The city tax cops in New Haven, CT, have contracted with a private company to drive a vehicle around the city, using a fantastic computerized and infrared-equipped R2D2 unit to take pictures of everybody's license plates, lest someone be holding back dough from the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Lacking a cool state motto, armed Nutmegger villagers are notably not assembling on the village green.
(H/T to Unc.)
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27 comments:
They could have gotten the google street view folks!
-SayUncle
Help pull the wagon, or move to New Hampshire and wear a wookie suit.
Shootin' Buddy
...after all, if you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about, citizen?
I wonder if they'll drive down the streets where members of the Inner Party live?
You are right we lack a snappy state motto up he in CT. This is the first that I have heard of this tax machine so to speak. Hrmmm what to do about this...
What Would Nathan Hale Do?
You now have a snappy motto in CT:
"Help pull the wagon, or move to New Hampshire and wear a wookie suit"
What to do? Pay the tab perhaps?
Shootin' Buddy
They'd better pay the tab. R2D2 can't be cheap...
R2D2 belongs to the contractors, not the city.
Shootin' Buddy
I'm sure the contractors have a plan to pay it off...
I wonder if R2 would stand up to blaster fire?
WV: "quensum" You quensum, you qloosum.
A village near Daisy Hollow has just placed in service two patrol cars with scanners that look at the bar-codes on registration and inspection stickers on cars. They now sit right in the middle of the main street turn-lane, doing their panopticon thing where the serfs drive by all day long.
It's all about the money, and all protestations of "service" are so much insulting bullshit.
People are here are becoming quite irritated by all of it, and I know damned good and well that there are active fantasies of violence ringing through some of the woods around here.
These stoopid motherfuckers really are playing with fire, without a clue in the world.
A better state motto would be:
Welcome to Connecticut, where R2D2 is no match for a rusty old Ford F150!
I'm SURE all those Yalies and their profs register their Prii and urban assault vehicles immediately upon hitting town. If they didn't pay their taxes, they could end up occupying a high-ranking position in the Obama administration or something awful like that.
I wonder what they do for people who park inside of garages, with the garage door down, every night.
Trespass and try to gain access to the garage?
I just keep thinking of Peter Ustinov's Prince John in the furrified Disney version of Robin Hood.
Well YellowDog, you forget that in the first days of Zero's presidential run, he sent one of his stooges up to Cambridge to pay off all his parking fines from his Harvard days:
http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2007/03/obama_finally_p.html
Remember, rules are for little people!
Now, someone is going to have to show me this. I'm willing to be dazzled by technology.
How is an IR-equipped R2D2 going to take a picture of a license plate? It's not as if the plate is a heat-emitting source. Especially if the car (with plate) has been sitting cold at the curb all night.
Sounds like another waste of good taxpayer money.
B Woodman
III-per
I wonder if there is a substance that can be applied to license plates that will be opaque to infrared light but transparent to normal light...
Some window glass apparently comes with an ir opaque coating for keeping buildings cooler. If you could find some scrap that ought to work fine, but a bit fragile.
Anonymous -
License plates are (usually) reflective to infrared light, so they don't need to be a "heat source" to be readable. Ambient IR, i.e. from stars, moon, streetlamps, the ground itself, etc. is sufficient. Besides, modern infrared technology is good enough to read a book at night, with an overcast sky. And license plates are a LOT more IR-reflective than that.
Regolith -
Yes, there is.
The IR they are using is just slightly beyond human vision range; it's like your TV remote IR that you can't see, but your video camera sees it just fine. Window glass that you can see thru will pass this IR just fine.
Wicked Lasers (and others) will sell you a laser powerful enough to burn out the camera's sensor. There are systems that hunt and find cameras via the reflections from the sensors. A sufficiently motivated person could put the two together.
---- OR ----
You could start a campaign to lower property taxes. Maybe stay out of jail.
Samsam
I live in one of the other towns mentioned that already does this. Two things that many people outside of CT won't pick right up on. One, we have to pay yearly local property tax on our cars, just like on out homes. This is on top of our registration and insurance. The amount varies according to the value of the car and the local mil rate. For an example, my 2007 Dodge Ram 1500 cost me around $500 in property tax this year. If I lived in a large city like New Haven, it would be more like $800-1000. That's a serious chunk of change that most people don't think is fair, so you can imagine plenty of people avoid it if at all possible.
The other thing is, New Haven is the home to Yale University as well as 6 other colleges/universities. If you are living there part time for school, even if you call some other town/state home, you are expected to pay New Haven their tax on your car.
Typical politicians; when you run out of other people's money, just take more.
Qui Transtulit Sustinet. He who transplanted yet sustains (the old traditions).
In New Haven, under every time-serving hypocrite from Dick Lee to the present bloviator, John DeStefano, that means the traditions of "civilized" places like 21st century London and Rome. They're transplants all right.
Five minutes north and you're driving between Mossberg and Marlin. Fifteen minutes north and you're at Blue Trail Range, with several hundred covered firing spots, a great gun store, and an O.K. lounge, restaurant, and indoor smallbore range.. For reference, the people who own it are named Lyman.
After that, from Durham all the way up to Enfield on the Mass. border, you're in God's country, if God lives in a mellow little town where people shoot their bows in the back yard and usually have a town range with at least a hundred yard highpower line and a trap machine.
Just detour around the Hartford/New Britain/Manchester uglyopolis in the center. It's only about ten miles north to south and twenty miles wide. Even the prettiest campground has to have a latrine.
"Knock knock r2d2," -- Thermite calling.
or --on a budget--
old F-150. "Honest ossifer, I swerved to miss a puddy tat. I didn't see the tax moocher scooting along the road dere."
Or like the Santas in AZ dealing with the stoplight cameras: drop a refrigerator box on it. Of course, they'll probably have the robot deputized. r2d2 probably has a tazer mounted. or M-60.
Well, to be honest, despite hating Yale University, I am thinking of applying there for my PhD. It's good to know they have all these taxes. Really, pay property tax on my vehicle? What do you pay registration and inspection fees for?
I just don't see myself paying these taxes.
-Rob
PS: Word Verify: Store.
As taxes go, a property tax on vehicles is not so bad (I've lived in NC and VA, and counties in both states do this). The neat part is you get to pick exactly how much tax to pay. In VA a few years back some asshole candidate for governor promised to kill the "car tax". He won; I was pissed because they simply shifted the robbery to other taxes that weren't nearly so easy for me to control.
"
It's all about the money, and all protestations of 'service' are so much insulting bullshit."
I'm thinking that in this case "service" refers to actions of a bull upon a cow.
And guess which one the citizenry is.
VW: cattleca-- just one "-ca" away from an alternate term for BS.
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