Traffic Robocops

Anyone who knows the Ragin' Man knows that he hates cops. Kind of ironic since at one point the Ragin' Man trained police officers, but the Ragin' Man digresses.

I read a story on Yahoo! News about one South Carolina town along I-95 (the major north-south corridor along the east coast US) installing traffic cameras that send tickets to motorists who speed. Here is an excerpt about why they did such a thing:

"Ridgeland Mayor Gary Hodges said the cameras in his town about 20 miles north of the Georgia line do what they are designed to do: slow people down, reduce accidents and, most importantly, save lives."

Sounds reasonable enough right? I mean who wants to cause accidents or take lives? Well here is how the article describes the process of being ticketed:

"Earlier this month, Ridgeland Police Officer David Swinehamer sat in a van beneath an overpass as a radar gun in a thicket of electronic equipment outside clocked passing vehicles: 60, 72, 73, 67.

Then a Mercedes with South Carolina tags sped by going 83 — 13 mph over the speed limit. A camera fired and pictures of the tag and driver appeared on a monitor in the van. The unaware motorist continued north, but could expect a $133 ticket in the mail in a couple of weeks."

To paraphrase Nicholas Cage in the movie "The Rock", how in the name of Zeus' butthole does this help "slow people down, reduce accidents and, most importantly, save lives"? If this were to actually perform those functions the police officer in question would have to stop the driver and tell him to drive slower. If the reasoning behind why we force motorists to drive within a speed limit is that "it is unsafe to drive above the speed limit" that police officer has done nothing to make the road safer as the driver was not even informed he could kill or maim at his current pace. He won't even be informed for 2-3 more weeks!

Now I'm sure you're saying "I'm with you Ragin' Man, but we all know you really rage. Like dark side of the Force rage. This seems pretty lame for rage." Well, let me show you something else that these traffic cams do.

I first read about this in Easyriders. It's a story about 6 towns that were caught shortening yellow lights in order to raise revenue from their red light cameras. In a few instances there is some doubt as to whether the lights were shortened on purpose, but this story cements the nature of the stop light cameras.

The pertinent lines from this article are

"City officials agree the cameras, which monitor and record red-light violations, are working. Violations, accidents and injuries are down. But so are citations, which help pay for the automated ticketing program that can cost some cities more than $400,000 a year to Norcross-based LaserCraft.

The drop in citations is due, in part, to a state law that went into effect Dec. 31 that mandated a one-second addition to the yellow phase at all camera intersections."

So if lengthening the yellow light makes for less accidents and municipalities just want to protect their citizenry then why doesn't ever municipality go to a 4 second yellow unprompted? Because it's all about revenue stream, which brings me to my reason for hating cops. The story is all about municipalities in Georgia removing red light cameras due to decreased revenues.

I have no idea how many cops stop crimes that could lead to the loss of life, limb or property on a daily basis, but I've honestly never been in a situation where I've said "thank God the cops are here." I take that back, one time my house was broken into and I waited 4 and a half hours for a cop to show up to take my report, so I did thank my deity that a cop had indeed shown up.

I can tell you that the number of cops I have seen looking for speeders is great, and going up every day. What is interesting is that most times I see them looking for speeders in areas where people aren't, so there is less chance of anyone being hurt by an errant 10 miles over.

A hint for anyone driving into Louisiana: WATCH THE SPEED LIMIT! Bobby Jindal runs a police state with shitty roads.

That's what makes me rage.

Rage Can Keep You Up At Night

Anyone who has spent an extended period of time around me will know that I run on a fuel known as "rage-ahol" and it keeps me functioning well.

Most times I see something that incites me into a fit of rage, and that keeps me going throughout the day. Eventually my rage high wears off and I fall into a heap on the ground where I am covered up until a dream incites rage enough to wake me. Well, I made the mistake of watching the news and then actually looking up raw video before going to bed the other night. I couldn't go to sleep after I saw this:



What is going on is the Wisconsin State Senate broke up the previous budget bill that called for an end of the ability for most public unions to negotiate for anything other than wages, and the Republicans are voting it through committee over a point of order objection of one of it's members. To be fair, the member never says "point of order" but he is clearly having a point of order discussion with the chair. Nothing can be more antithetical to the messages that Republicans have put out over the last two years.

"Well Ragin' Man, that is only in Wisconsin!" you say. Well random guy who talks to my brain, I say check out the first two or twenty minutes of this video:



What you're seeing is Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) making a point of order objection to a bill being entered into committee because it clearly fails to meet the standards of the legislative body it seeks to gain passage in.

This is where Republicans have lost me. I get their adherence to the Constitution kick, and I'll be honest, I find it a little too slogan-y for my taste, but there's nothing wrong with getting back to basics. If you want to make a superfluous rule, go ahead and make it. I don't have to follow it, so I'm not too worried about it. The problem I have is that while passing the healthcare bill in 2010 Republican spokespeople like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh never failed to mention what dastardly tricks that are within the rules the Democrats were willing to use to pass the bill. If we turned back to Republicans, who became fiscal hawks overnight in November, we would have a stricter adherence to Glenn Beck's understanding of what the Founders intended.

These rules were made to ensure that the healthcare debacle never happened again. I guess the rules could do that, but apparently they can be selectively followed.

The best case of this hypocrisy is in the person of Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) who has often misquoted then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's famous "But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy." On March 6th's Meet the Press she again misquoted to "famously" say "We have to pass the bill to know what's in it."

What is most egregious about this misquote is that Rep. Bachmann is making it sound as if then-Speaker Pelosi has no idea what is in the bill, and was not speaking about the public not knowing what was in the bill. I'm not going to get into my personal feelings about the quote by then-Speaker Pelosi, because it is a whole other issue. The real issue at hand is that the Republicans in Wisconsin in the first video I posted essentially told the one Democrat in the room that he could find out what was in the bill after they passed it. Will Rep. Bachmann lend her voice to the growing chorus of those enraged by this breaking of the rules? Not that I have seen, but she had previously been very active in speaking out about her support of Gov. Walker, so it stands to reason she should speak out about a completely wrong and illegal practice used to get the bill out of committee.

I don't care what you think of the bill, but if you had a problem with how the healthcare bill was passed a few years ago, then you should be marching in the streets of Wisconsin. Republicans refer to the states as "laboratories of democracy", and if you're not outspoken you could be the next victim of this latest experiment in a Republic based on the end, and not a republic based on laws.

Hypocrisy

Want to piss off a ragin' man fast? Be a hypocrite.

Any number of pro-Republican and anti-union blogs have referred to the protesters in Wisconsin as some sort of paid conspirators. Often these bloggers seek refuge in the few radio hosts that link them all together for moral support and essentially marching orders for the next subject of their next blog or exposé.

Well it turns out that the callers bringing up the points that lead into the hosts next rant might not be actual enraged people either. If paid rage is wrong on one side, it should be wrong on both.

Where do they get the money to pay for these callers? Well Sean Hannity probably uses all the money that you donated to his veteran's charities!