{"id":62874,"date":"2017-04-28T11:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T16:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=62874"},"modified":"2017-04-28T11:03:31","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T16:03:31","slug":"what-government-really-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=62874","title":{"rendered":"What Government <i>Really<\/i> Does"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Matt J\u00e4rlstr\u00f6m got snagged by one of Oregon&#8217;s red light cams in 2013, he b<a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/26\/after-challenging-red-light-cameras-oreg\">egan researching the effectivness and side-effects of these red-light cameras<\/a> &#8211; and the jiggering of yellow lights cycle times that allowed then to earn extra money for their jurisdictions.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since then, his research into red light cameras has earned him attention in local and national media\u2014in 2014, he presented his evidence on an episode of &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221;\u2014and an invitation to present at last year&#8217;s annual meeting of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.<\/p>\n<p>It also got him a $500 fine from the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Math and logic are apparently so powerful, you need a state license to use them (emphasis added):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Apparently the threats weren&#8217;t enough, because the board follow-up in January of this year by officially fining J\u00e4rlstr\u00f6m $500 for the supposed crime of &#8220;practicing engineering without being registered.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>J\u00e4rlstr\u00f6m is now suing the state board over that fine, arguing that it&#8217;s unconstitutional to prevent someone from doing math without the government&#8217;s permission. <a href=\"http:\/\/ij.org\/case\/oregon-engineering-speech\/\">He&#8217;s getting support from the Institute for Justice<\/a>, a national libertarian law firm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Don&#8217;t think there aren&#8217;t &#8220;journalists&#8221; who&#8217;d love to run with that whole &#8220;sue the competition out of exisence&#8221; schtick.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Criticizing the government&#8217;s engineering isn&#8217;t a crime; it&#8217;s a constitutional right,&#8221; said Sam Gedge, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, in a statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some would call it a duty.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, wait &#8211; I just got a letter from the Minnesota Moral Philosophy Standards and Licensing Board&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Matt J\u00e4rlstr\u00f6m got snagged by one of Oregon&#8217;s red light cams in 2013, he began researching the effectivness and side-effects of these red-light cameras &#8211; and the jiggering of yellow lights cycle times that allowed then to earn extra money for their jurisdictions. Since then, his research into red light cameras has earned him [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[255],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-racket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62875,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62874\/revisions\/62875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}