It was deemed newsworthy that a driver was ticketed going 117 MPH in Austin over the weekend. I point this out because you probably see people driving that fast every day. At least, you could if you drove on Beltway 8.
The speed limit on the Beltway is, for the most part, 65 MPH. I would remind you that this is the posted LIMIT. However, try driving in the left lane doing 65 during a non-peak hour and you're more than likely to get someone killed. That's because the REAL speed limit on Houston's version of the Autobahn is actually however fast your car can go and how fast you can comfortably drive it. I've been driving at, or near, 65 on the Beltway on many occasions and have been passed like I was standing still.
So what does any of this have to do with politics?
For politicians, the little rules and inconveniences that make up every day life are the bread and butter of politics. Forget meat and vegetables, we're at a much more basic level than that. Seemingly mundane items like the setting of speed limits, the timing (or lack thereof) of traffic lights etc. don't grab many headlines, but they involve years of study and planning (in some cases).
The problems arise when many of these rules and regulations are perceived to not be based on sound reasoning but something entirely arbitrary. Consider speed limits in the Houston region. Inside Harris County, and the counties immediately surrounding it, speed limits on Interstate Highways are typically set at 65 MPH (There are stretches of road where they are set lower, at 60 or even 55 MPH). The reason for this is not because of road conditions or driver safety or anything like that, it is because of the EPA. Because Houston has failed to meet pollution control targets a depressed local speed limit is part of the plan to remediate air pollutants. Therefore, when you drive through the area you are required to slow down by 10 MPH until you reach the county border after the county border at which point the speed limits raise to 75 MPH as they are in much the rest of the State.
When this plan was first devised the idea was that, in order to REALLY cut down on pollution (the unelected bureaucrats said) the limits would be reduced to 55 MPH, despite the fact that there was a.) little evidence this would help and b.) no additional justification for doing so.
The result? Drivers roundly ignored the speed limits and sped about even faster, at times, then they would have under normal conditions. It was a little bit of civil disobedience on a city-wide scale. Local police officers, realizing the bowl of crap they've been handed, just punted on speeding tickets except in the most egregious of cases. Eventually, realizing it just wasn't working, the city relented and agreed to raise limits by 5 MPH within the city, and 10 MPH outside. The politicians then patted each other on the back, and went back to trying to game the system declaring the problem "solved".
Except it wasn't. And if you think it was then you haven't driven on Houston's Interstate system all that often. Speed limits are treated as suggestions, or base-lines, certainly not limits. I challenge you to head out on a Saturday morning and try to drive the speed limit in the left lane of Houston's Interstates. The honks and angry looks that you receive from motorists will be withering. You will feel like you're the proverbial tortoise being passed up by so many hares.
The problem is that, as a society, we're losing our connection with both the societal contract and the rule of law. It's death by a 1000 cuts for civility. Speeding, running red lights, cutting into lanes of traffic illegally, turning from no-turn lanes because you didn't want to wait in the turning lane line, all of these things are people violating both the law, and the unwritten social contract that we make with each other on a daily basis.
You see it pretty much everywhere, in almost every aspect of daily life now. The common rules of law and civility are pretty much going away. People cut in line, shoplifting is on the increase, people have no qualms about parking in handicap parking spaces when they don't have a handicap.
In part this is happening because people are increasingly selfish, in part it's because we're not only polarized in our politics, but in our private lives as well. Part of it is probably also that we're just really, REALLY bad drivers. But, most of all it's due to the fact that many people just don't respect the integrity of the system any longer.
Texas currently has an Attorney General under indictment for securities fraud, there's a member of the State Legislature in Houston who has been convicted of barratry but who is still expected to win reelection. There is, not surprisingly, no pressure from his party to step down. As a matter of fact, this convicted criminal is getting support. The Houston Independent School District is in the process of rolling-back ethics reform which would allow them to, once again, receive campaign donations from companies actively bidding for contracts. When questioned they say to trust them, that they only have the best of intentions.
The problem is, people see through junk like that and, at a subconscious level, start to lose faith in the system. Because if the people making the rules are corrupt then the rules themselves are corrupt and so is pretty much everything that we've been asked to do. This is why, no matter how many exemptions or tweaks are made to the ACA, there are still going to always be a percentage of people who choose to pay the fine and opt out.
Unfortunately, for the system, the answer to all of this is usually the problem itself.
"We're the Government, and we're here to help"
