Sunday, September 14, 2008

Oh For The Love Of Cats


Don't get me started on license plates.

The good ladies at Pecanne Log expose the latest abomination to be displayed on our the backs of our cars - neutering kitties. What's next? Vasectomy plates?

It's very simple. License plates have one purpose, one purpose only - identification. They should not be moving billboards for the flavor of the month. Until someone can prove to me these things are somehow revenue positive, my hatred will remain.

Even then, I'll still probably boil a little when I see them.

28 comments:

Richard Campbell said...

I'm not sure what you want as proof...all the various DOTs and related news stories all state that these plates raise money, and the state takes a cut of all of them for storage.

Richard Campbell said...

(storage -> processing fees).

Hell, I'd think you'd love these things, as an easy way for the state to take a rake on voluntary funding of various causes?

griftdrift said...

Screw that crap. Even if they are revenue positive, eventually some idiot on the hill is going to try to gin up their pet cause like I don't know PRO-LIFE. It happened in Florida.

The government should be in the business of protecting the welfare of its citizens. Not the effing marketing business.

I HATE LICENSE PLATES!

Pokerista said...

Really, Richard, you're surprised that a libertarian doesn't think the state should be in the business of raising money for people's pet causes...even if the state gets to take its cut?

Anonymous said...

I think you're just being grumpy. If it costs the state nothing but permits money to be funnelled voluntarily into areas generally viewed positively -- education, beautification, wildlife preservation -- what's the problem? Frankly, you sound a little like Shank.

Blackjackk said...

Seriously ya old coot. It's totally voluntary.

However, I do want my Pro-Choice license plate

Sara said...

Yeah, that's gonna happen.

griftdrift said...

Fine I'll play Shank. How does the government determine what is generally viewed as positive? We're really going to take our petty and not so petty political battle literally to the streets?

You know why you think I'm being a grump? Because I'm picking on kitties. Well screw the kitties!

Richard Campbell said...

"Until someone can prove to me these things are somehow revenue positive, my hatred will remain."

"Screw that crap. Even if they are revenue positive"

Boy, that didn't take long.

"Really, Richard, you're surprised that a libertarian doesn't think the state should be in the business of raising money for people's pet causes...even if the state gets to take its cut?"

Yes. Basically, the license plates are the same as the lottery.

griftdrift said...

A Democrat is accusing me of rapidly changing my mind? Sweet!

A lottery ticket doesn't come with a little government endorsement of what's "good" for the world.

Sara said...

The lottery directly benefits state education. If we were talking about selling fancy license plates that directly benefit state programs such as education, state parks, or road maintenance, perhaps our curmudgeon friend would react differently.

Anonymous said...

Shank loves kitties. I hate them, so I'm all for anything that interferes with their reproductive prowess.

I agree it can be problematic, as the "Choose Life" license plates illustrate. But the government makes decisions like that all the time, and I don't think the prospect of a bad one is sufficient reason to abandon the whole exercise.

griftdrift said...

Like capital punishment?

Fearless Leader said...

The only real benefit of any vanity tag is that it steers your tag number away from being a un-memorable series of seven letters and numbers. Get a cat tag and now you're down to a mere four digits. Admittedly, the only time in remotely recent memory that I've needed to know my tag number has been during a hotel check-in.

Of course, the last time I considered getting a vanity tag was a couple of years ago. I was standing at the remote tag window, ready to order a tag with my college's seal on it. The lady at the counter narrowed her eyes a bit, nodded and started doing some math on a post-it pad. She then raised an eyebrow, looked at me over the tops of her glasses and said: "So you really want to pay an extra $60 -- on top of your ad valorum -- for this tag? Really"

I didn't get a vanity tag that day. Or any day since.

Richard Campbell said...

"A Democrat is accusing me of rapidly changing my mind? Sweet!"

I'm not sure what my political affiliation has to do with your change of heart in 1 comment. But if you want me to just start spamming you with wacky shit Libertarians do, please let me know.

