in the state of texas they call driving on public highways a privilege,but i say it is my right i buy and pay?

Question

for it.it cost me to register my vehicles and inspect them,it cost me in insurance on my vehicles,then they take taxes out of what i make to build the roads i am driving on ,and to pay for the policing of them.i believe i am paying for that right.

Answer 1

Even after you leave school and before your children are in school your taxes pay for the school system, you don't have the right to go walking around in the school anytime you want either. Sorry, it's a privilege and if you abuse the privilege then it can be revoked.

Answer 2

1. Maybe you should go back to school and find out what the Bill Of Rights says. You have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so long as it does not infringe on anyone else's rights. The reason it is considered a privilege is because, the loose nut behind the wheel of a car has a very high probability of infringing on the safety of everyone else on the road.

2. The taxes that pay for the roads we drive on are not taken from what you make. They come from the gasoline tax, so only the people who pay for the gas to drive on those roads actually pay for them. The police are paid from local and State taxes, that come from local sales tax.

3. Since you feel you have paid for the right to drive should drunk drivers who kill and injure thousands every year still have the "right " to drive just because they pay taxes, and insurance, and can pay for their car.

PS School might also help you with grammar, punctuation and sentence structure.

From a fellow Texan

Answer 3

Actually, most of your rights are technically free. The fact that you are paying therefore would tend to support that the thing you are doing is a privilege, not a right. of course, the owning and licensing of a gun is the exception to that suggested rule. you are paying for lots of different things with your taxes and --as i recall -- Texas does not have property taxes, so its not like you are paying taxes on your car.

Answer 4

As a taxpayer you pay for a lot of things, that doesn't mean it's your right to do anything. Let's say someone was unfit to drive. They pay taxes too, so should they be allowed to drive?

Answer 5

Sorry, bud, it is a privilege. If you violate any of the terms or conditions of privilege ih your home state of Texas, expect your license to be revoked or suspended.

Answer 6

It is a privilege - you and a thousand others are merely taxpayers and that is the way it is nowadays. So get used to it.

Answer 7

Life taxes, death. Life is about taxes.

Answer 8

t


Sounds like you never heard of RESPONSIBILITIES did you,

Drive responsibly and you won' have to worry about it.

Answer 9

Floyd,

In Texas, like every other state I know, operating a motor vehicle on a public road is considered a privilege. I believe every state does this. They say that you might have a right to travel, but you do not have a right to operate a motor vehicle on a public road... they essentially took away our right to travel in our own mode of transportaion back in the 1920s and 1930s and replaced it with a license.

You don't "buy" rights, and the government doesn't grant them to you. We have rights because we were endowed with them by God or Nature. When our government protects our natural rights, they are called liberties. Unfortunately, sometimes governments usurp our rights and prevent us from enjoying them. Requiring people to have a license to travel is one of these examples--whether it is possessing a license to drive a vehicle, or show your identification before you get on a plane or bus. It essentially denies our right to travel and relaces it with a privilege that can be denied if we don't get the government's blessing.

In Texas, I was amazed to learn that I had to stick my thumb on an infra-red scanner and let the State take my thumb print and sent to Austin. I looked it up, and it seems that the rationale for this initially was that it would curtail people from obtaining more than one drivers license or identity card under different names, and also, they've caught some dead-beat dads, too! (Yeah, that last one is always a good reason to make everyone submit their DNA and register their dogs and stop traveling freely--or maybe it really has nothing to do with any of it...hmmm which is it?) In reality, this stupid and invasive practice just allows the State to go on a fishing expedition, obtain your finger prints for no reason except they say you have to in order to obtain this license, compile a huge database of your and everyone elses prints that the police can access whenever they want for whatever reason they want, fish for bad guys--and maybe make you a suspect of a crime because they think your thumb print matches one they found at a crime scene! Yeah, a guy in Oregon was arrested and held in jail for a while for those bombings in Spain a few years ago becasue police said they matched a finger print to his, but it was just a similarity and they let him go after a few weeks with no apology. That's the real product of these sorts of tactics. Coming to Texas from another state, it is unbelievable to me that people think this manditory state-wide practice is just fine and dandy down here. The dangers and potential abuses far outweigh any benefit to "security." It is a scam and just a way to track and control people.

Some people who don't know any better will say things like "if you'r not a criminal, you don't have anything to wory about." That's just stupid and short sighted. To them, I'll repeat Ben Franklin: Those who would deny liberty for security deserve neither!"

Now, some other idiots seem to think that we can't just let anyone drive, and you should have to prove that you are OK in order obtain a license to drive. They say that they do this for public safety's sake. In reality, this turns the rights (like the right to travel freely) we are supposed to enjoy in America up-side down. In the United States, the Constitution states that we can't be denied a right without due process--that means you would have to do something bad in order to justify having your right taken away by a judge or a jury. Certainly, people who are shown to be a public danger by thier bad driving (and I'd say that would be about 50% of the drivers I have seen see in east Texas--drivers are terrble down here!) can be legitimately denied the right to operate a vehicle on public roads; this can be done easily through the courts in a similar way that a drivers license is suspended now. But it could be done without flipping our rights up-side-down and forcing the burden of proof on you to prove you are safe. Your right to travel freely shouldn't be denied you unless you're proved to be unsafe!

