Last Friday, myself and a colleague, had a sit down with a councilman of Kansas City to discuss certain issues that we have with the city. There’s not much liberty in Kansas City and they love their Orwellian toys, revenue generators, and squashing out freedom where they can.

Does the Kansas City City Council and the KCPD want to militarize the urban core? Seems so with the implementation of the lovely ShotSpotter system. First of all, let’s understand where this system comes from; the Green Zone in Iraq. That is correct and where they want to use this system is in the “Green Impact Zone” of Kansas City. The ShotSpotter system is a (acoustic surveillance) microphone system that, if funding is granted, would set up this detection system in the heart of the urban core. Federal grants have been applied for through the KCPD. This is a costly system and seems to be a waste of money where more officers could just be placed on the streets in these “high crime” areas. However, there are others on the council and KCPD that are truly “fired up” about this expensive “Orwellian” system. The councilman stated that he did think this system was too expensive, a waste of money, and the money should be used in deploying more cops onto the streets.

The red light cameras are going nowhere, unless we take action and do something about them. The love the city has for the money those unconstitutional robot cops make is much to great for the city to just let go, or even look into the constitutionality of them. The funds raised from these revenue generators go straight into the city’s general fund. One might find it amusing that Kansas City’s City Council may believe that Arizona’s Immigration Bill steps all over due process and will then pass a resolution letting Arizona know just how they feel about that, but you try to discuss due process with the red light cameras and the response you get is crickets. The councilman believes that the red light cameras are providing safer streets, they are needed, and even if the city makes no profit from the cameras, they will stay up. He also stated that they were only installed where the city found the highest number of red light accidents.

Is Kansas City fed up with the E-tax? You bet your bottom dollar they are and they’re letting Kansas City know in the form of doubling the number of petition signatures needed to put the initiative on the ballot to get rid of the tax. So, what will happen if Kansas City citizens tell the City Council they no longer want that one percent e-tax stolen from them? Property taxes will shoot through the roof!! Actually, it was stated that even if all the taxes collected from Kansas City residents were maxed out, the full amount allowable to be stolen and put into the city’s coffer still would not cover the revenue generated from the E-tax. Understand that the way the city sees it, those in the more affluent areas of the metro and surrounding areas are the ones that are truly funding it and Kansas City citizens will not like the outcome of repealing the E-tax. One might argue that if you truly want smaller government, remove their funding, however they will most likely find more ways to steal from us. The councilman did state that he is in favor of the e-tax and does not want to see it repealed.

One item that we did agree with the councilman on was Urban Farming. He stated that the reason we’re being stalled in our fight for legalizing freedom is because of elitism running rogue in some people of the council. The elites that are opposed to this legislation, which would lead to a person having the freedom to sell excess fruits and vegetables from their gardens from their house, are worried about high crime and property values. Yes, high crime is a worry that may stem from selling some lettuce or tomatoes from your front yard. Property values will plummet because people buying houses do not want to have a garden growing on the property next to them. Also, think about the traffic that this type of freedom loving legislation would lead to! You’re going to have neighborhoods packed with cars that don’t “belong” there, people you may not know will be running rampant through the neighborhood, and what about the CHILDREN?!?! Will we see an upswing in kidnappings?? Are you scared yet? Can you feel the grip of fear tightening around you, arising from these worrisome issues? Issues pushed by the elite, forcing your consideration on such simple matters as planting your first garden seed, based on what they perceive as the growing threat of providing the service of selling the fruits of that seed from your own property. There is a glimmer of hope in the fight, found in the sane voice of a Councilman to whom we spoke. He believes the bill to be a community builder for the city, and that’s a key point we can truly agree on.

While we don’t agree on everything, he did appear, through his own admission, to be the one that would agree with our stance on liberty in Kansas City more than any other councilperson. I commend him for taking an hour out of his schedule to meet with us, humanize, harmonize, and discuss. We just hope that our unbending liberty stance grows infectious, and becomes palatable to more office holders as time moves forward.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 10:23 pm and is filed under City Council, Commentary, General LRP Items, Kansas City, Red Light Traffic Cameras. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.