Congress can’t seem to help itself when it comes to attaching completely unrelated riders to large bills.
Professor X wrote:
Worse yet are those who, years down the road, will use a politician’s voting history as a gauge of his ethics without knowing whether reasons like this are why it was rejected or voted for. They combine enough good reasons to sign for it so that very few will contest it. I swear, they could reinstitute slavery and some fools would vote for it as long as they attached it to a bill that got rid of the right have an abortion.[/quote]
I suppose in this case it would be hard for a partisan attack, at least if the report above is correct – it’s hard to criticize a 100-0 Senate vote on partisan terms.
Everyone is afraid to voice a dissenting opinion, because of how things played out in the last election. Obviously, not sending money to the troops is seen as an election killing issue.
And, sigh, it seems like I need to state that I’m not bashing any republicans or republican viewpoints, nor am I promoting any type of liberal agenda or policy. This is just a problem with the way people are using voting records during election time.
How ridiculous is the fact I have to issue such a stupid disclaimer?
[quote]Professor X wrote:
I swear, they could reinstitute slavery and some fools would vote for it as long as they attached it to a bill that got rid of the right have an abortion.[/quote]
What exactly does slavery have to do with a REAL ID ?
[quote]vroom wrote:
Everyone is afraid to voice a dissenting opinion, because of how things played out in the last election. Obviously, not sending money to the troops is seen as an election killing issue.[/quote]
The only dissenting opinion that was quoted in the article I read was from Ted Kennedy, which basically said that he didn’t like all the extraneous provisions but getting money to the troops was more important. Basically everyone had to save face. I’d like to see the actual bill and find out who buried the nat’l ID thing in it.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I suppose in this case it would be hard for a partisan attack, at least if the report above is correct – it’s hard to criticize a 100-0 Senate vote on partisan terms.[/quote]
As Vroom stated, the way this played out during the last election is probably why no one has the guts to stand for issues they may not agree with. The general public won’t remember the “national ID” issue in 2008 when some biased media groups claims that one of the running mates didn’t vote for the bill (as if they didn’t vote for it because they hate the troops). Because of the attacks, those who are supposed to be representing us feel bound to simply follow the leader. I don’t see that as a good thing and don’t understand why many of those who praise nearly every conservative action seem to be very quiet on this issue.
[quote]Atreides wrote:
Professor X wrote:
I swear, they could reinstitute slavery and some fools would vote for it as long as they attached it to a bill that got rid of the right have an abortion.
What exactly does slavery have to do with a REAL ID ?
How is it germaine to anything on this thread?[/quote]
It was an analogy. You have heard of those, right? I know they took them out of the new SAT format, but damn. I’m sorry, was I not supposed to use that word? Did it offend you? If so, how? What about the use of that word in that sentence in that way made you so upset that you had to make a post about it? Others who read the same post didn’t seem to take it the way you did.
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
I suppose in this case it would be hard for a partisan attack, at least if the report above is correct – it’s hard to criticize a 100-0 Senate vote on partisan terms.
Professor X wrote:
As Vroom stated, the way this played out during the last election is probably why no one has the guts to stand for issues they may not agree with. The general public won’t remember the “national ID” issue in 2008 when some biased media groups claims that one of the running mates didn’t vote for the bill (as if they didn’t vote for it because they hate the troops). Because of the attacks, those who are supposed to be representing us feel bound to simply follow the leader. I don’t see that as a good thing and don’t understand why many of those who praise nearly every conservative action seem to be very quiet on this issue.[/quote]
If that is the case, I think they’re being quite a bit over-cautious. Kerry’s problem was he didn’t come out contemporaneously to his votes and state why he was voting “Nay” on those bills. It seems it would be relatively easy for someone to state his particular objections loudly and on the record.
You can’t seriously believe that. It doesn’t matter if someone tries to seriously counter such an attack – we’ve seen it on our own forums. They are just drowned out with talking points by the opposing party.
Privacy advocates should wise up and admit they lost the battle, but there is still a chance to win the war. The real issue isn’t a piece of ID with a microchip or a National database - it’s data privacy. The US needs to pass aggressive and far reaching data privacy laws. The need is very real. Just look at the news and read the latest report that hackers got to Choicepoint or Lexus Nexus. The problem is that the data, the credit reports and such, belong to the agency- the same one that is loosing it. If the data actually belong to the person- if my data actually belonged to me- and I could control who accesses it- everyone is better off. But hackers will get to it? maybe. They get to it now. They will be able to track? EVERYONE. Who says they are not doing it now?
We need to pass a data privacy law and we need to do it soon.
The government can track us whenever they want. They can find out where we live, our vehicle license plate number, etc right now. They can track us if they want. Its not that they are going to track Joe Blow because it won’t do no good, its that they want to find criminals and terrorists. I don’t know how the tracking system is going to work, but if its mandatory to have your ID card with you when you leave the house, and, lets say, a crime is committed, it’ll be easy to find out who did it.
