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Massachusetts Joins the Real ID Fight
In the battle against big government and the infamous Real ID, Massachusetts has hopped on board. In the words of State Senator Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, "Historically, Americans have resisted the idea, which totalitarian governments have tended to do, of having a national ID. That's the broad philosophical issue. I don't think it's a good move and I would be reluctant to see why we are going to that step." And State Attorney General Martha Coakley thinks "it's a bad idea." Should be interesting to see how it gets voted.
I have a nagging feeling that the real reason this is being resisted is because congress expected the states to bear the cost. If they ran it through again, 100% federally funded, I doubt there would be any significant resistance.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
How often through history have the villainous and the thoughtless used temporary tragedies to institute permanent tyrannies. National IDs would not have prevented 9-11. Those people were in the US legally. What would have prevented 9-11 would have been the enormous "intelligence" bureaucracy doing its job, listening to its field agents, actually gathering intelligence and generally not sitting on its post-Cold War laurels. For goodness sakes, the US kept the Soviets at bay without need of National IDs.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Cause you're not required to walk around with your passport to prove who you are at all times when you're within the country.
You're not supposed (at least according to that pesky Constitution) to be required to show ID everywhere you go within the US. But, that has largely been trampled upon since 9/11.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I like the national ID because it arguable can fold services 1, 2, 4, and 7 into one stupid card and cut the bureaucracy.
... ha. .. ha.
... it'll be a total shitshow. That's what the government does. They don't "cut bureaucracy," they are bureaucracy.
Hahahahahaha(snort)hahha
Okay, I'm done.
Seriously, do you really think that's going to happen? Have you ever worked with the government? What you'll end up with is one gigantic new Federal agency, which contains all the bureaucracy of the agencies it was supposed to replace, plus a lot of administrative overhead, plus the added cost of high-level management
And none of this ID crap would change the state drivers' license procedure, so you'd still have all the same crap at the state-level DMVs. No elimination there. And this ID wouldn't replace Passports, so you still have that separately, under the State Department -- that's not going away any time soon.
There's no "reduction" of anything happening here. All it's going to do is create a new layer of bureaucracy on top of what already exists in the form of your state drivers license.
It'll be a few hundred million dollars of taxpayer dollars down the drain, and the end result will be a whole lot of personal data siloed in some giant database run by a brand-new agency in Washington.*
* Probably not actually in Washington; it'll probably get an office somewhere out on the fringes somewhere.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"The plan will create a massive national identification system without adequate privacy and security safeguards. It will also make it more difficult for people to get driver's licenses. And it will make it too easy for identity thieves, stalkers, and corrupt government officials to get access to such personal information as a home address, age, and Social Security number."
Slashdotters should offer their perspective. REAL ID was approved without Congressional hearings, and this is the last 24 hours for the public to comment on this proposal!
Unlikely, and you shouldn't depend on it anyway.
People need to get it through their heads that *nothing* would have prevented 9/11. Nothing that is compatible with a free and open society, anyway. We often hear people say "Freedom isn't free" and nod our head, but we're thinking that the price is someone else's kid going over some ocean and getting hurt or killed to defend our freedom. Sometimes that is the price, but the fact is that sometimes the price is that bunch of innocent civilians die right here at home. Sometimes even kids.
A free society is always going to be at some level of risk from terrorists and other nutjobs who decide for whatever reason that they're more interested in hurting random strangers than in living. Actually, even the most restrictive police/nanny state is at some risk of such things because, fundamentally, the world is not a safe place. But free societies that allow people freedom of movement and association and the freedom to own and operate potentially dangerous tools are at more risk, and there is simply no way to avoid that without giving up a significant measure of freedom.
It's vaguely possible that the 9/11 terrorists could have been caught if the intelligence agencies had done a better job, but it's just as likely that if the intelligence agencies were more efficient, Al Qaeda would have been more careful and they still would have gotten away with it. You simply cannot defend against a small group of determined, inventive terrorists. Especially when they're smart and well-funded.
On the other hand, the actual damage that such a group can do is small. To a nation the size and strength of the US, 9/11 was a fleabite. More people die every month on our highways in auto accidents. More property damage is done every couple of years when a major hurricane rips across Florida, to say nothing of Katrina-scale disasters. The reason that terrorists choose terror tactics is because they don't have the ability to do real damage. If they could, they would. Terror is successful because of the response of the victim, not because of the actual damage it inflicts.
Even if they were able to inflict significant damage, however, the fact remains that if a low level of risk to ourselves and our families is the price of freedom, we should be willing to pay it. There is a limit, of course, but to my way of thinking the risk has to at *least* exceed the level of voluntary activities most of us willingly do every day, like driving an automobile, before we start reacting in extreme ways.
And in the case of a war of terror, some of the patriots are simply ordinary citizens going about their lives with a quiet determination that they will not be terrorized. If more people understood this, terrorists would be forced to find another way to air their grievances.
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