Is a member of the Right Eing Extremists of the United States of America allowed to have a favorite liberal writer who I don’t use as a blog whipping boy? I have twice asked if The Philadelphia Inquirer’s primary editorial writer, Daniel Pearson, could actually be a conservative.

He knows that I have asked that question, and certainly denies it, definitely opposed to President Trump and most Republicans, but he is at least in some ways the kind of Democrat conservatives can appreciate. He’s certainly not a loony leftist like his colleagues Will Bunch and the rest of the newspaper’s cabal of columnists! While he seems to support some silliness like the city’s silly driving while black driving equality law, he does support the enforcement of law.

Fake, expired, and obscured car tags threaten public safety | Editorial

The tactic has not only been adopted by those who want to avoid a traffic ticket. It has also become a tactical choice for would-be criminals.

by The Editorial Board | Wednesday, April 16, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

Over the last year, in more than 30,000 cases captured by the city’s traffic cameras, drivers got away with speeding down Roosevelt Boulevard. In at least 240 incidents, vehicles recklessly reached more than 100 mph on a road lined with residences, places of worship, and schools.

How did these motorized scofflaws get away with it? By using fake, obscured, or missing license plates.

Experts say that beyond posing a danger to pedestrians and other drivers, those with missing plates often want to do more than just avoid a traffic ticket. Driving without proper tags has also become a tactical choice for would-be criminals — like the suspected killers of 14-year-old Nicolas Elizalde — whose vehicles become harder to trace.

Local and state officials need a comprehensive strategy to end this trend and ensure public safety on multiple fronts.

There’s more at the original, but I could have written those first four paragraphs exactly the way he did.

The problem is more than Mr Pearson noted. You can buy devices to hide your license plate online for around $150, and they are openly linked on the internet. They’re controlled by a wireless remote, more practical for blowing through EZ Pass tolls, where you could hide your license plate from the overhead toll readers, but then expose it again once out of range, but could be used for drag racing on Roosevelt Blvd.

Having lived in The First State^[1]Delaware considers itself the First State because it was the first to ratify the Constitution. for two years, this paragraph certainly caught my eye:

City and state officials should consider working together to pressure Delaware, which issued more than 150,000 temporary tags last year — a very high number for a state with fewer than 400,000 households — into toughening up its requirements for temporary tags. Fake and photocopied Delaware tags have become a problem for many of that state’s neighbors. A concerted effort by regional leadership to lobby Dover could help turn the tide.

A simple law could help with that, if Delaware required the turning in of temporary tags to obtain the regular, metal plates, and restricting the validity of the temporary tags to 15 days. An even simpler law could help: having legitimate automobile dealers issue the permanent tags themselves. The Keystone State already uses private notaries public to process and issue plate registration renewals; Delaware currently requires a personal visit to the Division of Motor Vehicles, which was, as I recall, a major pain in the ass.

But at least the DMV in New Castle County wasn’t as bad as the one in Hampton, Virginia, to which I have frequently referred as Affirmative Action for special education students!

If the state can trust automobile dealers to issue temporary tags, then they should be able to trust them to issue permanent plates.

Pennsylvania ceased issuing license plate registration stickers in 2017, depending upon license plate readers in police cars and various other locations to detect vehicles which had fallen out of registration or had the tags suspended. With tighter issuance of temporary tags, some — certainly not all — of the problems can be eliminated.

But, I digress. My point in writing this article is to point out that not all Democrats are wild-eyed #woke^[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, utterly deranged far lefties; moderate Democrats do still exist, Democrats that conservatives can actually respect even when we disagree on some things. Joe Biden ran on his reputation as a moderate Democrat in 2020, and won, even though his campaign was less moderate than his reputation, and he wound up with his minions taking presidential actions when, as President, he had been drifting into dementia. Some Democrats today, such as Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) have been flirting with more moderate positions on a few issues, because they understand that they cannot run as Kamala Harris Emhoff 2.0 and win the general election. Mr Pearson, though he’s not running for any political office, shows us that some Democrats can support the enforcement of the laws — albeit not the immigration laws! — that are supposed to maintain a civilized society and even, shockingly enough, Western civilization. His continued advocacy of increased funding for SEPTA is coupled with his support of greater law enforcement at the agency’s terminals and vehicles, when it comes to junkies, bad guys, and ‘ordinary’ fare-jumpers.

Do I want moderate Democrats to run and win? Certainly not! But it is inevitable that Democrats will win some elections, and it’s important that, when it happens, it’s the sane ones who win.