Get Ready To Hear A Lot About The Real ID Act

I think you'll be hearing a lot about this in the coming year.

In 2005 Congress approved the "Real ID Act".  It's an effort to make sure certain requirements are met when someone goes to get a drivers license. The idea behind this was to make it tougher for terrorists to get fake credentials.   Done. Understandable. Piece of cake.

The problem now is whackadoodles.  Sure there are some legitimate concerns about funding upgrades to the process and things of that nature, but a number of states have refused to comply because they're listening to the lunatic fringe out there.  They claim that this is an attempt to create a national I.D. card that will lead to the government tracking you and blah, blah, conspiracy theory, blah.  I really wish I had the patience to explain this to you, but you know the tin-foil hat types as well as I do and explaining their side is just pointless.

Texas is currently in compliance with the act, but some of our more backward/less progressive states are treating this like "the revenoors lookin' fer moonshine". In fact, compliance in some is so poor that they're going to start feeling the effects in just a few weeks. For example, at the end of this month people in Kentucky can no longer use their state I.D. to enter its military bases, and if they don't clear things up by early next year, they won't be able to board airplanes.

I think if we're going to have I.D.s at all, they should be worth the paper they're printed on. It shouldn't be easier to get or fake an idea from another state, we should all go through the same process for each others safety. It does matter with people from those non-compliant states flying over our heads and trying to get into our government buildings.

As I said, in Texas we're good all the way until 2020, but these hold-out states will probably be making a lot of headlines this year and now you have a good base of knowledge to know what's going on.