel. (And you can’t just camp out when you travel: that’s illegal in so much of the country.)
Now true, there’s little bang for the buck in public transportation, but there is also very little bang for the buck in our road building program. There is, however, a LOT of bang for the buck in being able to travel without an internal passport.
Would it be too inflammatory to stage a protest alongside these checkpoints where people dress as Nazis and politely call out to every passerby, “Papiere, bitte”?
This liberal is against TSA scanning and groping.
And against sobriety checkpoints.
They’re unreasonable searches.
Searches should be based on probable cause. It’s a more effective way to stop terrorists and drunk drivers. Treating everyone like a terrorist or like a drunk driver isn’t effective.
About sobriety checkpoints… I live in an area od Los Angeles where A LOT of nightclubs are, and on Saturday nights they often setup sobriety checkpoints in the area. I’ve gone through them a few times… and while minimally invasive they do catch MANY MANY drunk drivers on their way home from partying. There is a time and a place for things…. In this particular situation I think a sobriety checkpoint is appropriate. They just ask for your drivers license, look at your pupils, ask if you’ve been drinking (“No sir”) and you’re on your way. It’s annoying but necessary in the area.
‘Look, Marty, a car is a two ton machine that goes 60MPH and can cause great harm if handled carelessly. That’s why we license drivers.’
The govt requires licenses primarily to raise revenue. The govt is not in the safety business…
‘Now true, there’s little bang for the buck in public transportation, but there is also very little bang for the buck in our road building program. There is, however, a LOT of bang for the buck in being able to travel without an internal passport.’
Roads are critical to commerce- there’s a huge payoff monetarily and for freedom to have good roads. If you enjoy public transportation and feel that’s your ticket to freedom, by all means do that. I feel my vehicles are a key to my freedom (and happiness). Licensing, social security numbers, passports, etc are all govt bullshit. To me, the ideal solution would be for whoever’s willing to insure me as a driver (the company or individual with a financial stake in me being a competent driver) to issue permission for me to drive.
you can also increase anonymity by allowing anyone to open a taxi company without bullshit govt rationing. I like your point about not having a license and paying for travel as you go. If there were more taxi services, this might expand this attitude.
Would it be too inflammatory to stage a protest alongside these checkpoints where people dress as Nazis and politely call out to every passerby, “Papiere, bitte”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5F1SmMABkE
The guy’s a religious kook but I am impressed by his outrage over these
stupid checkpoints. He eventually got the living daylights beaten out of him and was trying to sue.
#26 | SinoMatt
“Do people really have a problem with sobriety checkpoints? How is it an encroachment of liberty to provide incentives for people not to drive drunk? I don’t think this is analogous to excessive TSA regulations at all.”
Yes:
“The roadblocks are also constitutionally problematic. In the 1990 decision Michigan v. Sitz ,the Supreme Court acknowledged that stops at sobriety checkpoints constitute ‘seizures’ under the Fourth Amendment but ruled that the public safety threat posed by drunk driving made them ‘reasonable.’ In the years since, the checkpoints have become little more than revenue generators for local governments. When local newspapers inquire about specific roadblocks after the fact, they inevitably find lots of citations for seat belt offenses, broken headlights, driving with an expired license, and other minor infractions. But the checkpoints rarely catch seriously impaired drivers. In 2009, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, 1,600 sobriety checkpoints in California generated $40 million in fines, $30 million in overtime pay for cops, 24,000 vehicle confiscations, and just 3,200 arrests for drunk driving. A typical checkpoint would consist of 20 or more cops, yield a dozen or more vehicle confiscations, but around three drunk driving arrests.
Checkpoints are only the beginning of what California DWI attorney Lawrence Taylor calls ‘the drunk driving exception to the Constitution.’”
http://reason.com/archives/2010/10/11/abolish-drunk-driving-laws
“The govt requires licenses primarily to raise revenue. The govt is not in the safety business…”
Which is why our driver’s licensing laws are the most lenient in the world, and which is why traffic deaths are a leading killer in our country. The government needs to get into the safety business before the aging boomers turn our roads into an even bigger butcher ship.
“Roads are critical to commerce- there’s a huge payoff monetarily and for freedom to have good roads.”
Not as critical as you think. If roads were so critical, they’d pay for themselves with user fees, and yet more than half the money we spend on roads comes from general taxation.
“. If you enjoy public transportation and feel that’s your ticket to freedom, by all means do that. I feel my vehicles are a key to my freedom (and happiness).”
So, your key to freedom is this thing that our laws call a PRIVILEGE and not a RIGHT.
Interesting thing for a libertarian to decide on.
Also:
“[E]very cop manning a roadblock aimed at catching motorists violating the new law is a cop not on the highways looking for more seriously impaired motorists. By 2004 alcohol-related fatalities went down again, but only because the decrease in states that don’t use roadblocks compensated for a slight but continuing increase in the states that use them.”
Not many people realize it today, but the automobile was around a long time before the driver’s license came into mass existence – at least two decades in most states.
