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David Cox of North Raleigh recently teamed up with other homeowners association members to petition city and state officials to add some traffic lights in their North Carolina neighborhood. This simple petition put them at odds with their government. An engineering consultant hired by the city said the lights weren’t needed. So Mr. Cox and other residents drew up a detailed eight-page document,complete with maps, diagrams, and traffic projections to press their case. In other words, they did their homework.
As a result, Mr. Cox is now being “investigated”. Kevin Lacy, the chief traffic engineer for North Carolina’s Department of Transportation, has requested a state licensing agency investigate Mr. Cox for– get this– practicing engineering without a license.
The state chief traffic engineer denies he’s trying to hush Mr. Cox up by investigating him. He claims he filed the complaint because Mr. Cox’s petition “appears to be engineering-level work” by someone who is not a professional licensed engineer. Mr. Cox is apparently guilty of being smart. He says his group’s request for traffic lights was simply to make their neighborhood safe.
American citizens, petitioning their government, are threatened for intelligently making their case. A government official(an unelected bureaucrat, in this case)apparently sees nothing wrong with using governmental power to stomp on a citizen who dares disagree with the all-knowing, all-powerful state.
This bureaucrat’s arrogant attitude is pervasive– from the local and state levels to the federal government– among people who have forgotten, or never understood, why this country was formed in the first place.
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