Vehicle monkeywrenches
Claire Wolfe - on how REAL ID will backfire and a story from a friend who drove for 18 months without license or registration. [claire]
I SPENT MIND-NUMBING DAYS ON THE HIGHWAY recently and had hours to reflect on the stupidity of turning drivers licenses into national ID cards for the alleged sake of "security." The major result: Millions of "marginal" people -- both legal and illegal immigrants, Outlaws, transgendered people, "deadbeat dads," and oldsters born in the days before universal documentation -- are increasingly forced to drive without licenses. Which also means without insurance. Which may also mean (depending on state law and the individual's degree of cleverness) driving unregistered vehicles.
So in the vain hope of identifying the very rare terrorist (or whichever other miscreant they're momentarily claiming as a dire danger to the country), they fill the highways with scofflaws.
Not that I'm against scofflaws, mind you. ;-) Scoff away.
It's just that it's stupid -- and typical of control-freaking government -- to create scofflaws where none need exist. A drivers license ought only certify that you know, and agree to obey, the rules of the road. Using the threat of withdrawing the "driving privilege" as an iron fist to force acceptance of national ID is going to backfire spectacularly.