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You have a valid point there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Novaheart
I'd be inclined to permit National Guard plates, or plates with military awards on them (some states authorize them for Bronze Star Medals or higher), or other indications of state or federal service, but those tend not to require the individual discretion of DMV employees.
Here you can get plates of your college(if you went to one in NJ) or your favorite sports team from the area(NY/PHL/NJ).
Still don't see where it"s unconstitutional to have the pro life plates.
Florida has dozens to choose from...including a "Choose Life" plate.
http://www.flhsmv.gov/dmv/specialtytags/
Florida is going to do away with a lot of its plate designs. Apparently it makes it difficult for the municipalities and the state to circumvent tax limitations by using Revenue Cameras and filling the pockets of the political cronies that sell and service them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawkgirl
I don't know the full story on this, but I suspect that it ultimately boils down to money.
The state legislature rejected the "opposite view" plates multiple times, which seems rather silly. Create the plates and see if anyone is interested in buying them, right?
We had this same fight here in Tennessee about 7 or 8 years ago. Now, it's important to understand the process involved:
In Tennessee, if you want to create a specialty plate, then you get a petition of 10,000 people who commit to buying the plate on its issuance. Anyone can create a specialty plate for pretty much anything, so long as it isn't just patently offensive, e.g. a "jerk off to porn" plate or something like that. As such, we have a bunch of specialty plates: plates for Vanderbilt supporters, for UT supporters, for people who support education, for people who support the outdoors, for people who are Alabama alumni, for people who are Auburn alumni .... There is even a plate for people who support Radnor Lake, which is a tiny man-made lake that almost no one has ever heard of in my neighborhood where I grew up. So long as 10,000 people sign up and commit to buy the plates, and the artwork is approved as both non-offensive and technically possible (there's only so much that can be put on a plate, though since they have gone to laser-cutting plates, there's a lot more flexibility), then the plates are automatically approved. The legislature has to find a valid reason to quash the plates, or else they go into production, according to the law.
Now, what happens with specialty plates? Well, they're the "perfect tax:" they are completely voluntary, people are paying more for them, and there are nearly an infinite number of possible permutations, which means that the regular plates don't have to be redesigned/reissued nearly as often (eventually, you run out of numbers and new numbers and plates have to be issued to weed out all of the numbers on plates that have been on someone's '72 charger that has been sitting in a barn for 18 years). The cost for a specialty plate is, I think, $40 over and above the cost of a regular plate. Out of that $40, $10 goes to the Tennessee Arts Commission, $20 gets held in a reserve fund that is distributed to a cause related to the plate each year, and and $10 goes into the state treasury as added tax revenue collection. That middle $20? That becomes a sticking point.
For several years, I had an "animal friendly" plate. The funds from that plate were (well, still are) allocated each year to some animal cause: the Dickson County Animal Shelter or the Nashville Humane Association or whoever. Same goes with all of the other plates: the "children first" plate, for support of education, has those funds deposited into some county's Head Start program or some such, the university plates generally have some charitable organization such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters that they designate as where the funds should go, and while the legislature doesn't have to honor that request, they usually do, the sportsmen's plate goes to some conservation group, etc., etc., etc. The "choose life" plates here have their funds sent to places like battered womens' shelters and crisis counselors and such, not to Families First or some other such anti-abortion group.
Well, along comes documented communist Hedy Weinberg and the local ACLU. They didn't want people to have "choose life" plates because that somehow prevented pro-abortionists from having a say. The proper response to this is for the pro-abortionists to have "choose death" or "kill babies" plates, but of course they knew that they didn't have the moral standing for that, much less the signatories. The (Democratically-controlled) legislature actually took the unprecedented step of creating a "preserve womens' rights" plate (or some such) and passed it without having to have the 10,000 signatures and commitments. That wasn't sufficient for the freedom-quashing ACLU (whose headquarters were the same house as the Communist Party of Tennessee), who then sued and said that the plates were illegal because they didn't have the 10,000-signature requirement. So then someone else went out and collected the 10,000 signatures out of a bunch of militant feminist Vandy students, and presented that to the DOT for the new plates. Weinberg then sued because that was put actually through by anti-abortionists who had figured they would turn the ACLU on their head. Weinberg's wein then was that the ACLU wasn't involved (meaning they weren't going to get the funds from the sale of the plates), so the plates were somehow invalid.
After a year or two, the court eventually told them to go pound sand and to go out and get their own fucking plate, but they have to disclose that the funds from the plates will go toward pro-abortion causes. Well, it turns out that they have never actually been able to raise enough signatures to submit the request for the plates. I think they finally gave up about 3 years ago.
Now, I have no idea how North Carolina allocates any extra funding from specialty plates. In fact, I don't even know if they take any extra funding from specialty plates, but they would be pretty stupid not to, because, like I said, it's the "perfect tax:" it's completely voluntary, people actually line up to pay it, it's recurring year over year, and it costs the state basically nothing to collect it. But I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that the reason that the state legislature refused to pass the pro-abortion plates is that there was some mandatory funding attached to it that would have gone to Planned Abortionhood or some other such group, and no one wanted to be on record as having voted for that because they knew that it was a political live grenade.
License Plates are government related. It has no place with politics.Quote:
Originally Posted by m00
Put a cheesy bumper sticker on your car if you want to make a statement, at your own risk of course.
Exactly. I'd love to place bumper stickers on my car and have yard signs, but I don't go there.Quote:
Originally Posted by Elspeth
"Government related" is "no place for politics?"Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanie
But my thinking is with Adam on this. It's the best kind of tax -- voluntary.
Amazingly, I agree with this. Do away with all vanity plates. If you want to make a statement buy a nice vinyl sticker from someone in the private sector.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanie
For instance, you could put one of these on your car and .gov can't do anything about it:
http://www.foulmouthshirts.com/Designs/JUDGES225.gif