Have you noticed it? How often authorities elect to punish the entire population of innocent people to avoid doing a competent job of identifying the guilty. The security check at the airport is an example: every passenger must submit to the inconvenience and indignity of official groping and scanning to prevent the minuscule minority of terrorists from succeeding. I am frustrated every time I hear a policeman advise everyone in the population to prevent theft and burglary by making sure their houses and cars are always locked and their valuables kept out of sight; especially since, as a lawyer, I see first-hand what a poor job society does of handling the guilty once they are identified. I am aware of a large hospital chain that chose to avoid pursuing the small percentage of its patients who failed to pay their bills by allowing collection agents to grill every conscious incoming patient about their financial resources.
One of the many problems with this punish-the-innocent policy for preventing the guilty is the sheer inefficiency of it all. There must be better ways to achieve the desired result. Can’t we develop a smart bomb that will avoid all this collateral damage?
This all came to mind yesterday when I attempted to help Jeff and Vicky renew their state identification cards. Jeff is my disabled son and Vicky is his more severely disabled wife. At the counter, once their number had been called, Jeff presented his soon-to-expire state ID, his original birth certificate, and his original Social Security card and was granted a renewal. But Vicky over the years has misplaced her Social Security card, so she was only able to present her currently valid, picture, state Id, her original birth certificate, and an original document, issued by Social Security, that contained her name and Social Security number. Her renewal was denied because the only forms the bureaucrats at the drivers license division will accept to verify ones Social Security number are either an original Social Security card, a W2 or a 1099. Vicky will never be employed, so a W2 or a 1099 are out of the question. Vicky will now have to try to convince the workers at the Social Security office that she is who she says she is and get a new Social Security card before the drivers license division will grant her an ID. This catch 22 reminds me of a movie about Germany between the world wars called, “Der Hauptmann von Koepernick.” In Vicky’s case, their was no real question about her identity. But the bureaucrats and legislators who are bent on preventing any illegal alien from gaining a benefit they don’t deserve, have inflicted on every citizen the burden of preserving and presenting three specific, official forms of ID.