There were a few early ones that regulated licensing at the turn of the century, but most states didn’t even require a driver’s license until the late 1920′s or early 1930′s. Some of the rural states held out past 1940, and South Dakota was the last to fall, adopting its first driver’s license law in 1954.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/Summary95/dl230.pdf
It makes you wonder how millions of people safely operated cars for all those decades without the government to license, regulate, and harass them for papers =)
I think anonymous travel is only possible on buses and trains in this country because those modes of transport are less used, so there is little incentive to make them “secure” when criminals can drive just as easily. If everyone depended on buses and trains for travel, the government would have “secured” those modes of travel a long time ago as part of the drug war, then the war on terror.
And on a more personal note, I remember my late grandmother telling me a story about when licensing first came to her state – Texas – in 1936. She had been driving for years already when the new law took effect but didn’t get a license immediately. But her sister went and got one, and for the first few years of the policy’s existence whenever somebody in the family needed to drive they just “borrowed” the sister’s license and took it with them – all without incident.
“It makes you wonder how millions of people safely operated cars for all those decades without the government to license, regulate, and harass them for papers =)”
In short, they didn’t. Do a Lexis search on the phrase “vampire auto” and see the outcry that lead to driver’s licensing. At the same time, those people who cried out to regulate driving were adamantly opposed to having ID cards. And in America at the time, most people did not drive. So a driver’s license didn’t look like it would lead to an ID card.
“I think anonymous travel is only possible on buses and trains in this country because those modes of transport are less used, so there is little incentive to make them “secure” when criminals can drive just as easily. If everyone depended on buses and trains for travel, the government would have “secured” those modes of travel a long time ago as part of the drug war, then the war on terror.”
Not even Soviet Russia did that.
@44: Reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Lisa and Homer get in a car.
Lisa: “Dad, you don’t have your license!”
Homer turns the key and the car starts: “It works!”
You’re assuming that Obama wins reelection.
Should the Republicans retake the Whitehouse, I’d bet a month’s salary that the “liberals” who tell people to “grow up” today will be silent, or rationalizing why they changed their tune.
Omri-
can you back any of your assertions up? ‘Which is why our driver’s licensing laws are the most lenient in the world, and which is why traffic deaths are a leading killer in our country.’ Is it possible that ‘lenient laws’ aren’t the cause of the deaths? Maybe it’s the sheer amount of driving we do. is it possible that the amount of deaths per mile driven are at the lowest point they’ve ever been?
I get it, you don’t like cars. That’s fine- Will Rogers didn’t, either. He was pretty brilliant on most things…
‘Not as critical as you think. If roads were so critical, they’d pay for themselves with user fees, and yet more than half the money we spend on roads comes from general taxation.’ I think there’s a lot more hidden benefits to roads than you’re giving credit.
‘So, your key to freedom is this thing that our laws call a PRIVILEGE and not a RIGHT. Interesting thing for a libertarian to decide on.’
Travel is a key component of my freedom and happiness. I feel this is a right- have I stated anything otherwise? That govt is restricting all avenues of travel should be an issue to all of us. I never said I was libertarian- where’d that come from?
“Do a Lexis search on the phrase “vampire auto” and see the outcry that lead to driver’s licensing.”
All that proves is that the press of the past was just as sensationalist, emotion-laden, and predisposed to turn to government as a solution for everything as it is today. Thank you, Captain Hindsight!
As to the frequency of driving, Henry Ford alone put 10 million model T’s on the road between 1908 and 1924, at which point less than half of the states required driver’s licenses. While it is true fewer people drove back then compared to today, automobiles – the majority of them operated by completely unlicensed drivers – were anything but a rarity on the roadways.
…When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty–to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
just watched Yizmo Gizmo’s YouTube link and, oddly enough, I felt kinda sorry for the cop. you could almost see the smoke coming out his ears as the cognitive dissonance hit him. the poor fuck may well believe (or, who knows? may have believed) what he’s doing is a good thing. now he’s trying to reconcile that with what he believes America should be about and it’s not matching up so well.
nope. not being an apologist for these intrusions, they are wrong. but I did sort of admire him for not doing the usual stormtrooper thing and whipping out the taser and sap gloves when confronted.
Omri – “Which is why our driver’s licensing laws are the most lenient in the world”
Now that assertion is just plain silly. The run-of-the-mill Latin American country’s approach is far more lenient in practice than anything here. Vehicle laws down there are generally lax with all sorts of drivers (and contraptions that barely even seem to have an engine) on the roadways. And when La Policia do pull you over, it’s not uncommon that a simple $20 bill slipped to the officer will settle the matter on the spot.
You may call this extortion/bribery/whatever, but I find it far less offensive and burdensome than the ticketing system we have in the U.S. where the exact same thing occurs under the cover of law, only the amount they steal from you is $200 and instead of paying it on the roadside and being done with it you get the run around through months of a bureaucratic court system that assesses its own additional $50 “processing fee.”
“can you back any of your assertions up?”
Tom Vanderbilt’s book Traffic is a handy read on these thigns.
“Is it possible that ‘lenient laws’ aren’t the cause of the deaths?”
Just one example: In Sweden, to pass your driver’s test you have to drive a car onto a skid pan. The instructor sends the car into a skid. You then have to regain control of the car. If you can’t, no license. Makes sense for a wintry country like Sweden. And should give you some perspective on this winter’s snow-related death toll in the US.
“I think there’s a lot more hidden benefits to roads than you’re giving credit.”
Also plenty of hidden costs. If roads were worth it, they would be paid for with user fees.
“Travel is a key component of my freedom and happiness. I feel this is a right-”
And yet you limit yourself by being dependent on a form of travel that is legally a privilege, and not a right. Not advisable.
