“Apparently” is right. Sorry, I’m still not alarmed.
The article makes no mention of any particular company or agency that I’m surprised to hear about.
You go to car dealership and want their credit - DL check.
Want an insurance quote - DL check.
Background investigation - DL check.
Gun permit - DL check.
Want to adopt - DL check.
Get pulled over - DL check.
I’ve noticed a lot of dealerships and independent insurance companies (through mail) just in my local area.
Note it’s 32000 private AND govt agencies. To attempt to contrast, it says NJ provides records to 1500 private companies. However, since that number doesn’t include the gov agencies, it not a good comparison.
Also note that no timeframe is mentioned. Is this 32000 in the past month, or over the last 10 years? Is the Jersey comparison over the same time period?
If they weren’t selling it, they’d be covering the expense of the list items I mentioned above with general taxes. So I still don’t find this terribly alarming.
What would bother me is, which is very likely, that they started charging this WITHOUT cutting general taxes. Most states attempt to raise taxes “quietly” this way, e.g., cell phone, internet taxes, business license fees...
Quick google check:
how many municipalities are there in the united states
Answer:
The most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2007) counted 39,044 general purpose local governments, which includes 19,492 municipal governments, 16,519 township governments and 3.033 county governments.Mar 2, 2015
So unless PA drivers never move or travel and never get pulled over (don’t forget rental cars), there are plenty of gov agencies out there ready to request data in addition to private companies - all with legitimate purpose.
I have little respect for the media. I refuse to share their “hype” especially when there are numbers involved. When an article includes a number, you can be assured that they have left out more relevant facts than usual.
The article is hyping things up with the presumption that the data provided is not of legitimate purpose. You read it, and they get to count you as a “viewer” when marketing their advertising rates. They leave out that this same data would be provided to those companies and agencies REGARDLESS.
Don’t be a sap for hype (or propaganda) and learn to read with a more critical eye.
As you well know, taxes NEVER go down. The ‘decrease’ in one is merely shifted to another area of taxation, and well-distributed and hidden inside other line items. Public pablum. As a farm/nursery business owner (now retired) in the hort/ag industries, I never saw anything decrease from any crevice of gov’t. Once they have your data, they think they own your life.