More cameras, more money.

It’s often that you hear Democrats and other extreme liberals accuse President Bush of turning the US into a police-state.  They claim that the Patriot Act infringed on the much debated “right” to privacy.  The funny thing is, here in Illinois, it’s the Democrats that are pushing for more “police-state” type actions.  Placing cameras on the freeway to capture speeders appears to be perfectly acceptable to them.

To make good on his offer to help Chicago combat violence, Gov. Blagojevich envisions putting speed cameras on interstates across Illinois — and using the revenue to form an “elite tactical team” that would operate in Chicago and other cities.

The Governor uses a very poor tactic of trying to link these freeway cameras with “combating violence”.  The Sun-Times even hit on the true issue in the tagline of this article, although I don’t think they realized it.  The main motivation behind this move isn’t to combat crime, it’s to raise money.  I covered the city’s decision to have cameras mounted on street-sweepers a few weeks back, this is just more of the same.  Next it will be adding cameras to interesections in order to catch jaywalkers or text-walkers.

How about instead, to follow-through with his “offer” to help Chicago combat violence, Governor Blagojevich first work to repeal the city’s ban on handguns?  It would cost little to no money (especially compared to a highway camera system), actually support the 2nd Amendment, and would immediately have an effect on crime, especially the murder rate, which last I heard had risen by an obscene 18%. We don’t need more policies in this city/state to raise money, we need more policies and proposals that actually accomplish something.