Passenger rail doesn’t work in most of the US and is actually worse for the environment.
I get the concerns about registration, traffic stops, checkpoints, cameras, etc. which go with automobiles. But there simply is no replacement for being able to run errands in which I stop at multiple locations and putting many armfuls of purchases in my vehicle.
“All that proves is that the press of the past was just as sensationalist, emotion-laden, and predisposed to turn to government as a solution for everything as it is today. Thank you, Captain Hindsight!”
Highway accidents are a major cause of death in the US, particularly among the young. Cars weigh a lot and go fast. it’s very easy to kill with them. Film at 11.
“I get the concerns about registration, traffic stops, checkpoints, cameras, etc. which go with automobiles. But there simply is no replacement for being able to run errands in which I stop at multiple locations and putting many armfuls of purchases in my vehicle.”
So in exchange for convenience you give your government an easy lever with which to take away your freedom.
Bad move.
As to the death stats from driving, I’d actually argue that a large part of it has to do with the way we design our roadways. Like all else government, the feds impose an top-down system of regulations and standards that dictates how highways are supposed to be built, including where and how shoulders, on-ramps, exits, merging lanes, passing zones, and virtually everything else must be built – right up to and including the font, color, and text size on the freaking mile marker signs along the side of the damn road.
It’s absurdly bureaucratic, and generally leads to (1) slow and perpetual construction projects and (2) poorly designed highways with recurring and unresolved bottlenecks that nobody even thinks about fixing for years on end, especially in urban areas. These two factors combine to create frequent and sudden traffic jams, which in turn tend to cause accidents.
“Highway accidents are a major cause of death in the US, particularly among the young.”
As I said, thank you Captain Hindsight!
“It’s absurdly bureaucratic, and generally leads to (1) slow and perpetual construction projects and (2) poorly designed highways with recurring and unresolved bottlenecks that nobody even thinks about fixing for years on end, especially in urban areas. These two factors combine to create frequent and sudden traffic jams, which in turn tend to cause accidents.”
Jams cause minor accidents. It’s fast, smoothly flowing traffic where people get killed.
“As I said, thank you Captain Hindsight!”
Well, you made the claim that driver’s licensing is a result of media hysteria, and not a legitimate issue. Guess what: it was a legitimate issue then and it is now.
“Jams cause minor accidents.”
As a commuter in a heavily congested city where large jam-induced wrecks and accompanying ambulances are an almost daily event on my normal route to work, I beg to differ.
Accidents in the middle of rural nowhere when a driver loses control and slams into a concrete pillar are almost always big, splashy news events because of the media frenzy they induce. But if you compare actual accident stats from our roadways to places with lax or no speed limits such as the German autobahn, there’s very little difference because speed has comparatively little to do with it.
The real problem is usually road design, hence we see certain places on certain roadways where an inordinately high number of accidents happen. And road design is almost always HEAVILY regulated by the government.
This is silly, taking a train or bus is no less a privilege than driving; it requires the consent of the train or bus operator in accordance with that organization’s policies and any government regulations, such as requiring an ID, as Amtrak now does for example.
The question of it being a right or a privilege is a matter of the general vs. the specific; travel, as a general principle, is an essential right in a free society, but any specific form of travel – roads, rail, air – is a privilege requiring the cooperation of whoever is managing that mode of travel. It’s certainly fair to consider if the cumulative effect of restricting our “privileges” is undermining our overall right to travel within our own country.
“As a commuter in a heavily congested city where large jam-induced wrecks and accompanying ambulances are an almost daily event on my normal route to work, I beg to differ.”
Dude, a car travelling at 15 MPH can ruin your day. A car travelling at 40 MPH will easily end your life. As a commuter in a heavily congested city, I happen to notice that jammed traffic produces fender benders, while faster traffic is where people get killed. Bear in mind in a fender bender, you’re still best advised to call in the EMTs for legal reasons, even with minor injuries.
“But if you compare actual accident stats from our roadways to places with lax or no speed limits such as the German autobahn, there’s very little difference because speed has comparatively little to do with it. ”
The German autobahn is mostly driven by people with German driver’s licenses. Most Americans would fail the German driver’s test. Oh, and the Autobahn is far more prone to jams than American roads. Two lanes each way, no breakdown lane. People get trapped in jams all the time there. They just don’t die as often.
“Guess what: it was a legitimate issue then and it is now.”
Simply repeating that ad nauseum without any evidence beyond hindsight-induced mass media hysterics does not make it any less false, Omri.
If you want to understand roadway fatalities, looking to the regulation of drivers is the wrong way to go. They’re already regulated and, to a large extent, over-regulated. Dumping more regulations on them will yield practically nothing in the way of safety. The real issue is and has always been roadway design, and the government as usual does an overbureaucratized and all around piss-poor job in that department.
“This is silly, taking a train or bus is no less a privilege than driving; it requires the consent of the train or bus operator in accordance with that organization’s policies and any government regulations, such as requiring an ID, as Amtrak now does for example.”
It’s going to be a lot easier to fight back and get the ID requirement removed from trains and buses than it will be to do away with driver’s licenses. The latter is not going to happen at all.
