A controversial new bill in Annapolis proposes that first-time drunk driving offenders be required to have ignition interlocks installed in their vehicles. One question the local media has failed to ask: will the House of Delegates' majority leader, Kumar Barve (D - District 17), be required to have one installed in his vehicle? And will Maryland's state budget director, T. Eloise Foster, be required to, as well? Barve and Foster were both convicted of drunk driving charges a few years ago.
District 16's delegate, Bill Bronrott, is in favor of the new requirement, but after several years, has yet to publicly criticize Barve or Foster for getting behind the wheel while intoxicated.
This bill should raise more questions than that, however.
In order to have such a law, there should be uniform standards and testing equipment statewide to ensure accuracy of tests. Recent years have brought questions about D.C.'s tests, which have declared drivers who drank only one glass of wine as over the limit. Since most would agree that one glass of wine is insufficient to incapacitate a legal adult, such a standard for a severe solution would be unacceptable. I have not heard similar complaints about the tests administered here in Montgomery County, so my hope is that law-abiding citizens will not have to worry if the bill becomes law.
And that leads to a second concern here, one of principle. While we need accurate, objective tests to declare a driver "over the limit," requiring he or she to have a clunky device permanently installed in his or her car, there's no doubt about something else: Big Government wants into your car. Bigtime.
Among the devices outside-the-mainstream politicians want to install in your car: "black boxes" to gather data about every aspect of your driving and vehicle condition; a GPS tracking device that not only reports your location to local, state, and Federal governments, but also charges you a variety of taxes by mile, gallon, engine size, fuel type, vehicle category, weather, time, and location; and another device that will transmit the driving directions you are listening to on your GPS to the government.
In short, Big Brother will know who you are, what you are driving, where you are, and where you are going. Even worse, it is going to send you a bill just for existing! And government will have a complete log of your every move. You know how "secure" government data is. There's a report every night on the news about this data or that data being stolen by all kinds of criminals. Such detailed data could put lives at risk, be used by criminals to blackmail citizens, and, quite simply, give the government information it has no entitlement to under the United States Constitution.
There's something terribly wrong when a state knows more of the whereabouts of its law-abiding taxpayers than of its violent criminals, convicted predators and prisoners. The oft-deadly results of such a status quo have been splashed across many a newspaper page in recent months. Some of these deaths and prison breaks have become national news, and a tremendous embarrassment to the leaders of our state. At least, I hope they have the decency to be embarrassed.
So I think the average taxpayer wants to know if politicians in Annapolis will be above the law in this case. We've already witnessed our County Council place itself above the law in several cases, including the failure to maintain education funding under state law. Now the council, and Montgomery County legislators, are working overtime in Annapolis to pass legislation that would declare the Montgomery County Council "above the law," and result in reduced school funding, crowded classrooms, fewer programs and a backwards step for special and gifted education.
It's outrageous.
And more than that, is the law still what is written in our Constitution, and will government be allowed to go above and beyond it in this new era of no privacy, and taxmania?
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