The Everlasting Phelps

Earl Gray tea, a shot of Grand Marnier, sugar to taste.

Dallas police Lt. Scott Bratcher and Dallas County Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield asked lawmakers to allow law enforcement agencies to set up temporary roadblocks, called sobriety checkpoints, where police can look for drunken drivers.

“This is our No. 1 and only issue,” Mayfield said, referring to checkpoints.

In other words, the the only thing law enforcement wants is a system that lets them collect massive amounts of overtime for a ton of people to sit around in one place and delay and harass the general population, who did nothing more than decide to drive home.

Checkpoints are simply an end run around the 4th amendment.  They can’t legally pull someone over for no reason — so they want to legally be able to pull everyone over for no reason.  Why?  Because checkpoints take a huge number of officers, and a long time.  That’s a huge number of man hours, and almost all of those hours will be overtime.  That’s the point to checkpoints.  It’s riding the clock, and it’s costing you double — in the taxes wasted to pay for it, and in the lost time you pay sitting in a stupid checkpoint line.

U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 10: Powers Prohibited of States:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Article 1, Section 8: Powers of Congress:

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

There’s a whole slew of other powers granted in Section 8.  The power to lay and collect taxes.  The power to establish post roads.  The power to establish Tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court.  Organizing the militia.  These are all things allowed to both the Feds and the States. You know why?  Not prohibited to the states in Section 10.

The uniform rules of naturalization is not in jeopardy here.  Arizona isn’t trying to come up with its own rules on who is or isn’t a citizen.  It is simply prohibiting non-citizens who have failed to properly enter the country from traveling freely there.  (That is, by the way, directly in line with the Federal laws.)

And of course, there is Article 4, Section 4:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Emphasis mine.  There is certainly a constitutional problem here.  Arizona ain’t it.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised a nation shuddering in economic crisis Tuesday night that he would lead it from a dire “day of reckoning” to a brighter future, summoning politicians and public alike to shoulder responsibility for hard choices and shared sacrifice.

Shared sacrifice seems reasonable.  We’ll start by putting Obama out of work on January 20, 2013.

Let’s muse about toll roads, shall we?

We have an unusual system here in Texas.  There aren’t a lot of toll roads, but there are some.  The ones that we have in North Texas as all administered by the NTTA, the North Texas Tollway Authority.  The NTTA is a non-profit corporation operating under the aegis of the Texas Department of Transportation.  NTTA has to raise its own money, run its own books, and operate on its own revenues.  I moved at the start of the year and began driving the Dallas North Tollway as my everyday commute, and I’ve noticed a few things.

The main thing is that almost as soon as I started driving it, the NTTA gained the power to set its own speed limits.  It did the utterly astonishing thing of following the state law.  They did a traffic survey, determined the “prevailing speed” on the road, and actually set the speed limits based on that.  The Dallas North Tollway went from 55 mph to 65 mph, and the George Bush Turnpike went from 55 mph (I think) to 75.

The results were, well, astounding.  Two things happened.  One, traffic improved.  The people who didn’t want to drive 65 actually moved to the right instead of poking along in the left lane fuming with indignation.  The second thing is that the speed traps disappeared.  What didn’t happen is that people didn’t go from driving 10 mph over (65) to 10 mph over (75.)  The vast majority of people now drive right at the speed limit, some 5 mph over in the left lane, some 5 mph under in the right lane.  The really amusing thing is that almost no one drives 75 on the George Bush, and almost everyone drives 70 or so.

The law says that this is how speed limits are supposed to be set in Texas.  This is virtually never how speed limits are set.  You know why?  It’s right up there.  Speed traps.  There’s no revenue profit in sitting a state trooper on the Tollway anymore.  They’ve all moved to the side streets.  You know, the ones where the speed limits are set by some other method than conducting a traffic survey (actually measuring the average speed) and setting it with the results.

The second thing that I’ve noticed is how little congestion there is on the Tollway now.  The NTTA has made significant changes to create this situation.  They took out the tollbooths — all the tolls are collected by mail, using electronic metering, reading RFID tags or license plates.  They promote the RFID method by making the toll cheaper if you have an account with them.  (BTW, if you are on paper dealer tags or out of state plates, tolls are now free.  Yay!)  More importantly, there are crews ready to provide roadside assistance if anyone breaks down.  They are there in minutes, get the vehicle off the road, and get the tire changed or provide some gas if the car can be put back on the road.

And what does that mean?  More people use the road because it is likely to not be backed up.  That means more tolls, which means more revenue.

The NTTA gets more revenue by making it faster and safer to use its roads.  The state gets more revenue by artificially lowering speed limits, writing tickets, and loses money by providing services.  Is is any surprise that the difference between the two is so stark?  But, you know, us libertarians are still insane for thinking that private roads would ever work.  That’s like thinking that you could build something like the internet by relying on private telecoms and peering agreements rather than complete government control over the wires.

Later, she talked to friends, liberals like herself, who advised against telling police. One asked her “to just suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from global warming.”

In other words, lie back and think of Gaia.

I really don’t have an opinion on the veracity of her accusation (don’t know enough about either party) but that part of her story is 1000% credible to me.

In a vibrant democracy, usurpation should have to be accomplished in the dark.

Justice Scalia’s concurring opinion in McDonald