“Dude, a car travelling at 15 MPH can ruin your day”
I’m not worried about the guy plodding along in traffic at 15 mph. I’m worried about the guy going 60 mph around a blind curve on the interstate and plowing head first into an easily resolved traffic jam that’s happened at that exact same spot for the last decade because the government did a crappy job of designing the road and has done nothing since to fix it. And I see exactly that scenario happening on a frequency that is far too common for comfort.
“Simply repeating that ad nauseum without any evidence beyond hindsight-induced mass media hysterics does not make it any less false, Omri.”
Are you seriously saying that anyone who wants to should be able to just buy a car and drive it?
You’re the one repeating the silly argument. It used to be the case that you could. Then lots of people got run over and killed. So our great grandparents voted for legislators who instituted driver’s licenses. And in other countries, to get a driver’s license you have to seriously show that you can control a car.
Also I didn’t say the autobahns were free from traffic jams or perfectly designed, or that the German driver’s test was superior/inferior to the American ones.
I said that Germany has far less restrictive speed regulations than the United States, and yet the accident stats are comparable indicating that speed has very little to do with it.
“If you want to understand roadway fatalities, looking to the regulation of drivers is the wrong way to go. They’re already regulated and, to a large extent, over-regulated. Dumping more regulations on them will yield practically nothing in the way of safety. ”
If dumping more regulations get more drivers off the road, that will accomplish a great deal in the way of safety. Especially as the Baby Boomers age.
“I said that Germany has far less restrictive speed regulations than the United States, and yet the accident stats are comparable indicating that speed has very little to do with it.”
Because careless speed freaks don’t get to drive in Germany in the first place. I.e. no license. No driving. Nein! Kaput! Raus von die autobahn! Schnell!
“Are you seriously saying that anyone who wants to should be able to just buy a car and drive it?”
It will probably never happen again in this country, but the idea is not as outrageous as you may think. As I noted previously, the vast majority of states in the U.S. didn’t even require licensing before the 1930′s. A few made it into the 40′s and 50′s. So it certainly has happened before and, your media driven hysterics aside, the world didn’t end because of it.
“It will probably never happen again in this country, but the idea is not as outrageous as you may think. As I noted previously, the vast majority of states in the U.S. didn’t even require licensing before the 1930′s. A few made it into the 40′s and 50′s. So it certainly has happened before and, your media driven hysterics aside, the world didn’t end because of it.”
Hysterics are when the media reports on a non-issue. dangerous driving is the leading cause of people not reaching old age in this country. It is hardly a non-issue.
“Because careless speed freaks don’t get to drive in Germany in the first place.”
Really? Cause the last time I was there I saw more than a few French and Italian “speed freaks” traversing the very same highways as the Germans. Funny how that happens when different countries are close to each other and all.
“dangerous driving is the leading cause of people not reaching old age in this country.”
According to some measures and definitions, it’s actually obesity. Do you support government issued food consumption licenses as well?
Dying of obesity is your own damn fault. Getting hit by a careless driver is not.
Omri-
stick with your public transportation, if you want. I’ll keep driving my vehicles and live as freely as possible. I’ll try to act outraged when homeland security’s fondling your balls as you get on the bus, too.
I just want to be left alone. I feel like I need as much protection from people like you (people who advocate using the govt to restrict others) as I do from the govt. Do you feel seatbelts should be mandatory? Helmets for bicyclists and motorcyclists? sobriety checkpoints? How much driver training? How much do you drive? What kinds of vehicles? What would make you happy?
‘Are you seriously saying that anyone who wants to should be able to just buy a car and drive it? ‘
if they’re financially responsible for their behavior, then yes.
“if they’re financially responsible for their behavior, then yes.”
That’s small comfort for the dead.
marty, if you want to be left alone, why are you arranging your affairs so that you can’t manage without a car?
That makes it impossible for you to be left alone.
Whenever the government adds new regulations it’s quite hard to fight back and get them removed. Tyranny of the status quo. Even after the recent uproar, we can’t even get the government to stop sexually molesting people, much less are we fighting back against ID requirements at airports. If we depended entirely on public transit, the administrative search loophole to the fourth amendment would be applied comprehensively to bus and rail; they are not, as those modes of travel have to compete with cars and would suffocate if they became like air travel.
Omri, it’s completely disingenuous to claim that roads should pay for themselves with user fees only, but then not make the claim that the amount of general revenue that is paid into roadway systems be refunded to those who paid taxes into that general fund, and taxes forever after be reduced by that amount. People factor their total tax burden into their decisions, not just the narrow fees that are supposedly used for one thing or another.
Roadways ARE paid for by users. There’s no big source of government income that comes from people who don’t use roadways. Everyone uses the roadways, even those who use mass transit. Corporations use them, local and state and federal governments use them, citizens of all stripes use them. The link to every person using roadways is far stronger than the link to every person using rail, especially passenger rail.
I’m perfectly fine with paying my true cost for the roadway. But then give me back the money that was taken from me that goes into the general fund for roadway construction and maintenance. The government *will not do that*. That money is power for them. That decision making is power for them. And they won’t give it up.
It’s not roadway users that revolt against paying the true cost of roadways. It’s governments that revolt against giving up the power of that money they’ve got their hands on.
