Transportation Secretary Buttigieg ripped for wanting Big Government expansion of racist, inaccurate highway cameras for 'safety' reasons
By jdheyes // 2022-02-03
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If Democrats are anything, they are persistent advocates for big government expansionism and increasingly authoritarian control. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is no exception. The Biden regime hack who has little-to-no previous "transportation" and "infrastructure" experience outside of being mayor of South Bend, Ind., for a time wants to use billions in taxpayer dollars to dramatically expand the use of cameras along America's highways -- cameras that have been known to be notoriously racist, inaccurate and abused by political cronies, Breitbart News reported this week. And like a good little Dem, he justified this lunacy by pretending to care more about minorities than Republicans and Independents do. In introducing his scheme in late January, Buttigieg framed the camera expansion as one of "fairness," claiming that  "people of color, Native Americans, low-income communities, [and] people in rural areas, [are] more likely to die on our roads." In countering the nonsense, Breitbart noted: "What he did not mention was that poor people, and people of color, are impacted more by traffic tickets, with black drivers and other minorities far more likely to be ticketed — and, in many cases, less able to afford the resulting fines for violations." The site linked to a report from the Crime & Justice Research Alliance, which noted:
  • Black drivers disproportionately received more traffic tickets than their counterparts that were White or from another minority group.
  • Black drivers, accounting for approximately 31 percent of motorists, received 58 percent of traffic tickets.
  • White drivers, accounting for almost 50 percent of motorists, received 36 percent of traffic tickets.
  • Blacks are more than 2.5 times more likely to be ticketed than Whites.
  • Members of other racial groups are approximately 1.3 times more likely to be ticketed than Whites.
Now, without context, it's impossible to know if Black drivers are much more likely than Whites to speed or drive recklessly; simply using raw statistics without providing the necessary context makes this kind of research only nominally useful. But still, if we're just using raw numbers -- and this research appears to be doing that -- Buttigieg obviously has not taken it into consideration. The plan the Transportation secretary has introduced calls for the federal government to "promote speed safety cameras as a proven safety countermeasure," as well as the mass rollout of additional speed cameras to be completed by the end of Biden's first and what will be his only term. However, "skeptics say it will only end up leading to more fines for motorists – and money for the government – while doing nothing to address the country's real transport problems," noted Jennifer Smith of the Daily Mail, via MSN. When then-Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel had enough traffic cameras installed to make the Windy City the leader in red light cams, his government was accused of singling out black and Latino drivers. "A ProPublica analysis of millions of citations found that households in majority Black and Hispanic ZIP codes received tickets at around twice the rate of those in White areas between 2015 and 2019," left-leaning ProPublica reported earlier this month. And not so ironically, Buttigieg was the one who, last year upon taking office, vowed to target "racist" roads and bridges. Also in recent years, roadside "safety" cameras have been involved in allegations of political corruption, Breitbart News pointed out, citing the company supplying Chicago’s cameras, Redflex. That firm "reached a non-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice and a $20 million civil settlement with the City of Chicago after related bribery scandals and convictions in the city and in Columbus, Ohio," the outlet reported. If cities and local communities want to install these cameras -- and many have -- that's one thing. Local communities can also have them uninstalled if voters put representatives in office who don't want them. But nationally, this effort will be tied into another big government surveillance state scheme, probably with Google and Amazon providing the data storage and Internet services. Buttigieg should be laser-focused on solving our worsening supply chain crisis, like a good "Transportation" secretary would be doing. Sources include: Breitbart.com MSN.com ProPublica.org
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