http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010112312164/us/homeland-security/obamas-power-mad-cell-phone-czar.html
What? You missed the Million Anti-Distracted Drivers Protest March on Washington and the Great Grassroots Groundswell for federal intervention on our highways and byways? Don’t worry. You weren’t the only one. Making the cable TV rounds to unveil a public service announcement campaign against “epidemic” cell phone use and texting on the road, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood revealed bizarre and alarming plans on Wednesday to install devices in cars that would block a driver’s ability to communicate.
“There’s a lot of technology out there now that can disable phones, and we’re looking at that,” he threatened. LaHood — a liberal Republican and pork-addicted Chicago crony who embodies Obama “bipartisanship” — envisions centralized government mechanisms to shut off commuters’ BlackBerries and iPhones.
And that’s just the start. “We need to do a lot more if we’re going to save lives,” LaHood vowed, while paying obligatory lip service to encouraging “personal responsibility.” Will the cell phone banners ban radios, GPS devices, makeup and fast food in cars next? All are also listed as causes of distracted driver-induced accidents.
Any death due to such reckless behavior is tragic. But by “saving lives,” what cell phone czar LaHood really means is “controlling lives.” There are already 30 states with laws in place regulating drivers’ cell phone and/or texting habits. The District of Columbia and Guam also passed bans. The safety benefits of such laws are in dispute.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety examined insurance claims and driving habits in Louisiana, Washington, Minnesota and California, which all passed texting bans two years ago.
Its study found that when compared to neighboring states that had not yet banned texting while driving (Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi), the no-texting states actually reported higher accident rates among young drivers — while the states with no bans maintained constant accident rates. Safety officials theorized that drivers in no-texting states may have adjusted their habits to hide their cell phone use from visual detection by police — incentivizing even riskier behavior.
LaHood and his fellow social meddlers have lashed out at the study and any other evidence that state enforcement of these bans is futile. But there’s a long history of government safety regulations backfiring on central planners. Back in the 1970s, the federal drive to require child safety-caps on aspirin bottles resulted in no reduction in child poisoning deaths. In fact, renowned risk analyst Kip Viscusi at Harvard Law School found that the regulations induced many parents to leave the caps off altogether because they were inconvenient and difficult to remove.
Moreover, the push for federal policing of our driving habits comes just as the federal government itself reports that the rate of teenage-related car accidents has fallen. Yes, fallen. Despite increased cell phone use, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that when the years 2004 through 2008 were compared, there was a 38 percent reduction in the number of car accidents involving 16 and 17 year olds.
So what’s really driving LaHood? He’s pursued an anti-car ideological zeal from Day One — from entertaining proposals to impose mileage taxes on drivers and to track drivers’ routes, to redistributing tax dollars to pie-in-the-sky high-rail projects that no private business will touch, to peddling a “livability initiative” that would discourage suburban growth and corral residents in high-density areas dependent on public transportation.
Like the rest of Obama’s radicals, the Transportation Department’s self-appointed cell phone czar is a power-hungry busybody hiding behind children to expand government’s reach. If only federal agencies came equipped with anti-big government ignition breathalyzer locks.
I keep hearing folks talk about how this Administration is inept and out-of touch with the American people.......quite to the contrary, I think the opposite is a more correct statement. This Administration knows exactly what it is doing, and is following a carefully devised plan to - not only transform this nation in to a tird word impoverished nation, but as in any other dictatorship, to limit the rights and freedoms of its citizenry - to divest us of our sense of self-sufficiency and independence so as to make us more dependent on the government rather than ourselves for our needs........The Government has grown to the biggest size it has ever been in our history and slowly and gradually we are being conditioned and prepared for a Police State. Bush was heavily criticized and accused by radical liberals and DemonRats (Democrats) of doing this during his 8 year administration, now two years into the Obongo Administration with much more of the same - just only alot worse - they seem to have nothing to say even though this President's Policies are far more invasive than that of his predecessor George Bush.
The notion that Government knows whats best for us and the only way that it can protect us is by growing itself and being ever more invasive into our personal lives is a lie. Until the people fully realize this and stand up against this to resist the continuing erosion of our freedoms and demand a real change in the way things are done by summoning the same courage as our fore-fathers did and fight against what is happening, we will awaken one morning very soon to find ourselves living under the whim and rule of another despotic king dispensing his will without opposition to his subjects....
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