I have seen TSA at LA’s Union Station (train station) this week. I believe they, and the MTA Sheriffs, have been at the entrance to the #8 platform – I think that might be the Orange County line? They don’t have the big signs up notifying you that they are going to paw through your purse, and they don’t have the white folding tables up to make it easy to paw through your purse, so I’m not sure what they’re doing at the ramp entrance. Any other LA Agitatortots seen this?
“Whenever the government adds new regulations it’s quite hard to fight back and get them removed.”
It’s going to be a lot harder to get driver’s licenses done away with. Impossible, in fact.
It’s going to be hard to get gate rape stopped at the airports. But not impossible.
And we can still stop it from reaching the buses and trains. If we act.
“Getting hit by a careless driver is not.”
But being that careless driver is, and a huge chunk of your fatality stats are self-inflicted – including virtually all single-car accidents.
Cut your stats down to include only cases of innocents killed by other careless drivers and – guess what – it’s no longer the super-duper #1 deadly threat in the world to our safety, well being, puppies, apple pie, and the American Way of Life ™!
#83 | Omri
“if they’re financially responsible for their behavior, then yes.”
That’s small comfort for the dead.
good argument. it’s all life and death. the government’s keeping us safe with driver’s licenses, too.
#86 – There’s also a sound argument to be made that all the federal and state gasoline taxes are tantamount to a direct “user fee” on the roadways. Setting up a toll booth every 3 miles isn’t the only way to tax “roadway consumption.” People who drive more also consume more gasoline, and therefore pay more gas taxes into the system by definition.
“But being that careless driver is, and a huge chunk of your fatality stats are self-inflicted – including virtually all single-car accidents.”
Nope. Not as huge a chunk as you think.
Not since seat belts and airbags.
“Cut your stats down to include only cases of innocents killed by other careless drivers and – guess what – it’s no longer the super-duper #1 deadly threat in the world to our safety, well being, puppies, apple pie, and the American Way of Life ™!”
It’s certainly a bigger threat than terrorism.
#84 | Omri
‘marty, if you want to be left alone, why are you arranging your affairs so that you can’t manage without a car?
That makes it impossible for you to be left alone.’
Now that the arguments are veering hopelessly into stupid, I’m backing out. Troll on, Omri.
Quick aside on driving risks – You’d never know it from the press coverage and hype, but “self-inflicted” traffic accident deaths are almost always the single largest cause of cop fatalities, and the source of the vast majority of names on those silly “killed in the line of duty” monuments.
The number of cops who actually die from a gunshot fired by the bad guys seldom exceeds a couple dozen per year. It’s also significantly smaller than the number of gas station, 7-Eleven, and liquor store clerks who die from gunshots fired by the same bad guys.
“Nope. Not as huge a chunk as you think.”
Okay stats boy, let’s see your figures then. You’ve been spouting about car accidents being the “#1 killer!” for a while now, but have nothing to back it up…or to permit others to scrutinize the factual accuracy of your claim.
And while you’re at it, I’d also like to see a statistical comparison of automobile fatalities by state before and after the adoption of driver’s license laws. If licensing truly does make us all “safer,” then surely you could find no stronger proof of that claim than to produce hard statistical evidence that the number of automobile accidents drastically declined after we started licensing everybody.
Indeed, Omri may well be right that driver’s licenses are necessary, but his appeal to what was decided in the past is a fallacy.
Anyway, it’s damned silly to steer a discussion of nude scanners and groping in bus stations with a notion about doing away with driver’s licenses.
Goes to show why nobody takes libertarians seriously.
You guys think all those states had no reason at all to regulate driving, that traffic accidents are not a big concern, you go on thinking that. And wonder why you can’t get anyone elected. Or to take you seriously.
Or, you know, you can crack open some history books on why this legislation passed. Go to Tom Vanderbult’s book Traffic. It has a good bibliography.
In the mean time, grown ups like Radley can discuss fighting against this new development.
I kind of like that idea about getting rid of driver’s licenses. I’m against most licenses anyway.
Perhaps you steered the conversation this way when you blamed our woes on the car.
Omri,
I can’t make heads or tails of your arguments. Roads are unsafe because of lenient licenses, but licenses are bad because they serve as government IDs. Being able to travel where you want in a car is giving up freedom, but using public transportation somehow isn’t.
You are arguing that roads are expensive and unnecessary, while advocating public transportation, something that historically is mostly funded by public works projects. You flatly refuse to recognize that outside of concentrated urban areas, i.e. most of the fucking country, public transportation is prohibitively expensive. You make a couple of offhand comments about freedom and government interference, while simultaneously calling for greater and more unreasonable driving restrictions than currently exist.
And you keep comparing America to Europe, news flash, they ain’t the same. Europe has very old cities built around pedestrian and horse drawn traffic, the transportation needs of those cities are vastly different than most American cities which were built in and after the industrial age. The two best public transportation systems in the world are in England and Japan, island nations with large concentrated urban populations, very different than most of America. You can’t use examples like that and make meaningful comparisons to life in the US. Are our traffic fatalities higher than other nations? Sure but we also a) have a much larger population than those other nations and b) we have many times more active drivers. You could maybe apply European style public transit methods to the New England area (also filled with very old densely populated cities), but for most of America the population density is to low for public transport to be viable and effective on a large scale.
All of your posts strike of some kind of purposely obtuse worldview. You flip between some convoluted notions of freedom, regulation, and public transport panaceas, while simultaneously getting all twisted up over the fact that no one has banned old people from driving yet. And you keep trying to slam this square peg of European ideals into the round hole of American realities.
