Posted on 03/20/2016 6:20:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
My car was towed from an area near a train station in San Francisco last month. I had parked in front of a small "No Parking" sign that I had not seen. I spent an hour looking for my car and calling an attendant who didn't answer the phone. When someone finally answered, she told me my car had been towed. It cost me $350.
At least I could afford to pay to get my car back. California is filled with people who are one traffic ticket away from losing their means of independent transportation. They get a ticket for a busted taillight or a small-change moving violation. On paper, the fine is $100, but with surcharges, it adds up to a lot more. People who cannot pay often do not show up in court -- which drives up the cost. According to the Judicial Council of California, about 612,000 Californians have suspended driver's licenses because they didn't pay fines. In 2013, more people -- 510,811 -- had their licenses suspended for not paying fines than the 150,366 who had lost their licenses for drunken driving.
"For a lot of people, the car is the only asset they own in this whole damn world," noted Mike Herald of the Western Center on Law & Poverty. "When you take their car, you're taking the thing that helps them make money."
Herald is an author of a report -- about how traffic courts drive inequality -- that helped prompt Gov. Jerry Brown to institute an 18-month amnesty program to deliver Californians from a "hellhole of desperation." Under the program, Californians can get their outstanding fines reduced by 50 percent -- or 80 percent if they make 125 percent of the federal poverty level or less. The amnesty program does not apply to parking tickets, reckless driving or drunken driving.
This is one of those issues that unite activists on the left and the right. The Western Center on Law & Poverty sees how the system crushes the working poor. Conservatives also see excessive fines and penalties as backdoor tax increases that lawmakers employ because they don't need to sell them to voters. In December, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, joined U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the White House for an event that lauded the Brown amnesty program.
"We've turned too many of the police into tax collectors and wonder why they don't have strong relations with the community," Norquist said, according to NBC News. When people can't pay fines in California, it means they have to forfeit their licenses. It's deceptive advertising; a $100 fine can front for an extra $390 in add-ons. The price tag can grow exponentially if unpaid and lead to losing one's license.
The penalty is harsh and crushing on the poor, but these fees also are undeserved for the middle class. If Sacramento wants to levy a $490 fine for moving violations, let lawmakers put honest numbers on their legislation -- instead of pretending that the fine is $100. Alas, the Legislature has found that hidden fees are a handy way to finance the court system without voting to raise tax revenue. It's the easy road.
And though judges might claim that they never asked for this system, they have been able to use the threat of driver's license suspension as leverage to make Californians pony up.
The practice of throwing in extra sources of revenue is so ingrained in Sacramento that there is a $50 amnesty program fee. That's right; if you want to pay off unpaid traffic fines that have ballooned because of hidden fees, first you have to pay another (albeit smaller) hidden fee.
"They're a little tone-deaf," Herald told me. Fellow activists explained that the $50 fee "is a barrier," but to no avail.
If a private corporation advertised a $100 payment for something that really costs $500, California Attorney General Kamala Harris probably would go after the corporation for false advertising. If a credit card company boosted its fees the way the courts do, activists would call the practice usury. If the police yanked people's driver's licenses because they didn't pay a $100 fine, the public would regard such a harsh penalty as excessive force. Yet Sacramento has codified a system that commits all three sins and it's perfectly legal. Really, is there anything more brutal than government on autopilot?
That kind of corruption has crept in to government at every level - and much of the funding goes to private companies who have contracts to run all the systems to do the collections. The rest hires more government bureaucrats. But almost none of all this money actually goes to fund a legitimate public purpose.
And then impose a 35% excise fee on any product or service coming from California. It wants to be a foreign country anyway, so this is a good place to start.
The logical outcome when the government has the power to extort money rather than having to earn it. Here’s hoping those who advocate they keep getting the former get a nice, brutal wake-up call from reality.
I was just thinking yesterday that # of fines per person and $ fines per person should be a stat of the nation statistic indicating how burdensome the govt is.
So, it is alright to put up small signs and tow people’s cars if they have money, but it is unfair to put up small signs and tow people’s cars if they are not wealthy.
I do that with Newark NJ; I got a bogus parking ticket there years ago (”Expired meter” when it had plenty of time on it), and was advised to simply pay it because I had no way of proving it.
I paid, and every time a vendor offers to pay for lunch I suggest nice places in surrounding towns. I hope it was worth $35 for North Zaire (that’s how long ago it was - $35).
Yeah ...... attend even a small town council meeting and they talk quotas to the chief of police, the city ordnance inspectors even tell the trash collectors to turn in violators and they get 10% of the fine as a reward / bonus.
Of course you want to keep your property clean and keep crime down , community safe etc but ..... gaming it on your citizens to promote a out of control budget filled with wasteful practices should be a clue to vote the bastards back to the streets they prey for pay on.... my opinion.
I am surprised the article didn’t mention Obamacare taxes as well. Many of these people will have to decide if they want to keep their car or pay their health care premiums to avoid the tax...
Why didn't the police do that with the idiots who blocked the roads to where Trump was speaking? The dark side of me wonders if the mayor was anti-Trump and told the cops not to interfere with "Free Speech Advocates".
In the future, mayors/police chiefs should have a half dozen tow trucks standing by and when the blockade starts, start hauling - clear one lane at a time so the traffic can leak through until all clear.
A couple of $350 towing/impound fees for each "protester" should get the point across.
So I guess Deb Saunders is on the same page with DoJ? (NOT)
This is another Obama administration attempt at a reverse-Giuliani: break windows and create social destruction. Poor people should have open season to commit petty crimes and civil violations. In that atmosphere, raising fines on only “the rich” is social payback for the underclasses.
But SF and Califoria are run by the democrats. You know, the party of the little guy. I’m confused.
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