Travel is free movement; transportation is the commercial use of roads and other ways of commerce for profit, as in trucking and the operation of an airline. Transportation is subject to government regulation, but travel is free.
A reform of police traffic stops in Tennessee pursuant to transportation administrative notice Tennessee has many potential constituencies as the bottom-up reform begins to spread.
The reform has the power to create political support from a diverse group of voters, citizens and others who have a stake in justice and liberty and view themselves as guardians of common folk.
By David Tulis / NoogaRadio 92.7
Public and political support is important, because the ending of police abuse of private travel in Tennessee is opposed by the Tennessee supreme court and the court of criminal appeals.
These courts have developed a legal fiction: No right to travel exists under the constitution; travel is nothing more than the right to move one’s domicile from one state to another.
The right of travel, however, is God-given, unalienable, constitutionally guaranteed and inherent in every human being, whose sentience and free-will is exercised first of all in movement, that of organ and limb, and after birth relocation of his person from one point on a map to another, by use of feet, bike and car.
American, Tennessee left will support
Conservatives and liberals both can see elements of Tile 55 perform to applaud. Republicans and Democrats would support it for diverse reasons. Left and right, socialist and conservative, too, for different ones.
Traditional Democrat, progressive, liberal people will agree to and eventually support reform because it enhances protections from their constituents.
Blacks are the leading beneficiaries of Title 55 enforcement reforms because they are most regularly abused by the pretense that private travel is transportation and commercial use. Police stop black people prejudicially, on the basis of racial profiling, and off and on the basis of stereotypes that hold black people more prone to crime, pilfering, dissolution, vagrancy and other petty offenses.
Progressives and liberals will get behind 55 enforcement reform because they will serve the interests of immigrants, whom Republicans and conservatives think are almost always Democrat leaning. Democrats make much of underdogs, the working poor, immigrants and equal treatment under the law, and routinely claim to be working for African-Americans and newer arrivals to the United States (Hondurans, Mexicans, Guatemalans). The country is controlled by a progressive Caucasian New England ivy-league elite, who oversee the social engineering embodied in policing and who they make a show of opposing.
Ending the routine police abuse of private working people on the road is consistent with a wide array of Democrat party interests: The right to work, the creation of employment opportunities (people who work have to get to the job), the ending of corporate concentrations (the U.S., and states are the largest concentrations of capital in the country), “ending systemic racism” by “promoting racial justice through fair, just, and equitable governing”; criminal justice reform with better training of officers and a halt to “unnecessary force;” and many other points.
Traditional liberal groups such as NAACP and Black Lives Matter would favor a restriction in enforcement practices.
Other reliably progressive groups such as labor unions will eventually support the lawful narrowing of the transportation statute to benefit working people in a retraction of law enforcement claws against working people on the highways and boulevards of cities and counties across the state. If cops no longer have authority to stop a traveling person in car or truck under Title 55, men and women who are not capitalists, managers and owners will be free to travel about by car or truck, unmolested.
The Double-Nickel program puts money in the pockets of working people because they do not have to give up workdays and hire babysitters when they have to go to court to be fined in Mickey Mouse prosecutions that generally fail to comport with constitutional government and due process requirements upon the judiciary.
Progressive advocates of the poor also are likely to be pleased by tile 55 enforcement reform. The case brought in Nashville on behalf of the poor is typical of the interest these groups have in victims of poverty who are afflicted by the judicial-industrial complex because they cannot pay their Court debt. U.S. district judge Aleta Trauger appears on the verge of tearing up the Tennessee department of safety’s abusive use of driver license revocations to harass people unable to pay court debt at the county level.
Trapped in the system, the working poor are often unable to get out, unable to meet court dates because of work requirements, unable to pay fees and fines, unable to raise enough money for insurance or renewed registration. Here is the Tennessee court debt case memorandum.
Immigrants are especially vulnerable to Tennessee Highway Patrol officers such as Stony Morton, who hauls in Hispanic travelers as if they were drivers and operators involved in commerce. City and sessions courts are full of immigrants, many of whom cannot speak English.
Support from conservatives
The political right also has reason to support the Double-Nickel reform.
Conservatives, republicans, libertarians and other supporters of authoritarian socialism under Republican government also have reason to favor this reform that is composed not of anything new, but of plain obedience to the statute and a large body of case law..
The main argument:
➤ Respect of constitution. Obedience of Title 55 brings government in line with constitutional liberties that cannot be reduced or eliminated by any statute (if only the people will enforce their rights). If deputies and cops enforce transportation rules (tail lights, tag lights, stopping at stop signs, speed limits) only on people involved for transportation, that leaves everybody else free to go. With enforcement lining up with state, people will be able to travel about unhurried and untrammeled, according to their own self-interest on the streets (which are owned by the people and for their benefit).
Transportation Administrative Notice Tennessee
➤ The rule of law crowd, Republicans will be able to say that they have brought the state under control of government and if the people, with the people being freed from unjust and unjustified enforcement actions against their persons and property and movement.
➤ Libertarian crowd. The proper enforcement will please also constitutionalists and influential Ron Paul libertarians. These people want minimal state intrusion upon innocent activities. With Title 55 reform, a cop can stop a traveler only if he has a warrant for a person’s arrest, a warrant to search a particular car, or has seen a person in the car or truck commit a common law crime or a crime under Tenn. Code Ann. title 39, the criminal code. No more stops for technical “violations” such as no tag light. An end to state intrusion against victimless human activity.
➤ Budget conscious conservatives. If law enforcement services are less needed because the Double Nickel statute is narrowly — and correctly — construed, cities, counties and states can cut payroll and save millions.
➤ Ending of the state fraud of transportation enforcement against non-transportation travelers will ease pressure on city and county governments who have to pay for jails and who require heavy use of cells to pay off their bonds.
Pleasing all sides
Reform, especially if brought about by a conservative a republican, will win him liberal votes. The reform, if brought about by a progressive Democrat, will win him conservative and libertarian support for a bold Innovation whose claims arise from existing law.
Christian people are marked by variety of political views and perspectives. Their interest are gratified because now, the poor, the alien, the stranger, widows and orphans now don’t have to worry about the officer kidnapping them while pursuing a private activity in all innocency.
Opponents to lawful enforcement of the Double Nickel will be authoritarians, fascists and supporters of the police state. Police unions and others believe that the state must supervise all human activity and that all activity, even the most basic one of moving from point A to point B, must be under state supervision. If it’s not, they argue, anarchy and chaos will ensue.
But these good people are vastly outnumbered.