I wouldn’t have made this post If I thought that you had some realistic alternatives to America’s transportation (and Transportation Security Administration) woes. But so far all I’ve gathered is that you don’t like cars, roads, or anyone in or on them thats over 55. Why did all of that take a dozen condescending posts?
An ye seek, so shall ye find:
“LOS ANGELES — The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Los Angeles World Airports and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority today announced the expansion of the nationwide “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign at historic Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, to raise public awareness and strengthen security in America in anticipation of the busy holiday travel season.”
http://www.metro.net/news/simple_pr/see-something-say-something-campaign-launches-l/
“I can’t make heads or tails of your arguments. Roads are unsafe because of lenient licenses, but licenses are bad because they serve as government IDs. Being able to travel where you want in a car is giving up freedom, but using public transportation somehow isn’t. ”
If the government takes away my driver’s license (and they might have a legitimate reason for doing that, like say my eyesight goes kaput), I could still get around. They can do that, and I can still get to work. And to the stores. Because that is how I arranged my life.
Other people, however, choose to live and work where they absolutely CANNOT manage without a car. And in fact, the majority of Americans have done that. And since they have to carry a driver’s license everywhere, they are carrying an ID card. Which is ironic, since a driver’s license was not supposed to serve that function.
What’s even more mind boggling is that Marty and company arranged their lives, and still think they can “just be left alone.” But they can’t be left alone. The government wants to make sure they can drive competently. Nobody cares whether I can walk competently.
And my point is that this was the “camel’s” nose in the tent that got us to this mess, historically.
We’re in the mess we’re in because of our insane paranoia about crime, drugs and terrorism and the fact that our government is at least as much of a cause of these problems as the solution to them. It’s not the car’s fault.
“What’s even more mind boggling is that Marty and company arranged their lives, and still think they can “just be left alone.” But they can’t be left alone. The government wants to make sure they can drive competently. Nobody cares whether I can walk competently.”
See this is what I’m talking about. You assume people have options that they don’t. Nobody ‘arranged’ my life. I live in the woods 10 minutes from a store of any kind, and 30 min from school and work. I can’t afford to move and no one can afford to provide me with public transport. Telling me I chose to live this way is the same kind of bullshit like telling black people not to live in racist cities. Its this elitist notion that because you don’t have the ability to pack up and move over (minor or major) injustices somehow turns them into choices.
The government has no right to disallow anyone the freedom to travel until it has proven (and not in some esoteric statistical sense) that that person represents a real threat to other people. Its nice that you can walk places, but don’t use that as a starting point to tell other people how to live their lives. And don’t get on a fucking high horse and tell us that the government needs to be more restrictive about licenses just so you can feel safer when your doing all that walking. Your attempt to tell people what ‘options’ they have under some premise of safety is no different than the TSA’s, petty small minded tyranny.
PW @ 91 –
I agree that fuel taxes are roughly equivalent to user fees for roadways. The issue is that the fuel tax revenue is not nearly as much as the capital and maintenance costs of our highway system. Fuel taxes are part of it. Many times fuel taxes just get dumped into general revenue, further mixing up the question of whether roads are ‘subsidised’ or not. But the main point I was trying to make is that whether roads are paid for by all gas taxes or by gas taxes plus other taxes out of the general funding, they’re still paid for by everyone. It’s very difficult to make any argument that there is a significant portion of the US residency that does not derive significant benefit from the network of roadways we have. The same just cannot be said of passenger mass transit, where the main benefit non-users gain is the transfer of other people from vehicles into different vehicles.
Saying that roads should be paid for all by user fees, whether collected by gas tax, toll booth, or even GPS tracking or other means, without that commensurate decrease in general taxation would just mean increasing the tax burden on people, giving government more money to play with.
#106 -
A friend of mine who worked in roadway engineering once told me that construction firms intentionally use low-grade materials when building roadways for the government. It guarantees that they’ll need to be repaved in 5 years instead of 10, hence more work for the contractor and the reason many of our highways are under “perpetual” construction. The kicker is that the government tends to be in on the scam and fully encourages it through the bidding and construction regulatory processes. Hence the actual cost of keeping the highways maintained well exceeds what it should be.
#105 – Also color me highly doubtful that Omri could have “arranged his life” in a car-free manner without HEAVY dependence upon other forms of state-subsidized transportation such as buses and rail. These “car free” alternatives also tend to consume vastly higher amounts of public resources per passenger than a car driver.
You all are just getting to experience the police state. I have not been able to leave my hometown for 20+ yrs without going through a government checkpoint. For the past 2-3 yrs, these checkpoints have been armed with some massive camera systems that do facial recognition. The INS guys claim the cameras belong to the DEA. They now have xray warnings at the stations so I suspect they have the backscatter technology in place. These checkpoints are on Interstate highways and the smaller SU hwys here in southern NM.
“Also color me highly doubtful that Omri could have “arranged his life” in a car-free manner without HEAVY dependence upon other forms of state-subsidized transportation such as buses and rail. ”
Correct. Buses and rail come out as less of a subsidy than driving (literally – my tax deduction for taking public transit is less than what I can get for paying to park)
T”hese “car free” alternatives also tend to consume vastly higher amounts of public resources per passenger than a car driver.”
