ATTN: Bill Decker & The Advertiser Staff at Gannett Co.
This is a rebuttal response to the anonymous Opinion article posted at The Advertiser titled “ .. when Real ID becomes a reality.”
The author suggests to the reader in this text that the federal government has it all thought out. It’s all been decided. Louisiana residents, after passing legislation resisting a federal mandate should just go ahead and submit because ...it’s 2012 and it will be inconvenient?
The people of Louisiana already passed their law against Real ID, pre-empting their fight with City Hall. I believe the idea in the minds of locals was to never submit to this federal mandate. Louisiana residents made their case strong enough to help settle it in the minds of DHS that Real ID is an unenforceable national ID card.
If you fly out after 2013 there are lots of TSA concerns: X-Ray body scanners, theft, needless groping of your genitals, and abuse of authority at airport checkpoints. The author suggests a “Papers Please clause” bow on the present of humiliating abuses in exchange for admission to fly on a commercial airline.
There’s no way for the reader to interpret this as “ostensibly benevolent government”.
The good news is, AAMVA, a public-private highway safety agency, is not your government. AAMVA is a private corporation who exists solely to commission drivers with identity articles for profit. They come up with their own battery of regulations. They have their own lobby and their own entitlement issues with the American tax dollar.
Data retention is not the job of AAMVA, but they will make a lot of money if it becomes their contract job to do so. Such is the case in the sale of CDL license records for ~ 3 cents a record to commercial vendors and the sale of motor voter roll logs to partisan campaigns. Indeed, it says plainly on the website they are an Information Clearinghosue. They will sell you information if you want to buy it. How the taxpayer makes it their job is through reprobate laws like Real ID.
Louisiana residents don’t have amnesia. The legislature doesn’t need a change of heart. They are not going to subvert their own laws so they can kao tao to DHS now. Residents will either get a passport or they will give their travel business to someone else who won’t put their hands in their pants.
FYI ...there are great commuter transport consultants in Alaska waiting to take your calls now!