"A lottery ticket doesn't come with a little government endorsement of what's "good" for the world."

Have you really looked at the ads for the Lottery, or at the Georgia Lottery web site? They do in fact endorse the lottery, the HOPE scholarship, and education as "good" for the world.

"eventually some idiot on the hill is going to try to gin up their pet cause like I don't know PRO-LIFE. It happened in Florida."

Happened in Georgia, too.

"if we were talking about selling fancy license plates that directly benefit state programs such as education, state parks, or road maintenance, perhaps our curmudgeon friend would react differently.

25 of the specialty plates directly fund universities in Georgia, many of which are state-operated.

Several others go to state departments such as DNR.

Sara said...

I have one now, but only because I was going to have to file a police report for a stolen tag and wait a week to get a new one...or I could pay $25 for an "upgrade" to a vanity tag and get a new one that day. I went for convenience even if it does mean I have a hummingbird on my car that benefits wildlife or something, I really have no idea.

I am a bleeding heart liberal and I still think that tying pet causes to official state license plates is both silly and potentially dangerous once it bleeds over from relatively non-controversial things like football teams and kitty cats into hot button causes like abortion or gun rights. I find myself agreeing with the curmudgeon on this one.

griftdrift said...

And then once again I will have to tell you why I am not a dues paying member of the LP. Because I know they are mostly bat shit crazy.

Here's why its apples and oranges. The Lottery was created specifically as a revenue generator for education. License plates were specifically created for identification purposes and this latest wackiness was tacked on later.

Call it libertarian or whatever but I don't like it when the government makes something for a reasonble function and later starts taking on doo dads.

Surely a former engineer is still repulsed by the old barnacle ball.

Richard Campbell said...

I still don't understand why it's a bad idea for the state to allow me some aesthetic flexibility in the mandatory identification plate.

I would think you would applaud the customization options.

Amber Rhea said...

Isn't Florida the state that has one w/ a Christian cross on it? Or was that South Carolina? It's one of those...

Amber Rhea said...

The lottery directly benefits state education. If we were talking about selling fancy license plates that directly benefit state programs such as education, state parks, or road maintenance, perhaps our curmudgeon friend would react differently.

Some of them do benefit those kinds of programs, don't they? Like the wildflower one benefits the interstate beautification thing. The one I have, "Preserve Georgia," benefits the The Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Sara said...

I think that is FL with the cross.

As I said, I don't have as much of a problem with it if the plate directly benefits a state program. But this cat neutering plate that started this whole discussion has nothing to do with it.

As for state universities, I also do not have a problem with that...for in-state schools only. We let any alumni association that can get 5,000 signatures have a custom plate, and that's just dumb.

Amber Rhea said...

As I said, I don't have as much of a problem with it if the plate directly benefits a state program. But this cat neutering plate that started this whole discussion has nothing to do with it.

No I agree, I just wanted to be clear that *some* of them do benefit state programs, bc it seemed like some commenters upthread were saying *none* of them do.

griftdrift said...

God why do I suddenly feel like I'm once again arguing with Richard about a requirements doc. If I close my eyes the bad clown won't eat me.

Richard Campbell said...

I dunno, you clearly started this. You said your hatred would remain until someone could prove they were revenue positive, I said they were revenue positive, and then your hatred somehow remained (albeit taking some odd tangents in the middle).

griftdrift said...

Sounds just like all those times I explained why certain requirements were a good thing.

hatred->explanation->weird tangents->hatred

Richard Campbell said...

The better argument against specialty plates is that they are hard to read and so screw up identification for law enforcement officers, which is as you noted their primary purpose.

See here (for bonus points, note that the article talks about how much money NY raises through specialty plates).

Blackjackk said...

Grift -why do you hate animals?

Rusty said...

A little cognitive dissonance for me this Tuesday morning:

I agree with you about the general stupidity of license plates for anything other than identification.

I have already dropped a $25 checko for a Tennessee Vols license plate.