Dear Citizens: Screw You. Love, Arizona

I know my rants about the ever growing web of surveillance cameras and the “Big Brother” phenomenon tend to fall on deaf ears. I also know that most people out there could give a rat’s ass about a law that seems good on the surface but, in reality, strips yet another right or choice away from the public. But it’s hard not to think that people would be up in arms at the latest government invasion going on in Arizona. Not only is this invasion attempting to bring the citizens of the U.S. one step closer to the CCTV-laden world of Great Britain, but it’s also a blatant example of state government finding a way to fleece their populace and visitors to their state because they can’t reign in their own budgetary excesses. That’s right, Arizona Governor, Janet Napolitano, wants to deploy photo radar and “other speed enforcement technology” on their state highways in order to capture people driving over the speed limit and send them tickets in the mail.

That doesn’t drive you nuts? You don’t find that an invasion? I do. It’s one thing to be pulled over by a cop who sets up a radar trap, it’s another to get a ticket in the mail a week later based on a picture. A cop can make human decisions about who to pull over and why. A camera just takes pictures. I don’t know about where you live, but around these parts no one goes the speed limit. We’re always 5 to 10MPH over the limit when the traffic isn’t bad. Cops don’t pull anyone over for that because it doesn’t make financial sense for them to do so. Any speeding infraction from 1 to 10 MPH over the speed limit is a flat $50. It really starts to add up fast after 10 MPH though, so the cops grab those people so they can rake in the biggest amount of cash. A camera doesn’t care. A camera is going to take pictures whenever it’s programmed to take pictures. These assclowns are invariably going to set it to a tight limit and just start mailing out the tickets and raking in the cash.

All the time they’re going to claim that they’re just trying to encourage public safety. Bullshit. They could give a shit about public safety. All they care about is making their numbers, balancing their budget. The Arizona budget shortfall is pegged at 1.2 billion and they’re looking to make $120 million in revenue by ticketing people via camera. This effectively amounts to a government-led shakedown of drivers. It’s a tax disguised as an attempt at public safety. Soon we’ll have sites listing where the speed cams are or selling spray-on mud so people can obscure their license plates (and face fines for doing so, undoubtedly).

Now I have no defense against the very simple argument that speeding is against the law, but that doesn’t mean I want to be policed by camera or remote control. There are a lot of laws on the books that we break every day, if we start allowing politicians to police us via CCTV all over town they’ll be ticketing us for spitting on the sidewalk, jaywalking, and any number of minor offenses that are generally ignored as the nuisance they are. Pols will realize they can make all kinds of money by raping the citizenry with a non-tax tax and suddenly we’ll find that we can’t move without being watched. I don’t want my government, which can’t get it’s act together enough to balance a budget even in the best of times, to have another ill-conceived way to pull money from the pockets of the citizens when what they really ought to be doing is cutting the fat and cleaning out the corruption. They’d save tons of money if they just ran government properly, but it’s easier (and better for their jobs and pockets) if the fuck their citizens out of more cash. Don’t sigh, don’t accept…get angry and tell your “representatives” in state government that this shit won’t fly.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 11:35pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.