As of this writing, only a handful of states have formally resisted implementation of the draconian REAL-ID act, where the Feds create a de facto national ID card by hijacking the driver licensing agencies of all 50 states. Despite the chilling “papers, please!” overtones to this, some states are falling into line like so many obedient sheep, while the majority have resorted to sending the Department of Homeland Security a letter of intent to comply, which extends them another year or so of lead time before the mandate finally kicks in. Of course that path only legitimizes the law, as opposed to standing up to the Feds and declaring the law the unconstitutional usurpation that it is.

DHS head Michael “Skeletor” Chertoff has made it clear that starting next year the residents of Montana, Maine, et al. will find it impossible to board an aircraft or enter a Federal building unless their state legislatures and governors cave in to his demands.

There is a third way, however. It’s simple, doable, and one that is guaranteed to stop REAL-ID in its tracks. Every state can do it. Its only drawback is that state governments will have to give up certain entrenched powers that they have arrogated to themselves for decades.

To stop REAL-ID, the states only have to get completely out of the drivers license business – by June of 2009.

Libertarians have long lobbied for an end to state-mandated driver licensing. Here is a new opportunity to put that idea back on the table. After all, which is more important, rigid control over driver licensing, or the imposition of a biometric police-state national identity card? State legislatures, even those who are already on record opposing REAL-ID, could simply slip out from under the law’s requirements by closing their licensing agencies for good, and either farming out certain functions to private-sector contractors, or eliminating them entirely.

States could take the lead in redefining what it means to have an “ID” in their state, as well as finding better solutions to controlling “problem” drivers (the primary reason mandatory licensing was started to begin with). Who knows what sorts of creative solutions may manifest when private citizens and entrepreneurs get in on the act?

Meantime, any US citizen can certainly apply for a passport if they wish, and use that to board aircraft or enter government buildings. Of course, the passport agency has been so overburdened with new applications since Jan 1^st, with the Federal government’s insistence that passports are now required to enter Canada and Mexico, it’s hard to say how much farther they will fall behind in processing a new and even larger flood of applications in the wake of such state actions. So it may be that they will have no choice but to allow people with more “creative” state IDs to fly until that long backlog can be handled – which could take years.

But any temporary inconvenience would be worth it to see the look on old “Skeletor’s” face if every state told him: “Sorry Mike, but we no longer license drivers in our state, hence it is impossible for us to comply with the provisions of the REAL-ID Act.”

Even the majority of states who may loathe the Act but don’t have the guts to confront the Feds directly could, in this passive-aggressive manner, express their independence and gut-level unwillingness to take part in the Bush administration’s schemes to track us all, cradle to grave.

States may not like giving up that kind of power, but there’s a long-term plus in that they will save a lot of taxpayer money, money that can either be used elsewhere, or simply given back.

Thomas Andrew Olson [send him mail] is a technology consultant, writer, and speaker in New York City.

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

Recently, I watched Lou Dobbs, and his handmaiden, Kitty Pilgrim, get all hot, bothered, and appalled by the Maine state legislature voting overwhelmingly to refuse to enforce any provisions of the REAL ID act, an unfunded mandate passed by Congress in 2005, and which is supposed to go into force in May of next year.

REAL ID is the complex workaround to Congress’ failure to sell a national ID card outright, to a frightened public, in the wake of 9/11. Instead they now insist the states individually comply with precise federal standards (standards yet to be fully developed by the Dept. of Homeland Security) for driver licensing. These will probably include the requirement that residents produce birth certificates upon renewal, plus the collection of biometric data. Then, that state DMV database has to able to be accessed not only by the feds, but all the other states. This is supposed to help us fight terrorism, somehow, because the 19 hijackers had driver’s licenses.

States like Maine protested that not only was this law an unwarranted intrusion on the privacy rights of their residents, but it was a de facto national ID card in its own right, yet another foot in the door towards a totalitarian police state. The costs of implementation would be too high, projected to be in the tens of millions in each state, and would have to be passed on to the citizens somehow.

As usual, there was no federal “carrot” with such legislation, only a “stick.” The stick, in this case, was that residents of states who failed to comply would either have to show a passport in order to fly, or they simply would not fly. This reminder was delivered, again, on Dobb’s show, by a sneering angry sycophant from DHS.

But this is standard operating procedure. The feds levy high taxes on the residents of the states, make sweeping, unfunded policy edicts, then enforce them by warning the state governments that failure to comply fully will result in those states not getting their own residents’ tax dollars returned to them (minus a cut) in the form of various subsidies.

But take heart – history has shown us that resistance is not futile. From 1973 to 1988 we were saddled by a particularly egregious and corrupting federal edict demanding that speed limits on highways be reduced to 55mph, ostensibly as a fuel-saving initiative. It was corrupt in that it was a total failure – non-compliance was legion, especially in western states with lots of wide-open spaces, low traffic, and too few cops. Car companies that produced vehicles with better gas mileage did more to save fuel than any federal speed law. But the stick remained: failure to enforce the “double-nickel” would result in a loss of federal highway funding.

In early 1987, then Arizona governor Evan Mecham, no stranger to controversy, had finally had enough, and told Washington they could keep their highway funding – he was raising the limits on all AZ roads to 65mph, and he didn’t care what Washington thought about it. Then, as now, feds and media talking heads alike were appalled by the audacity of a lowly state governor standing up for the rights of his state residents against the needs of the federal government. But his action enabled other states – and their residents – to stand up and cry “enough is enough!”

By 1988, 55 was history – Congress bumped it to 65. A few years later, it was bumped again to 75 in Midwest and Western rural areas, and allowed states far greater leeway to set standards that they believed worked best for them. In the late 90’s, Montana went so far as to revive their original “reasonable and prudent” rule for daytime travel – which essentially meant, “whatever speed you felt was safe under the circumstances.” (That was a bit of a rush, believe me, to go 115 mph on a dry, straight, open road, and cops wouldn’t bat an eye – sadly, a federal judge later put a stop to that one.)

Therefore, it’s possible, despite all the posturing by the national-security jackboots in the Congress and DHS, that Maine’s action may have opened the door for other states to follow suit. Similar bills are pending right now in Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana, New Mexico, and Washington state. The question remains whether that door will ultimately become a floodgate.

Thomas Andrew Olson [send him mail] is a technology consultant, writer and speaker in New York City.

Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com