IMAO Reader OutbackJon suggested that Frank J. might want to re-think that “NO PLATES” idea:

Snopes, Licensed to Bill

Allowing motorists to obtain personalized plates provides them with an opportunity to obtain something distinctively unique, something that commands far more attention than the usual humdrum string of letters and digits. Sometimes, though, one's choice of license plate can command an unexpected and undesirable form of attention.

In 1979 a Los Angeles man named Robert Barbour found this out the hard way when he sent an application to the California Department of Motor No plate Vehicles requesting personalized license plates for his car. The DMV form asked applicants to list three choices in case one or two of their desired selections had already been assigned. Barbour, a sailing enthusiast, wrote down "SAILING" and "BOATING" as his first two choices; when he couldn't think of a third option, he wrote "NO PLATE," meaning that if neither of his two choices was available, he did not want personalized plates. Plates reading "BOATING" and "SAILING" had indeed already been assigned, so the DMV, following Barbour's instructions literally, sent him license plates reading "NO PLATE." Barbour was not thrilled that the DMV had misunderstood his intent, but he opted to keep the plates because of their uniqueness.

Four weeks later he received his first notice for an overdue parking fine, from faraway San Francisco, and within days he began receiving dozens of overdue notices from all over the state on a daily basis. Why? Because when law enforcement officers ticketed illegally parked cars that bore no license plates, they had been writing "NO PLATE" in the license plate field. Now that Barbour had plates bearing that phrase, the DMV computers were matching every unpaid citation issued to a car with missing plates to him.

Barbour received about 2,500 notices over the next several months. He alerted the DMV to the problem, and they responded in a typically bureaucratic way by instructing him to change his license plates. But Barbour had grown too fond of his plates by then to want to change them, so he instead began mailing out a form letter in response to each citation. That method usually worked, although occasionally he had to appear before a judge and demonstrate that the car described on the citation was not his.

In the same manner, the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs, may all have seemed like good ideas at the time, but turned into miserable failures with unintended consequences.

The War on Poverty has only resulted in more poor now than we had in 1969. See The Pursuit of Happiness and Making Blacks Happier. Worrying about the poor and trying to keep them from being red-lined by banks led to the creation of the Community Reinvestment Act which bred ACORN which bred loans to people who could not afford them which led to the need for a facility to package those toxic loans which led to the unintended consequence: our current economic crises.

The War on Drugs has resulted in more people dependent on drugs than ever. In addition, because of the War on Drugs, about half of all black men in America will have gone to prison on non-violent drug charges ¹. Most will be released into society again but because they are black men with a prison record, they will be permanently unemployable which then will force them into a life of violent crime. As an unintended consequence, America has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Without the War on Drugs we would be one of the least violent nations on Earth. ²

Notes

(1):

Druglibrary.org, What does this drug policy do to the black community?

At the present time, one-fourth of all of the young black men in America are either in prison or on parole. Most of them were arrested on non-violent drug charges.

In Washington, DC, the Bush administration's "demonstration" city, half of all of the black men in the city are currently in jail or on parole. More than ninety percent have arrest records. The same is true of inner city black men in Baltimore, New York, New Jersey, and Florida.

Two-thirds of all of today's black male high school students will be dead, disabled, or in prison before their thirtieth birthday. The majority will go to prison because of non-violent drug charges. For every black man who goes to college, three will go to prison.

By the year 2000, about half of all black men in America will have gone to prison. Most of them will go to prison for non-violent drug charges. Most of those who go to prison will be released into society again. Because they are black men with a prison record, they will be permanently unemployable.

(2):

Common Sense for Drug Policy, REDUCE THE HARM CAUSED BY THE "WAR ON DRUGS"

As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the nationwide emphasis on arresting drug dealers may have produced a labor shortage, which contributed to the high mortality rate of the 1980s. “Every time you jail a drug dealer, you open up a new opportunity for an enterprising young man. What does he do to compete for this job? He kills for it.”65 The chart shown above illustrates the homicide rate in the United States for the 20th Century. Note that this century's two most violent episodes are concurrent with stringent prohibition policies.

...

Overall, this study and figure illustrated below show that our failing War on Drugs actually creates the majority of costs our communities pay when considering illegal drugs.