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Instant Cash · Post by **Instant Cash** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:46 pm

i know colorado springs has been using these for years but more for traffic violations, much like the netherlands does with their speeding tickets.

kinda creeps me out, but it isn't like i go downtown and commit crimes, I do those in the suburbs.

Szechuan · Post by **Szechuan** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 12:54 pm

[vc="Bill Hicks"]Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control.[/vc]

Daki · Post by **Daki** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 1:01 pm

While torn on this, I heard (Chicago Mayor) Daley make a very good point this morning. I'll paraphrase it: "The city owns the streets and the sidewalks. We don't own your homes and there are no cameras there, but in areas where we own the property we are going to do waht we can to keep it safe."

Usually I think of buildings as private property but I cannot fault the logic of the Mayor and the plan.

MooCow · Post by **MooCow** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:50 pm

I fully support this. I am so fucking tired of going to work, busting my ass to put in nice roads and sidewalks, then coming back the next day to find some asshole has written his name in it before it finished curing. Same with our bridges. You come back the next day to do the Punchlist, and you find some asshole has spray painted the fucking bridge all up. You got the fucking mayor coming out for a fucking ribbon cutting and some fucking gang wannabe has written "Latin Kings" on your brand new fucking bridge. Fuckers. God damned electric chair is too good for the fucking animals.

Now, if we just installed miniguns at the camera sites, life would be perfect.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:21 pm

Daki wrote:"The city owns the streets and the sidewalks. We don't own your homes and there are no cameras there, but in areas where we own the property we are going to do waht we can to keep it safe."

And that's what is most terrifying to me: the notion that the government owns the streets and sidewalks, that the city - except your home! - is theirs. It isn't; it is /ours,/ and we pay the government to watch over it for us. Government likes to forget - because people like power - that they exist to serve us, and not the other way around.

MooCow · Post by **MooCow** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 11:59 pm

Ummm, that's not a logical statement. "The Government doesn't own the sidewalks, we do." is like saying "I don't own my house, I do."

We /are/ the government. The government doesn't own my house, because it belongs to me personally. However, the government owns the sidewalks because they belong to me, and you, and anyone else who pays taxes.

If you aren't the government, then why would /you/ own the sidewalk when you didn't pay for it? The government paid for the sidewalks. Not sure what world you live in, but in mine the vast majority of the time the people who pay for things are the ones who own it.

Of course, if the government doesn't own the sidewalks, streets, bridges, that's nice for them. It's not their responsibility to maintain them, which I guarantee takes a load off a lot of alderman's minds.

3278 · Post by **3278** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 7:35 pm

MooCow wrote:Ummm, that's not a logical statement. "The Government doesn't own the sidewalks, we do." is like saying "I don't own my house, I do."

We /are/ the government. The government doesn't own my house, because it belongs to me personally. However, the government owns the sidewalks because they belong to me, and you, and anyone else who pays taxes.

Right. They belong to you, me, and everyone else who pays taxes [and everyone else, by our law], just like the government does. We own the government, as well. What it owns, we own. The government is an agency created by the populace to do things like maintain our sidewalks.

MooCow wrote:If you aren't the government, then why would /you/ own the sidewalk when you didn't pay for it? The government paid for the sidewalks. Not sure what world you live in, but in mine the vast majority of the time the people who pay for things are the ones who own it.

The government did not ultimately pay for the sidewalks; we paid the government to make the sidewalks. Ultimately, they are ours, and not the governments. Perhaps it might be correct to say that the government owns them /as well,/ but the government certainly doesn't own them exclusively.

MooCow wrote:Of course, if the government doesn't own the sidewalks, streets, bridges, that's nice for them. It's not their responsibility to maintain them, which I guarantee takes a load off a lot of alderman's minds.

That's poor logic. Many things are not owned by the people responsible for maintaining them. The golf course owner pays the greenskeeper to keep the greens; the greens to not belong to the greenskeeper, but the golf course owner. The citizenry pays the government to maintain our infrastructure; the infrastructure doesn't belong to the government, but the citizenry.

Adam · Post by **Adam** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 9:44 pm

Naturally, I oppose; and I've sort of been a Chicago resident. :-)

crone · Post by **crone** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 10:40 pm

We have something like this in Sydney. I've never heard of anything that did or didn't happen because the cameras were there, so I don't know how effective they are. They don't bother me, personally.