With Nancy Pelosi now firmly esconced in power over these United States, it’s really only a matter of time until Americans will have to confront the notion of civil liberties, European-style; i.e., having them doled out to us by authorities who know best.
Which is bad enough.
And then you add in “some of those who “know best” really are insane”, and…
…well, you know where I’m going with that.
All by way of introducing a German pol’s novel proposal for raising revenue; building a database of dog doo:
A German lawmaker proposed on Monday a novel and high-tech way of dealing with the menace of dog poo on the streets: DNA testing to identify the canine culprit and fine its owner. Peter Stein, a conservative politician in eastern Germany, told AFP that under his proposal, officials would test the excrement and then match it up to the offending dog using a DNA database of all pooches.German dog owners are fined 30-40 euros (40-50 dollars) if they fail to clean up after their pets, but very few are caught, with only four fines given out in Stein’s hometown of Rostock — human population 200,000 — last year.
“Just saying ‘it wasn’t my dog’ will not wash any more,” Stein said.
On the one hand; I suppose it is one of those things that’d be “reserved to the States” under the Tenth Amendment, technically. I’ll wait for the SCOTUS case on the subject.
On the other hand – ew.
And on the third hand, five’ll get you ten that maintaining the database will be another of those jobs that “you can’t pay Americans to do”.
I don’t know. There’s going to be a lot of out of work “journalists” soon, and they do have some expertise in this area.
AC’s going to need to stop crapping in the streets now.
As a person who has DNA tested dogs (not because of dog poo issues however), I think that the cure proposed here sounds ridiculously cost prohbitive.
What I would have expected as a proposed big brother solution to this would be the municipal closed circuit cameras that are becoming so popular in places like the UK for a variety of security problems – much like our highway system cameras.
Or, in conjunction with closed circuit cameras it would probably be practicable to use some kind of sign post / lamp post ‘micro chip reader’ that could detect the identity of dogs walked in any given area to identify dogs that have been in the vicinity. Microchipping is becoming increasingly popular as a permanent method of identifying dogs for purposes of everything from canine health testing to returning lost dogs, and has been proposed for tracking potentially dangerous dogs. It is also proposed in some jurisdictions to back track stray dogs to the irresponsible owners. Cheaper, quick and relatively painless technology, although there have been rare instances of the microchips (about the size of a grain of rice) being ‘hacked’ witht he identifying information being altered. Less weird than people installing fake testicles in neutered dogs…
Addendum – most national kennel clubs, like the AKC and presumably the FCI (Federation Cynologique International) already maintain some kind of data base of DNA testing results on those purebred dogs where the owners have paid for the testing (usually used to track and eradicate hereditary health problems). It is possible now to DNA test mixed breed dogs to identify their component breeds (most of them anyway), for a fee, and it is of course possible to identify parentage on any dog, IF you have access to both parents.
Aren’t you glad you didn’t bring up drosophila melanogaster? Dog has spent many a tedious hour sexing fruit flies and charting eye color mutations back in my genetics classes in college….
Aren’t you glad you didn’t bring up drosophila melanogaster?
I claim a universal mandate in saying; yes.
🙂