Again, I’m not sure how the system will be setup, so this is just a theory.
You can’t seriously believe that. It doesn’t matter if someone tries to seriously counter such an attack – we’ve seen it on our own forums. They are just drowned out with talking points by the opposing party.[/quote]
Actually, I do.
Kerry didn’t have any reasons that he gave contemporaneously for his votes, so his explanations at this point seemed like post hoc justifications – especially as it took him so long to come up with them.
If someone were to go on record at the time that they were completely opposed to the Real ID provisions, and thus voted against the overall bill, then while they might get attacked for being opposed to the Real ID provisions, they would not be open to attacks on voting against other aspects of the bill.
Clinton used this tactic for his vetoes, and it worked very well for him.
[quote]Prof X: wrote: One large one is the right to privacy. Is it really anyone’s business if you go out of town for the weekend? I am in the military as well, but I can assure that when I am no longer in, having my every step tracked as far as where I am and what I am doing is not how I would like to live my life.
Further, there is also the fear of how this info could possibly be used against you. Unless you simply trust anyone in power to only use this info to determine who is a foreigner, I see a possible risk. What kinds of info will be maintained about you? [/quote]
Then being in the military you know we are sort of tracked everywhere we go. When we go on leave we are still accounted for, our unit knows where we are and can recall us whenever they want. But this never effects me, I never sit and think that they know where I am and they could be tracking me. I understand about you wanting a right to privacy and I am not disagreeing with it. But I think if someone was tracking me it wouldn’t be so Hollywood style obvious. I watch those undercover cop shows and they always catch those guys by surprise, and those criminals have to be super-paranoid about being followed and they still get caught. So I have doubts any of us would even be aware we were being tracked. The fear of how the info could be used, I agree with you on that. Information is power and I think there would be incredible temptation to exploit that info for things we wouldn’t like it to be used for.
OK, and to play devil’s advocate, being anonymous is part of the problem when it comes to terrorism. Being able to slip into our country and disappear is a tremendous advantage to someone that wants to attack us. I don’t want to be tracked either but I have serious doubts we have the resourses or manpower to track everyone in the US. I could picture some kind of filter where if you weren’t on a watch list you wouldn’t be cluttering up the database. The INS can’t get ahold of the immigration mess and the Border Patrol is completely overwhelmed.
What you wrote about the military, at least where I am stationed, being ambivalent about it is spot on. I think the big reason is, Prof X could probably second this, they have all of our info and stuff still gets lost/deleted/misplaced or whatever the excuse of the day is. So the attitude is mostly one of, we will believe it when we see it. I am not saying either of one of your concerns is not valid just giving my take.
Because it’s a war on terror, we keep coming up with good reasons to track the populace or grant additional powers to authorities.
The funny thing, the populace is willingly giving it up. Nobody is willing to stand against it because they can’t risk appearing soft on terrorism.
Sure, things are fine today, but after we are dead and gone, our children are going to have one hell of a struggle if things keep going the way they have been lately.
[quote]HouseOfAtlas wrote:
The government can track us whenever they want. They can find out where we live, our vehicle license plate number, etc right now. [/quote]
The reason that this is not problematic is because it is self-limiting, not because the government is filled with freedom loving, bad-guy chasing heroes. In fact, I remember a court ruling where a GPS was planted on a suspect’s car without a warrant, and the prosecution argued that this was the same thing as regular police tracking. The court disagreed, saying that it was obviously different because the police could afford the manpower to directly track only so many people at a time. By their logic, they could track every citizen in the country, and it wouldn’t be an encroachment.
[quote]HouseOfAtlas wrote:
I don’t know how the tracking system is going to work, but if its mandatory to have your ID card with you when you leave the house, and, lets say, a crime is committed, it’ll be easy to find out who did it.
Again, I’m not sure how the system will be setup, so this is just a theory.
[/quote]
Actually, all it would take to mess up this theory is for someone to loose their card or have it stolen.
If I wanted to commit a serious crime, why not leave my ID at home, pick-pocket some dude on the bus for his ID, then commit my sin?
[quote]jackzepplin wrote:
Actually, all it would take to mess up this theory is for someone to loose their card or have it stolen.
If I wanted to commit a serious crime, why not leave my ID at home, pick-pocket some dude on the bus for his ID, then commit my sin?[/quote]
Which is another part of the problem. This system would have virtually NO benefits for law-abiding citizens, and wouldn’t be effective in punishing “evil-doers.”
[quote]nephorm wrote:
jackzepplin wrote:
Actually, all it would take to mess up this theory is for someone to loose their card or have it stolen.
If I wanted to commit a serious crime, why not leave my ID at home, pick-pocket some dude on the bus for his ID, then commit my sin?
Which is another part of the problem. This system would have virtually NO benefits for law-abiding citizens, and wouldn’t be effective in punishing “evil-doers.”[/quote]
Which should really be making people ask the question, “then what is it going to be used for if they plan to spend that much money and technology on it?”