Dori: Don’t trust Bob Ferguson with toll camera control
Jan 23, 2019, 2:37 PM
Tolls on 405. (Associated Press/Elaine Thompson)
(Associated Press/Elaine Thompson)
I have long said that in all my years of watch-dogging government, I consider one of the most dangerous politicians whom I have ever covered to be Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who would rather follow political partisanship than the state Constitution.
My example of that is the drive for an income tax in Seattle and statewide. He knows it’s unconstitutional, but he didn’t want to tick off the people he thinks he needs support from to become the governor. So he will give the left political cover from the most powerful law office in the state, while being an attack dog for anyone who is not a leftist. He will try to bankrupt and personally destroy a florist in the Tri-Cities, even though she has the state Constitution on her side.
That’s why I want you to be so very aware of a new bill that was introduced in the Legislature. Lawmakers want to give police access to tolling cameras on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
RELATED: Why Bob Ferguson is the most dangerous politician I’ve seen
Right now, state law prohibits this, because the government promised us that if we let them put in toll cameras, they would only use them for tolling. Police say the footage is needed to apprehend criminals. Ordinarily, if we lived in a normal-type state, I’d probably think, “Okay — the cops want to see if a certain car drove through this toll area to try to solve a crime.”
But, we’re in a state where the attorney general is Bob Ferguson. I don’t trust Bob Ferguson. And frankly, I don’t think you should, either. If we give anybody access to those toll cameras, what are they going to do with the footage? Will they only use them to solve imminent crimes? Or, would we be giving politicians — politicians who certainly appear to use the power of their office to go on personal vendettas against people because of their political or religious ideology — the power to start looking at cameras and seeing where we drive?
If they do this on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, they’ll do it all up and down the Puget Sound, anywhere there are tolls — I-405, the 520 bridge, SR 167, the new Seattle Tunnel.
I hesitate to call Bob Ferguson evil because I don’t know him. But I think the persecution he engages in toward people because of their faith and/or politics is somewhat evil. Do I want a state where the most dangerous politician I’ve ever observed has an expanded power to conduct surveillance of us? Could he use that information in personal vendettas?
I’ll tell you what, Bob Ferguson is about the last person I would trust with that footage, and I think you should be very, very wary of this.
Government control in our cars
The government’s attempt to control you via toll roads doesn’t end there. Our friends at KIRO 7 had the story that WSDOT, after going hundreds of millions over budget and three years behind schedule, is going to spend $4.4 million of our money on an ad campaign for the new Seattle Tunnel. Why?
The story that I broke on this show was the underlying motive for these ad campaigns. When they built the 520 bridge and put in the toll, Good2Go ran a huge ad campaign. “Get that transponder and you’ll be good to go. You can just drive, and we’ll bill you automatically, and you won’t even feel the pain.” The same thing happened with the 405 tolls.
They want to get a transponder in every single vehicle. As you know, and as a senator confirmed on the show recently, there is a stated goal of the Puget Sound Regional Council to toll every inch of every road in the state. They are very close to the fruition of that plan. How do they do that? Get a transponder in every vehicle. How do you do that? The same way you boil a frog — you turn up the heat slowly.
Then when they say that they need every car in the state to have a transponder so they can monitor every inch you drive, they can just say, “All of the people who drive on the 520 Bridge and through the Seattle Tunnel and the 405 toll lanes already have one. It’s no big deal.”
That’s what this ad campaign is about — trying to increase usage so that they can very slowly get everybody acclimated. Then in two or three years years, when they reach fruition of the plan I have accurately been telling you about for 20 years — and the timetable I had then and have now has always been rock-solid, 100-percent accurate — everyone will have a tracking device in their car so they can have variable tolling on every single road in the state.
It will be up to you and me to stand strong. As a listener to this show, you’re the only one who knows about these plans, since the rest of the media seems to want to provide cover for the state government.
