Hillary Wants You To Drive 55
Donald Trump doesn’t want to Drive 55 – but Hillary does.
Well, she wants us to drive 55.
The Dear Leader’s armored limo, of course, is not subject to any speed limits. They are for the Little People (that’s us) only.
And if Hillary becomes Dear Leader, we may be driving 55 again.
Here she goes: “The 55-mile speed limit really does lower gas usage. And wherever it can be required, and the people will accept it, we ought to do it.” She uttered this ten years ago almost to the day – May 24th, 2006 – at the National Press Club in Washington, DC (see here.)
Not only was it miserable (per Sammy Hagar, what used to take two hours now takes all day) and stupid and – yes – wasteful (of time at least and also of gas, bear with me for a moment) it was also corrupting beyond calculation. While there always has been a certain degree of “revenue collection” inherent in speed enforcement, the Double Nickel was about little else.
Motorists were dunned for operating at speeds that had been lawful previously – on highways specifically designed for higher speeds decades prior (back in the ‘50s). Cops charged with enforcing the new fatwa knew perfectly well it was absurd – but this did not prevent them from enforcing it. We knew it was a farce, but that did not help our mood much when we got pulled over for “speeding” and had to play patty-cake with the cop.
If cops are (rightly) despised today as little more than roving tax collectors, the passage of the National Maximum Speed Limit (as Drive 55 was officially known) was arguably the source waters of that contempt. Millions of dollars in outright legal rape was countenanced.
And even though the NMSL was finally repealed in the mid-‘90s (the one solid done by Republicans in my lifetime) no refunds were issued… and the canker persists.
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