To deny EVERYONE the right to travel in thier own mode of transportation and they say you have to prove that you are worthy to obtain a license really flips our whole system of juriosprudence on its head. It is a backward way of thinking. Sure, folks want to prevent a bad driver from driving before he hurts someone, but in the process the State is allowed to takes away everyone's right and replaces it with a license? It is a flimsy stupid rationale.

And for folks who say that as long as everyone has to do it, it is OK, because everyone is being treated equally, I ask: If the State took EVERYONE'S right to speak freely away equally, and then told you (and everyone else) that you have to prove that what you want to say is OK before they'll give you a LICENSE to speak (with terms and conditions and responsibilities attached of course--a license that can be revolked at any time by a mere accumulation of bad point or a failure to pay a fee), would that be OK? If the State were to imprison EVERYONE for a few days (essentially denies Everyone ther basic liberty) and tells them they have to prove they are worthy of being let out of jail and being good members of society, and then instead of actually being FREE, people are granted a LICENSE to stay out of prison, which could be revolked for any number of reasons, would that be OK, just becasue they do it to EVERYONE? No and no.

But they do it with drivers licenses and other things that most people seem to take for granted now to the extent that they don't even realize that their rights have been taken from them. Police are allowed to pull people over at drunk driver check points as long as they are random and everyone is subject to the stop equally. It is just stupid: "RANDOM" ... it basically means for no reason and without cause... the Fifth ammendment clearly states that people cannot be deprived of thier life, liberty or property without due process and searches cannot be made without just cause ... but they get away with it on the flimsy grounds and stupid rationale that since EVERYONE is subject to being detained without just cause, NO ONE's rights have been violated.

What if I went around punching people in the face, and when they hauled me in, I told the judge that since I punched EVERYONE I saw in the face, NO ONE was really assaulted... do you think that rationale would work in my defense? No, and it doesn't work in the State's defense, either.

About taxes and fees... you don't buy or earn a right from the government. Your rights are yours just because you are human, and we each and all have rights naturally. When governments protect our rights, they are called liberties. Some social-contract theorists might say that when we join into the social contract that we give up some or parts of our rights so other rights can be protected. This is NOT true. We give up no legitimate right by being members of civil society. In fact, government is really only lawfully created to protect our individual rights, and excercise what rights we have and grant it collectively. Could I force you to give me your thumb print as a condition of obtaining my permission to drive your car for no reason other than you want to travel from here to there, and I don't want you to unless you agree to my terms and pay me a fee? No... that would be blackmail and extortion. How then could we, collectively, grant the government a power that we don't have to begin with? The answer is: we can't, we didn't, and this power is not legitimately derived from the People. It is an invented power that is instituted to contrpol people, and not protect them or their liberties.

The fees and taxes you pay to license and register your car is a practical way to pay for roads and public safety. Otherwise, they'd have to charge tolls everywhere, or raise property taxes (which used to be the sole source of funding for roads most places--except out west where at least 25% of timber sales and coal and gas revenue from public lands go to counties for roads and schools). Fuel taxes are an excellent way for people to "pay as they go" for maintaining public roads. In Oregon, with the foresight that fosil fuel consumtion will decline, they have decided to put GPS tracking systems in ALL vehicles and a satelite is going to track EVERYONE as they travel and folks will be charged per mile of public road they drive. That's not an idea or suggestion--it is now the Law in Oregon, and is being phased in over the next 10 years. Do you think that information will be secure and used only to pay a transportaion tax? I doubt it, too. Just like the finger print thing in Texas, and the vehicle license plate registration that was just supposed to protect your property and return it to you if it was stolen.

That's right... vehicle license plates were originally no more of a tool than what the registered brand was and is for livestock. A vehicle is mobile personal property and easily stolen and transported. Requiring a license plate was a natural step to make it easier to track stolen vehicles and return them to their owners. This policy was then perverted into a money machine and a control-tactic to make people either pay or become criminals for no reason other than they want to travel over public roads using thier own means of transportation.

It is one thing to say you need to pay taxes to support public works, and quite another to make it a criminal offense to travel in your own vehicle on a public road merely because you don't have the proper permission from and papers issued by the State.

Bottom line is, you DO have the right to travel. But you no longer enjoy that right freely. You don't pay for this right. Your right, being denied, has been replaces with a license. When you pay your license and registration fees, all you are paying for is a license to operate a motor vehicle, a privilege that the State invented to control you and everyone else...

Ever hear of George Orewel's 1984 "double speak"? Well, if you read what most of the other respondents have written, there you have it: Since EVERYONE is subject to it, NO ONE has anything to complain about. Yeah, and maybe if I just puch EVERYONE in the face, NO ONE would feel it! Wake up folks, you are not thinking clearly! It is doublespeak gobblygook!