Sometimes I really enjoy heading back home to Long Island to see some of the lunacy of the Confiscatory Republic of New York. In today’s Newsday, there’s a story about Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island yearning for red light cameras. For those that don’t know, I despise red light cameras for a number of reasons. First, they’re just obviously used as revenue generators, as the article points out. Nassau County hopes to raise $3 million for 2009, then $12 million the following year. I, however, hope to continually bang my head about this whole thing. In the article, “safety” is mentioned a full six paragraphs in, while opponents of cameras are relegated to a summary in the last paragraph. Actually, if you read there you’ll see some areas weren’t concerned with safety since they took the cameras away after officials figured out they weren’t profitable.



The first argument, of course, made by people is: “well, just don’t run the light!” Duh. Obviously that’s the goal here. I hate these things, yet am probably the most defensive driver I know. Not to tout my record, but I had 1 speeding ticket in my life, and it was dismissed at trial. Once, I totally rolled through a stop sign and got a warning, and another time my headlight was out. Those are my only run-ins with the law. Instead, I want to take a more philosophical disagreement with these things.



To begin, why do you support any sort of government cameras in public? Why are people these days so willing to give up this sort of liberty so easily? I prefer to live anonymously in public. Sadly, I know that I have to surrender that in order to go in stores and such, but those are my decisions and those are on private property. If I searched long and hard I could find some place that doesn’t have such surveillance and shop there. In the public square, I’d rather not be spied on.



Also, these cameras reveal how government sees its citizens: revenue generators. Police cruisers cannot be everywhere at once, so we’ll have technology monitor you. Then, we’ll change the timings of lights to guarantee drivers have tougher decisions to make. Then we’ll take pictures of just license plates. Don’t worry, there’s nothing sinister about our plan. In fact, we’re not going to take pictures of every license plate to see if there’s something else you’ve done wrong.



Finally, we’re going to make it nearly impossible to fight. Let’s not think about those pesky 6th Amendment rights to confronting witnesses against. Seriously, how do you put a camera on the witness stand? What if you weren’t driving the car? A policeman could figure that one out at a traffic stop, but a camera can’t.



Bottom line, though it doesn’t seem like much, it is these areas where government incrementally erodes personal freedom for, as they claim, the greater good of everyone. I can live with a little more risk then. I hope New York can take a longer look at this plan. Perhaps they could come up with sensible ways to curb spending as a way to close gaps instead of seeking ways to extort it from taxpayers. I can dream, right?

So it's been 6 years since...

Blogging? Why would I need to start writing a blog... Who really cares about me anyway on the series tubes we know as the Internets? I'm just a Civics teacher in Virginia but have always dreamed bigger.

Actually, not to claim myself as avant-garde, but I've been blogging before the term was coined. In college a bunch of us started goofing around with web design, my first site was handmade using Notepad. That being said, what about this thing?

Back in high school I started Perennial Quest as a newspaper column. Then it gained some notoriety, and I had my fair share of controversy. To this day there are a few members of the school staff who don't really like me because of what I wrote nearly 12 years ago. The style was similar of the McLaughlin Group: discuss a number of issues in rapid-fire succession. Most of my columns dedicated a short amount of space per topic depending on what I talked about.

In college, PQ showed up in the Binghamton Review at SUNY Binghamton for a few issues in that format. It took a hiatus after some objections lodged by this liberal... well, someone I knew at the time. Anywho... it went away for awhile.

Cut to 2000 and PQ was brought back, this time as my political talk show on WHRW Binghamton. Those days I dreamt of being what Andrew Wilkow is today: "The Next Generation of Talk Radio." We had a blast on the show and somehow I managed to get some great guests to interview such as Mark Levin, John McCaslin, Harry Browne, amongst others. On Election Day 2000 my co-host and I ran around campus talking to people about campaigns. One of my political science peeps cursed on the air... good times. In 2003 I was done with my education grad work, so PQ was done.

A few weeks ago I started playing around over on Twitter. Since then I've put musings about teaching, politics, and life. I'm not nearly as cool as my buddy Andy who tweets exclusively in haiku form, but I think I'm far from boring. That said, the 140 character limit can be rather constraining. So, I've decided to bring Perennial Quest back. This is mostly for my own amusement but if anyone else finds something redeeming in it I'd be honored. I'll just have to see where the Quest winds up...