Incorrect.
Omri, the real world seems to disagree with your treatise on traffic regulation:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html
Hmmm….. Wasnt there an old fairytale from around 1939, that had some crazy government nut with a funny mustache, that had these kinds of things going on in his country?
I think instead of “safety from terrorism”, the reason was “racial purity for Arians”….Hmmm…Doesnt seem to make much difference WHAT you call it, if the ends are the same…
Oh Wait!…Americans would NEVER fall for that…We’re much smarter than those Germans who fell for the Madman’s propaganda and patriotism bull-!@#@, and built the most modern and deadly war machine that the world had ever seen.
Oh Wait!..Propaganda?..Hmm… Fox News & Tea Party….Hmmm…Patriotism…The Iraq-Afghanistan thing is all about protecting OUR interests?…Hmmm.. The largest most modern military in the world happens to be OURS….”But its only for defense!”…Uh, no, you dont build a huge machine that like, just to let it sit and wait for the bad guys to come to you.
Seems like quite a few similarities to that old fairytale to me.
“Freedom is just another word, for nothing left to lose” with apologies to janis joplin…where can americans now go to be free?
#110 -
1. Buses and rail depend on direct taxpayer subsidy for their daily operation, most of which comes from taxpayers who never so much as set foot on a bus or a train. In other words, other people are paying for your decision to “arrange your life” around these modes of transportation.
2. The average government subsidy per passenger mile traveled by automobiles is a fraction of a single cent. The subsidy per passenger mile for public transit depends on the locale and method but averages in excess of 50 cents. It is therefore you who has it “incorrect.”
But of course facts like that are immaterial to your real motive. You’ve chosen to orient your life around public transit and you believe that makes you somehow “better” than those who have not, so you (a) tear them down gratuitously for desiring to drive a car and (b) slobber unjustified praises all over yourself and your chosen means of travel. In reality though you’re more dependent on the government to move you around than anyone else posting here. And that makes you just another whore at the public welfare trough.
You sound like someone who lives in a big city.
I’m wondering if you have any concept of living in a small town, suburban, or rural environment. It’s not simply a matter of convenience to be able to accomplish multiple tasks within a limited time frame, as dictated by circumstances such as geography, unavailability of public transportation, time constraints, money, etc.. Just to name a few cases: I needed to rush my son to the ER in time for him to get an appendectomy(*), we need to go to my daughter’s concert, we need to visit our grandkids who live 45 minutes away in a tiny rural town, we need to take our dogs when we visit my parents three hours away for a weekend, my son moves a thousand miles away and loads up his truck with his belongings, I buy a cartload of groceries and stop at the farmer’s market to pick up some plants, etc.. Without a personal vehicle, we simply couldn’t do some of those things at all, we’d have to spend quite a bit of money to do others, or we’d have to give up hours per day walking to a bus stop and waiting. And, if I have a broken toe or GI trouble, I guess that’s just too bad.
Only a small fraction of Americans live in a location where not having a personal vehicle is only a matter of “convenience”.
I don’t give the government anything. I never agreed to any of their laws and regulations They take advantage of the situation to interfere with the freedom of people who just want to get from point A to point B, plus the fact that they have a monopoly on the use of force.
(*) As a child, my mom actually had to walk to the hospital when she needed an appendectomy because they didn’t have a car. Luckily it wasn’t far.
PW @ 107,
I do work in highway design and construction. At least in the state I live in, if practices like that were being used, it would be considered fraudulent, and actionable. There are inspectors for the highway department who are making sure things are constructed to spec, with the correct materials, and the correct thicknesses and compactions. Construction companies certainly want to use cheaper materials, but that’s because they save money on it. That’s why there are people who are tasked with making sure they don’t.
I have no doubt that there may have been some things like that in the past. And there may be some states in the US where there are some shoddy practices still used. But I know in my state, there is a long chain of quality control checks, as-built checks, certification, and a lot of people who put their names, companies, and reputations on the line certifying that things are built the way they are supposed to be built. Highway departments don’t want to have to maintain facilities in the first place. Why would they allow something to be built shoddily (and fraudulently) that would increase their maintenance burden, which is already far more than they can pay for, and they know they aren’t getting more funding.
I haven’t yet seen TSA at LA Union Station, but I have seen them several times at Philadelphia 30th Street Station. On the one occasion when they told me that they would have to search my bag before I boarded a train to Lancaster, I simply turned around, went upstairs and took the SEPTA R5 to Paoli, where I transferred to Amtrak and arrived an hour later than I had planned. I was running late enough that a TSA search would have forced me to miss the earlier train in any event.
Within a few weeks of that trip, I overheard an Amtrak conductor telling another passenger that TSA didn’t keep night or weekend hours at 30th Street. He clearly considered their whole show of force something of a joke; if I remember correctly, he said something like, “all a terrorist would have to do would be wait until they go home in the evening.”
Searches by TSA goons at our train and bus stations are indeed chilling. Unlike TSA’s airport operations, which are somewhat uniformly implemented to screen all passengers, their bus and train station operations are so far nothing more than an arbitrary police state show of force, limited more or less to standard business hours and a handful of trains that, at 30th Street at least, have fairly low passenger volumes. The same is true at Union Station if they’re keeping an eye on one of the ground-level platforms but not on the Gold or Red Lines.
