Tag: infrastructure

Biden Infrastructure Bill Includes Passive Monitoring Vehicle “Kill Switch” Mandates For Automakers

As if the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to infringe on your civil liberties with lockdowns and vaccine mandates, media reports over the last several days are suggesting that Biden’s new infrastructure bill will also include a mandate for auto manufacturers to install “kill switches” into vehicles.

Former Rep. Bob Barr, writing for The Daily Caller, calls the measure “disturbingly short on details”, but for the fact that the proposed device must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.”

Which, of course, is code for some kind of device that is constantly on and monitoring your vehicle – and will likely have the power to shut down your vehicle anytime it wants.

“This is a privacy disaster in the making, and the fact that the provision made it through the Congress reveals — yet again — how little its members care about the privacy of their constituents,” The Daily Caller writes.

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Buttigieg Says Infrastructure Bill will Address Racist Highway Design That Prevents Black and Brown Kids From Being Bussed to the Beach

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Monday said the infrastructure bill will address the racist highway design meant to block black and brown kids from being bussed to the beach.

The program, dubbed “Reconnecting Communities,” will address racial inequities in the nation’s highway design.

“If an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach, […] in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices,” Buttigieg said on Monday.

“I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality and I think we have everything to gain by acknowledging it and then dealing with it…” he added.

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Infrastructure Bill to Require ‘Breathalyzer’-Style Systems in All Cars by 2026

Automakers will be required to install ‘breathalyzer’-style systems in all new cars starting in 2026 as part of the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill.

The Transportation Department will be tasked with developing the new technology automakers will be forced to install on vehicles.

The system must “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired,” according to the broadly-written legislation.

It may not entail blowing into a tube, but the system could involve something even more Orwellian: infrared cameras that track and monitor driver behavior.

“That technology is already being installed by automakers such as General Motors, BMW, and Nissan to track driver attentiveness while using partially automated driver-assist systems,” according to the AP. “The cameras make sure a driver is watching the road, and they look for signs of drowsiness, loss of consciousness, or impairment.”

Ostensibly, the “driver behavior” monitoring system could expanded later on for “carbon tax” enforcement, such as charging drivers who drive too fast, for example.

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INFRASTRUCTURE BILL COULD ENABLE GOVERNMENT TO TRACK DRIVERS’ TRAVEL DATA

THE SENATE’S $1.2 TRILLION bipartisan infrastructure bill proposes a national test program that would allow the government to collect drivers’ data in order to charge them per-mile travel fees. The new revenue would help finance the Highway Trust Fund, which currently depends mostly on fuel taxes to support roads and mass transit across the country.

Under the proposal, the government would collect information about the miles that drivers travel from smartphone apps, another on-board device, automakers, insurance companies, gas stations, or other means. For now, the initiative would only be a test effort — the government would solicit volunteers who drive commercial and passenger vehicles — but the idea still raises concerns about the government tracking people’s private data.

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Does Biden’s $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Include a Mileage Tax?

Here’s a dismaying prospect: Paying 6, 8, or 10 cents in new taxes for every mile you drive. It may sound small, but at an 8 cent rate, that would be $1,144 in new annual taxes for the average American, who drives about 14,300 miles a year. Yikes!

Some on social media are claiming that this punitive tax scheme has been slipped into President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending legislation—which, after all, is nearly 3,000 pages and is chock full of unrelated waste and partisan pet projects. But are they right to be concerned about a mileage tax soon becoming reality?

No. At least, not yet.

The infrastructure legislation does not include a mileage tax or another form of driving tax. What it does include is a pilot program to study and test the idea. The legislation authorizes $125 million in taxpayer funding for this test initiative. (A lot of taxpayer money for an experiment, no?)

“People would volunteer to be part of the test,” fact-checkers at local New York news outlet WGRZ-TV report.

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Will $500M for Smart Cities in Historic US Senate Spending Bill Fund Biometric Surveillance?

Half a billion dollars was written into the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed Wednesday by the U.S. Senate to pay cities to experiment with technologies for ‘Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation,’ which could include remote biometric systems, sensors and drones.

Reaction to the inclusion was rapid. The Intercept spoke with a senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation who said the ‘SMART’ money will buy more surveillance using facial recognition. The industry has yet to convince critics alleging face biometrics introduce racial and gender bias and misuse by law enforcement of the technology’s safety.

Also of concern is how this technology, if not the funding, will become tangled with relevant military programs as has happened with other software and hardware being deployed to monitor and quell dissent.

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Biden’s infrastructure bill is chock-full of anti-white racism

The infrastructure bill the Senate passed Tuesday discriminates against white people at every turn.

Americans are enthusiastic about spending money on physical infrastructure — bridges, roads, broadband. But this racist bill hands out jobs and contracts and locates projects based on race, not merit. Minority businesses and neighborhoods hold the inside track. If you’re white, you’re low-priority.

The bill includes grants to install solar or wind technologies and generate jobs in areas decimated by closing coal mines or coal-fired electric plants. Here’s the catch: When contractors bid, the bill says minority-owned businesses will get selected first. Bad news for small-time white contractors in depressed areas.

The same is true for the bill’s proposals to improve traffic patterns in cities. Contractors and subcontractors get priority only if they’re owned by minorities or women. White male business owners can take a hike.

Americans should be outraged — but not surprised. After all, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, passed in March, also put into place an ugly system of discrimination against whites. It offered debt relief to black farmers, but not white farmers. Another provision offered billions in aid to minority-owned and women-owned restaurants, but told struggling restaurants owners who happened to be white men that they had to go to the back of the line.

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9 Crazy Examples of Waste, Unrelated Pet Projects Snuck into Massive Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill

When President Biden first unveiled his $2+ trillion proposal for an infrastructure spending package, he was widely ridiculed for stretching the meaning of the word “infrastructure” far past its breaking point. The legislation snuck in climate change policy, billions for woke diversity initiatives, massive funding for public schools, and much more under creatively deceptive guises such as “human infrastructure.” Thankfully, this package didn’t get far.

However, more feasible efforts continue from a bipartisan group of senators seeking to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure compromise package. This legislative effort does, in fairness, stay much closer to the traditionally understood definition of infrastructure with its funding for roads, bridges, and more. Yet even this supposedly moderate, reasonable bill is 2,702 pages in length, leaving ample room for lobbyists and individual politicians to slip in wasteful items and crony pet projects.

Here are nine examples of seemingly unrelated, wasteful, or otherwise dubious spending programs snuck into the thousands of pages of legislative text.

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