W's Speeding Ticket

Since all the war madness started in the last month or so, I see five times as many cops as you normally would out writing speeding tickets. I should know: I got two tickets in February and summarily have to go to traffic school on the Saturday that I'm supposed to be moving to my new apartment. Speeding isn't dangerous in my front-wheel drive 2001 Grand Prix that can easily pass inspection in any state – dangerous driving like two-inch-tailgating and/or not using your turn signal is. So quit your frivolous ticketing quotas and go do some actual law enforcement, Mr. Officer, because I know you find this aspect of your job as insulting as I do. Besides, you might look my record up and see two speeding tickets in Pennsylvania, a formal warning in Indiana, and three speeding tickets in Illinois, but you will NOT find a single accident report.

Around the same time I started noticing the massively increased police presence, I saw on the news (I think it was ABC) one morning an interview with a Massachusetts police chief saying that he lost two officers on his force to the war effort (they're reservists) and still had to contend with less money from the Fed for the fiscal year. I believe his quote was, "…we have to make more with less."

I don't understand how everyday people can't see the effects of Bush's administration and their insane war in their daily lives. I see it everyday on the interstate with state police on the interstates using radar and Chicago Police on Lake Shore Drive leaning out of their doors with their laser guns out. I don't know about you, but I'd feel like a real dirtbag pulling a guy over on his way to/from work, yet that's how I got my two tickets that are landing me in the Illinois Traffic Safety School For Mouth-Breathers.

So, the Fed continues to make states and municipalities scrounge harder by taxing you more, de facto, with things like increased speed enforcement to get their daily business done. All because the money that should be going to the state coffers is going to Iraq, a country that you and I will never visit.

I just read that Pennsylvania, where I grew up 95% of my life, is considering a "Tax Me More" initiative (I swear to you, that's the name) which sounds to me like a thinly-veiled war bond. Essentially, you can volunteer to pay more taxes if you'd like to help out the ol' Commonwealth. Nothing energizes the dead workhorse of the PA Department of Transportation or the glorified babysitters of the public school system quite like a good dose of extra cash to mismanage. I heard my old school district just outside Pittsburgh's city limits is planning on building a new elementary school, and abandoning the only true neighborhood school in the district where its kids can actually walk to it, because they want a newer facility. It'll be another monument of efficiency, I'm sure.

Apparently, PA's Governor Rendell is also planning on increasing the tax on alcohol. Now this is more like it. I personally drink, and I also smoke. Should I do either of these things? Obviously not, but it's my freedom to do so. Do I mind paying more for them because of taxes? Yes and no.

Yes, because when I really want a pack of Camels, or I really want a bottle of Turkey, I'm going to buy them (isn't that the catch of the Sin Tax, after all?). But also no, because I can tell you that my consumption of cigarettes is WAY down since the tax has made the price pretty much double in the past year or so. So I've learned to smoke less, but I'm probably paying about the same amount annually I normally would have in the past. So, this isn't a case of Christian conservatives forbidding me tobacco and booze because they're instruments of the devil, it's a scientifically indisputable fact that these things are NOT good for you whatsoever.

Taxing a little more on the things that are proven to keep your state's workforce happy, yet unhealthy, is no big deal to me. It's a good investment for your coffers and your people's health (if only marginally). I'd like to see the Fed abolish its War on Drugs and permit states to make their own laws about drug enforcement on a grand scale, including the level of taxation. Of course, the Federal government's compliancy in keeping their own spending down and keeping us out of gung-ho legionnaire wars would be the easier answer. But maybe if drugs were decriminalized and regulated, the tax money could close some prisons because they wouldn't be overflowing, no schools would have to be abandoned, and our federally-beleaguered farmers would get an extra cash crop.

…and I wouldn't have to pay $140 go to a courthouse for eight hours on my day off to learn the finer points of polite lane-changing because I was trying to get to my honest job before 9:00. Thanks for the ticket, Officer Bush!

April 10, 2003