TSA agents have no business doing what I witnessed at 30th Street. Their conduct at Union Station sounds rather benign, but still completely wasteful. Most people who genuinely believe that they have information on terrorist plots have the good sense and ethics to contact the police. Recent cases in point: Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father and the individual who alerted the FBI to the Pioneer Square bomb plotter. The only place where TSA belongs, if it belongs anywhere, is in our airports.
An important consideration regarding civil liberties in mass transit is different security procedures and policies at different mass transit agencies. In my experience, most urban rapid transit agencies have competent, well-mannered police who know when to mind their own business. The SEPTA Police certainly impress me, and I doubt that SEPTA management would want to invite a bunch of officious, non-sworn imbeciles into its system to harass passengers.
The only urban rapid transit agencies that I foresee being really keen on TSA are the Washington Metro (too many moronic and/or fascist security bureaucrats in their midst) and the New York City MTA (which has a history of dubious bag searches at subway stations and partakes of the NYPD’s 4th Amendment misconduct). Conceivably, BART might decide that TSA is a reasonable replacement for part of its troubled police force; I certainly hope not.
Greyhound is problematic. Its management and drivers often don’t give a damn about violating the civil rights of their customers, whom they consider low-lives without rights who are too ignorant to fight back in any event. This helps explain the brazen fraud that their agents commit against stranded passengers who miss connections due to late incoming buses. (“Sorry, you’re going to have to buy a new ticket.” “That’s bullshit!” Which it indeed is.) Greyhound and many of its drivers take a very hard line on drugs, too, which results in an untold number of incidents of jack-booted thuggery by narcotics officers and their German Shepherds. Some of Greyhound’s own security staff are capricious, too.
Two examples from my first trip on Greyhound: at the Dallas bus station, I saw two black security guards searching and interrogating a group of harmless-looking Mexican guys in sombreros, but no one else (these Mexicans were definitely some of the more upstanding people in the station); six hours later, in Monroe, LA, a bunch of municipal cops first ordered everyone to stay on the bus, then ordered everyone off the bus, while a Sheriff’s deputy had his German Shepherd sniff every bag under both eastbound buses for drugs. Every one of the cops was white; I and about five of the other eighty-odd passengers were white.
One of Greyhound’s saving graces is that it will be just about the last business to demand an ID or credit card. A huge number of its customers lack either, and ticket fraud is easier to conceal with cash payments.
In most ways, Amtrak has a much higher regard for its passengers than Greyhound. The most blatant exception is the ID requirement, which hasn’t a thing to do with passenger safety; the second most blatant exception is its employment of TSA agents. I suspect that both of these policies are motivated, on some level, by Amtrak’s bizarre desire to make itself feel like an airline. Other examples include seat-back safety cards, tickets in approximately the same format as airline boarding passes, referring to platform stairways as “gates,” five-minute advance cut-off times to board trains in Washington and Chicago, needless reservation requirements on many lines, absurdly high fares between Boston and Washington, and a ridiculous, rarely-enforced limit on “carry-on baggage.” The psychology behind these policies and procedures is understandable but bizarre: instead of simply providing better service than domestic airlines (not hard on short trips), Amtrak’s executives hope to fool people into thinking of Amtrak as an airline by doing whatever the airlines are doing. They probably impress a few people and alienate many more by being slower than air travel but similarly cumbersome; TSA only makes this worse.
Amtrak has a hugely overstaffed police force of its own. Thankfully, most Amtrak Police are well-mannered and mind their own business; I’ve never seen them do anything egregious. The conductors are generally pretty good, too; a scant few have fascist tendencies, but most are just laid-back, friendly, lazy guys who like riding around on trains. They don’t care about enforcing bureaucratic dictats that they know will not make their trains safer.
Bee @ 102:
People need to start reporting the guys with guns and other weapons hanging around in the stations. A short time later you’ll be able to call in and report that they’re acting agitated and running around like something is happening. And that they are wearing paramilitary uniforms.
And when they finally get right up in your face point at them and say, “I have no way to know if you are really what you want us to believe you are.”
Sign the petition to abolish the TSA: http://abolishthetsa.net/sign-the-petition/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwaAVJITx1Y
Now we know how he intends to construct his “civilian defence force”.
[...] Read the rest [...]
#26, SinoMatt
About the problems with sobriety checkpoints…
Go read http://www.duiblog.com/ daily for one month. Then you’ll understand.
I particularly like his view that there appears to be a DUI exception to the US Constitution. He’s got some interesting facts about breathalyzers, too. Like how they are NEVER correct, and how the manufacturers REFUSE to guarantee that they measure alcohol (because the actually don’t).
FYI: The site is run by a CA lawyer who specializes in DUI defense.
MPH Larry has a great one on HGN. As it turns out, some cunt named Marcelline Burns pulled the whole thing out of her ass 30 some years ago. Of course she was funded by NHTSA. She then toured the nation testifying to the scientific validity of the eye test. Makes me wonder who got the grant to say the pornoscan is safe. If you study the case law you can see that TSA would be nowhere without DUI checkpoints. And people who have no problem with DUI checkpoints tend to be OK with TSA.
A petition! Shit just got real.
feel free to drive your car…or you could walk….horse is an option for some…
I got a pat down last week coming out of Panama City, Panama, she was hot, just love Latin America…I wanted to tip her