new car plates for Tennessee

[mark mywords]

car drivers in Tenessee are being offered new pates which bear the words "IN GOD WE TRUST " you are not compelled to have the words on your plate but if you dont want them you are given a plate is a different style which makes your choice immediately obvious.
if you choose the words your plate is ABC 123
if you choose not to have the words your plate is 123 ABC.
At a glance a cop can tell your religious belief and can infer your politics

 

[sear]

a) Holy %$#@ !

b) I totally don't like it.

c) It had better be removed by court ruling. BUT !! How long will that take? How much harm will be done before this baby is strangled?

d) I'd love love love to argue that one in court.

e) I suspect there's a much deeper story here. The legislators that dreamed up this scheme didn't do so in a vacuum. I'd like to know the rest of it. And I'd like to know what their ultimate objective is.

 

[titan]

The public shaming Hawthorne / The Scarlet Letter style is obvious. And this may invite petty vandalism across Tennessee.
There's also a risk of mob violence when the Saturday night crowd in the biker bar parking lot clashes with the despised minority.
Crime stats may register the implementation date. Levitt & Dubner framed this relationship in their co-authored book Freakonomics. For example, the drop in crime a generation after the Roe v. Wade ruling
Might be worth it to register the truck out of State.

 

[Rampage]

What were the Tennessee law makers trying or hoping to accomplish here? Do they have a cover story? An excuse?

 

[mark mywords]

What were the Tennessee law makers trying or hoping to accomplish here? Do they have a cover story? An excuse?

I assume that they are wanting to allow people to give voice to their religious/political beliefs
The official version as to why one choice has numbers first and the other has letters first is that it allows for more number plates without additional figures which is of course hog wash because the without swopping the order around would already give a number of variations far in excess of the number of plates ever needed.


Incidentally whilst reading around this I was shocked to discover that the same number/letter combination could conceivably be issued in more than one state (ABC 123 for example could be issued in both California and Texas).
in 2017, one Rhode Island resident received numerous unpaid toll invoices for a New York-registered vehicle, NBC10 reports. Why?
The NY truck had the same combination of letters and numbers as the Rhode Island-registered car.


this is less likely to happen in the EU where number plates has 8 characters rather than the US which uses 7 (and not all states use all 26 letters)

 

[sear]

"The Scarlet Letter" t #3

Yes, BUT !!
The difference is, this new Tennessee standard forces motorists to pick a side, and display it to the world. This leaves anyone displaying a license plate vulnerable to the anger & potential violence of those who made the opposite choice in license plate selection. It's a compulsory chip on the shoulder. The State is merely granting citizens the option to pick which shoulder.

"I assume that they are wanting to allow people to give voice to their religious/political beliefs" mm #5

Plausibly that's Tennessee's fig-leaf. But if that were the real reason, drivers wishing to declare a position could put a plastic Jesus on their dashboard, or hang a string of rosary beads from the rear-view mirror. And then there's the old reliable, the bumper-sticker. Nope! This one smells like Boston harbor at low tide.

"I was shocked to discover that the same number/letter combination could conceivably be issued in more than one state" mm #5

Totally.
I gather it took decades for the individual States to coordinate a "points system". Before that, a drunk driver, speeder, etc with many convictions in one State could drive unfettered in another State.
But indeed mm, you've identified a glaring example of the 10th Amendment in action.

B. O. R. ARTICLE #10: Ratified December 15, 1791
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Your suggestion mm is an excellent one of course. And now that license plate scanners are proliferating among police departments across the nation, it may become a necessity to implement your improvement. But bitter personal experience indicates, they'll delay that as long as possible, particularly if it's perceived as merely an inconvenience to citizens. Once revision is perceived by them as a benefit to them, progress will suddenly become imminent. Welcome to America.

 

[titan]

"What were the Tennessee law makers trying or hoping to accomplish here? Do they have a cover story? An excuse?" Rampage
"I assume that they are wanting to allow people to give voice to their religious/political beliefs" mark

The culture in Tennessee is different from that North of the Mason-Dixon line. "Them's fightin' words" the rhetorical prelude to a brawl. Perhaps Southerners just don't think themselves articulate enough to make their point persuasively with their hands in their pockets. This license plate standard looks like Tennessee is looking for trouble.

 

[sear]

t #7
I'm from New York. I understand we Northerners sometimes poke fun at our Southern countrymen. But I don't sense in it the bitterness that may persist in the South. To quote a country-Western musician I heard commenting on it: when you hear a Southerner talking about "the war" they're not talking about Vietnam.
The Southern drawl may seem a little backward to some. BUT ! Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY) is a powerfully talented wordsmith. McConnell should not be misunderestimated, if you'll pardon the Bushism (Bush, the Texan from Connecticut).

 

[titan]

It's diffusing with the generations sear. The drawl you mentioned for example. Children learning the language attune their own pronunciation to the dialect they're exposed to. That can include network radio or television news, which is often national, and based in New York, or Washington DC. DC is considered a Southern town. But the cosmopolitan influence ameliorates the drawl that might otherwise be native to that geography. It's complicated. The drawl won't have vanished before the weekend.