Several days ago, Mule Breath wrote a blog post that municipalities are using increased fees and fines as back-door tax increases. Many jurisdictions are putting up "red light cameras" or "speed cameras" as a way to collect more fines.
In New York, where I live, the state fee for renewing a car registration jumped from $50 for two years to $110. If you get a traffic ticket, the state slaps a "mandatory surcharge" of $85 on the violation.
None of this is new. When I was a kid, the village of Justice, Illinois had a well-deserved reputation for using traffic violations as a major budget tool. In Ohio, if you have to fly into Cleveland and you rent a car at the airport, you might have become acquainted with the pissant village of Linndale. Linndale has maybe 200 yards of I-71 running through it and the biggest revenue source in the village was from traffic tickets given out on I-71. Cleveland Heights was almost as bad, except there was no interstate running through the town, so they had to make do with things such as dropping the speed limit on a 4-lane road to 25mph.[1]
In one sense, the argument that "they're breaking the law, what is wrong with fining them" is true. But this is, of course, a false argument, for almost none of it is about enforcing the law. It is all about money. It is all about raising revenue. The cameras come down when they don't make any money, which proves the point.
The more corrosive point is that the use of law enforcement to generate more revenue for town and state coffers results in a lessening regard for law enforcement. Everyone knows what is going on-- the cops are being used as tax collectors. Everyone knows that the reason for the cameras and the crackdowns have far more to do with the fact that governments are too frightened to come right out and say "we either have to cut services or we have to raise taxes". So they add in fees and fines and hope to make it up,in part, that way.
It is not all evil intent, of course. In hard times, people do make more use of local government services, especially parks and libraries. They have to be maintained and those costs aren't going down, either.
But it is high time that the citizenry in this country grow the fuck up and face the fact that if they want local services, those services have to be paid for in some manner. Let's be up-front about it and let's stop using the cops as tax collectors.
[1]Cleveland Heights also had parking meters that unaccountably would run a little fast. The fuckers set the fines low, though, to make sure that most people would pay. What happened, of course, is a lot of locals shopped elsewhere, where they didn't have to worry about the meters running out.
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Saturday, June 26, 2010
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Ever since my second speeding ticket, in the early 90s, I've been a stickler for going the speed limit, or at most 5mph over.
ReplyDeleteThat 5mph buffer is rapidly disappearing, for predictable reasons.
People go out of their minds having to drive the legal limit behind me. limits of 35 are bad enough, but 30 and 25 and I see the hands flying up off the steering wheels behind me and see them shouting.
I've had 50 minute commutes before. It's not pleasant for me, either.
Even I have trouble with 20mph limits, but cops like the school zones, and I can't argue with their logic, even internally.
I got my speed thrills when I was young, and in airplanes.
I used to commute on the western end of the Mass Pike and there was one trooper, who had moved north from Alabama, who drove an innocent looking unmarked car i.e. not a Crown Vic who was a real earner. Knowing where he parked, it was easy to avoid him but it seemed like he had someone every day I drove past him. It was said he was personally responsible for over half the speeding tickets in that District Court.
ReplyDeleteWhat, you say there is no free lunch, that if we want to have government services we must pay for them? Heresy, heresy I say! Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that suspicious looking feller over there behind that tree! Oh wait, no, that feller happens to own most of the politicians in town, so we can't do that, can we? Heh.
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Here's a thought. How about we cut some spending.
ReplyDeleteSure! So what spending do you want to cut? Spending on regulators for gulf drilling? Yeah, that worked out well. Spending for defense? Your ilk shits your tighty whities every time we suggest that, even though defense is over 50% of the discretionary budget when you add in the war spending. Spending for unemployment insurance? Uhm, these folks paid into the unemployment insurance fund for all their working lives with the promise that if they needed it, they'd get unemployment compensation while they looked for a job, your ilk sure likes breaking your promises. Shall we cut spending for children's health care insurance and watch children die? Well yeah, I know that gives tighty whities like, the biggest erections of all time, they just stroke their rods at the thought, tighty righties just *love* the thought of people dying (preferably brown people, but they'll stroke to children dying too, but *never* fetuses, fetuses are God's special little ugly monkeys).... oh I know! We'll cut Medicare! Those wrinkly old prunes ought to just have the sense to die when they get sick like they used to back before Medicare! (50% of our elders had no health insurance before Medicare was passed, and basically no access to health care if they got sick).
ReplyDeleteOr maybe... just maybe... being the OECD nation with the lowest taxes of all major economies isn't a healthy place to be? I mean, fuck. Even SOUTH KOREA and JAPAN have a higher percentage of their GDP going to taxes than the United States! How fucked up is that?!
- Badtux the Fact-based Penguin
You're right. When illegal becomes "right if you pay enough money or buy a tax stamp" the whole respect for the law is bullshit.
ReplyDeleteBTW, though, it's Linndale. The only Black enclave on the West Side of Cleveland. And it's still an effing speed trap.
Nangleator, the 5mph buffer used to be a function of the error band of the radar guns. Some of the earlier guns had a 5mph +/- error, so they didn't write you up unless you were 6mph over. The lasers are supposedly far more accurate.
ReplyDeleteOf course, in Ohio, they don't need any of that shit. Al the cop has to say is he estimated the speed and that's proof enough.
William, thank you, I've corrected the post.
It's highway robbery!
ReplyDeleteLocal and State police used to provide a valuable public service as their priority. Quotas did not exist and in my experience they only wanted you to play safe even if it meant following you home so you didn't get in trouble.
ReplyDeleteThe first speed trap I ever saw was in Mid-state New York in about 1966. They had a plane in the air clocking speeders on the ground and radioing plate numbers to the local 5 or 6 cruisers who were waiting in a turnoff. We got plunked along with a line of cars. This was not a safety issue. We were in traffic! It was the middle of the day. It was my first look at factory farming for revenue generation by cop.
Today - they stand on the island at the toll booth checking your tags and inspection sticker. Point and fine. Easy. Revenue generation is now their primary purpose. I read about the occasional bad guy that really needed to be caught but it is so rare. Most of the busts are for non-violent crimes and traffic stops.
There are so many local police in my town that I cannot go to the store and back without seeing one. There are too many of them with too much time on their hands. The police state is here.
And, to add insult to injury, I like to take to the water for relaxation and to get away from the noise that life makes. Well... there was the harbor patrol, stalking us because there were not many boats out yesterday. You can just imagine how that went over. I hope his binoculars didn't steam up from the constant middle fingers sent in his direction.
This is part of the conservative mindset. Puritan thinking with punishment as the only recourse.
If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Well... fuck that. I don't like to be watched constantly for an opportunity for some underpaid, undereducated asshole to bust me for nothing so he can make his quota. We have more of our population in prison per capita than any other nation in the world. Why is that? More capitalism! Ah, the mighty free market, the invisible hand who now owns most of the prison system in this country AND supported by crooked judges who own stock in the same institutions where they send offenders!! Ah... capitalism.
Tux - I agree, let's take a $trillion out of the defense budget for two wars that only kill, do not keep us safe, and only enrich the Halliburtons and Blackwaters of the world.
I'm pretty long winded today. Thanks EBM!
GreenDayMan, they don't have to check anything anymore. They have license plate cameras in the cruisers that automatically check to make sure that you've renewed the plate, that you have a safety inspection and that your insurance is current.
ReplyDeleteYou can bet your last nickel that when the day comes that those cameras don't yield the revenue that they want, they'll be ripped out of the cop cars.