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February 19, 2009
Arizona's Budget Cutbacks: Speed cameras backfire, kill work ethic.
Subduing the driven, rewarding the Slackoiesie. According to our friend Dr. Michael O'Neil, political consultant and pollster with Tempe, Arizona-based O'Neil Associates Inc., and frequent television news commentator, that's exactly what speed cameras--part of Arizona's solution to its current budget crisis--are doing to the state's citizenry. Along with other states, Arizona is grappling with its largest state budget shortfall ever. New governor Jan Brewer is doing all she can. We are all moved by Arizona's grit and resolve.
But speed cameras?
It's a hidden and "pernicious" tax, O'Neil argued one Sunday morning on an NBC affiliate with the buzz-saw precision of Clarence Darrow on his best roll. Speed cameras were slowing busy Arizonans down. Stifling achievement in Type As. And lulling the laid-back and lazy into deeper sloth-like comas. We agree. And of all states, this artifice comes from the one that gave us the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, Moses of the American Right, an inspired no-nonsense candidate for President in 1964 who urged Americans to get off their sofas, stand up, and get out there and inherit a chain of department stores, like he did? Say it ain't so, Arizona.
Mike O'Neil explains the unintended consequences of the Arizona speed camera tax in his NBC commentary here.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at February 19, 2009 08:54 PM
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