Click It or Ticket

Okay, maybe it's me, but this whole thing seems a bit dubious to me. Yes, I believe that having people use seat belts is a good thing, but I wonder if such an "enforcement" of all motorists is not yet another reason for police officers to pull me over just for the sake of pulling me over. In many areas, police officers are looking for any reason to pull you over, so they can check out your car and see if maybe they can find something wrong. I remember living in Oakland some time ago when a police officer in El Cerrito pulled me over because I "took that turn awfully fast this late at night." The fact that I wasn't speeding, hadn't barreled around a corner, and it was extremely late out (3am in the morning) didn't seem to make a difference. He then indicated (after realizing I wasn't budging on the "took that turn awfully fast this late at night" rationale, that he had really pulled me over because there were a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. The fact that I was driving a white station wagon with no trunk, which meant you could see everything out in the open, served as a further joke as I indicated that I could think of a lot better vehicles to be pulling burglaries than one in which all the stolen goods would be seen. He then indicated that I should take those corners slower, because he just couldn't admit that he was pulling me over because I happened to be the ONLY other vehicle on the road at that particular time.

That's why I hate these new "we're pulling you over for your protection" campaigns. Sure, for the most part, I'm sure it will do some good, but there are these guys out there that seek ANY reason to get you into their radar.

The Patriot Act is an example of this. Sure, it sounds great, but I'm already hearing from some community leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area that quite often, in the name of the Patriot Act, individuals are being questioned about personal activities that have nothing to do with terrorism or national security, but just because community representatives don't like something that one group might be doing. I've started to notice prurient interest crackdowns in certain areas of the country that are utilizing new powers given to them by the government because of the fear of terrorism. Spying on local groups is now a norm rather than a no-no. The CIA is requesting the opportunity to start conducting hometown surveillance, something that was, by practice, ONLY left up to the FBI.

People don't seem to notice this as a problem, yet I believe it's going to get worse and worse as time goes on. And what are our legislators doing? Calling for more police powers to protect us. It makes one wonder sometimes.

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I've been reading a bunch of articles on this whole Texas Congress fiasco about how the Democrats hid so they would not have to vote on a Republican redistricting plan, and I find myself more amazed at the posturing the writers need to take than the actual content of their arguments. I find it fascinating sometimes that people actually need to villify the othe side in what is very much an obvious circumstance.

Morris Fiorina pointed out in Divided Government that divided government is not always a bad thing, and that quite often in divided government the compromises allow us to further productive government whereas in times of unified government, there has been no consensus that things were actually good, and that things actually moved forward. Gary Jacobson makes a pretty interesting claim in the first edition of his book The Politics of Congressional Elections when he indicates that due to the changing nature of PACs, it was very possible (and this is a connection I made linking his arguments together along with Fiorina's) that the Republican Party would move away from just controlling state governments and become a major powerhouse in the national government as well.

I put forth that Texas is a very good example of the steps that the displaced party is going to have to take in order to still remain feasible. The interesting thing of this whole affair is not that they went against the grain, but that they used a parliamentary procedure to circumvent a vote, and thus derail the Republican attempt to redistrict. People don't even think about the ramifications of redistricting in a non-census period; if this was to happen everytime a Congress changed its power structure, you could have a continuous period of redistricting where people would eventually lose all faith in the political system. I know I would if I didn't know what district I was going to be in due to how someone is trying to gain more seats for his own party every couple of weeks or months.

This is going to be happening a lot, if Jacobson was correct. We're going to see a lot of this type of last ditch attempt posturing on the Democrats a lot in the near future, because we live in a dual society that makes it so that you can only play to win. Right now, the Republicans are winning, and they are going to do everything possible to make that solidified. Because of this, we're going to start seeing a lot of parliamentary resistance from the other side. The confirmation hearings and the attempts to stall that are a great example.

I predict we're going to see a lot more of this and at a much higher cost in the future. The more one side solidifies its control of the government, the more you're going to see desperate measures having to be taken on the other side. A good example is to observe the steps New Zealand went through before its government decided on proportional government. The two party system eventually collapsed into a one party system and a tolerated second party outsider group before proportional representation changed the whole process.

But I don't think people really think all that much about the long term ramifications but just in how much their side is winning or losing.

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What is it with DVD television series collections? A friend of mine from California recommended that I watch Buffy, the Vampire Slayer when it came out some year or so ago, and she was right; I really enjoyed the series. I remember paying something like $33-39 for the first season. And then I paid something similar to Seasons 2 and 3 each. I'm also a huge X-Files fan, and a Star Trek fan. Yet, X-Files charges over $100 for a season, and so does all of the Star Treks. Babylon 5 is somewhere around $59.

Why is there such a huge difference in pricing? The 7th season of X-Files was just released, and I was going to get it, but I've decided against it because I really feel like they're fleecing fans this way. If one part of the industry can charge $30-40 for a season, why can't the rest of the industry? Are episodes of the X-Files that much more enjoyable than episodes of Babylon 5 or Buffy? Are we paying for quality or greed?

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I haven't been doing a lot of writing on the blog lately, mainly because other things have been occupying my time. Just thought I'd check in here to remind myself that I still write on this thing.

I received my money for Prague, so that's going forward. Now, I just need to work on getting the plane ticket and then the books. I have to do some extensive reading before leaving for this trip.

I haven't really been doing much at all, but for the first time in quite some time, it's been nice to not have to do anything at all.

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