Posted on 03/10/2015 7:58:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Conservatives are typically eager to disparage politicians and bureaucrats who conspire to seize wealth. So you'd think that they'd be outraged to learn that officials in one municipality treat residents as revenue sources rather than citizens. In this city, policymakers have made maximizing the intake of money their number one priority. They urge police to cite residents as aggressively as possible and evaluate their municipal court judge based on the fines that he levies. Challenges to the city's system are thwarted by a deliberately complicated thicket of rules and red tape. And violations of the Constitution are frequent and unpunished.
This city's government does not solve problems. Its government is the problem. One illustration of many concerns a poor woman who got a single parking ticket there. "From 2007 to 2014, the woman was arrested twice, spent six days in jail, and paid $550 to the court for the events stemming from this single instance of illegal parking," federal investigators report. "Court records show that she twice attempted to make partial payments of $25 and $50, but the court returned those payments, refusing to accept anything less than payment in full. One of those payments was later accepted, but only after the courts letter rejecting payment by money order was returned as undeliverable. This woman is now making regular payments on the fine. As of December 2014, over seven years later, despite initially owing $151 fine and having already paid $550, she still owed $541."
What a burden the public sector has imposed on her life.
No city in America better illustrates government run amok than Ferguson, Missouri. Libertarians have long excoriated the city. Less so, movement conservatives. Most are ambivalent about the abuses. Some have even defended Ferguson officials. Why haven't conservatives seized this opportunity to highlight government-caused damage
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have just been assuming that we’re talking about DEMOCRAT politicians here that control Ferguson, aren’t we? It looks like they were just interested in ripping people off, it didn’t matter what color they were.
You'd be correct.
Unless the woman parked somewhere SERIOUSLY illegally, like in front of a fire station, what could the original fine have possibly been? $50? $100?
She may not have *liked* that fine, but she KEPT getting notices, which she ignored.
And the tickets eventually said "if you don't pay, you'll have a warrant issued."
At that point, any normal person would have done about anything to pay it off.
She didn't.
So yeah, it must have been "serious".
But $151 is a hell of a lot better than going to jail, TWICE.
Wow. Talk about grasping at connect the dots.
Socialist never change....take away guns from citizens and put policing under their control over the whole US....what can we learn from history???? Worked so well for the common citizen in NAZI Germany and the Communist countries around the world and dems blindly follow to their destruction voting for this so they can get some free goodies that keep them at subsistence level at best believing that somehow this will make them safe.
They are voting themselves into slavery.
Really...now it’s the republican’s fault that all their cities are failures. Hey D-bag...anyone with half a brain moved out years ago...and you probably did too and now you’re having a self pity party.
Anybody that didn’t already know that traffic offenses are as much about revenue as saftey, particularly in small towns, just hasn’t been paying attention.
It isn’t a race thing, blacks just don’t know how to jump through the hoops. A good start would be being polite and respectful when you are stopped.
Over the years I must have gotten out of at least 20 tickets for speeding or running a stop sign. Doesn’t always work, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
A news release from the city said the Council had reached a "mutual separation agreement"
with Shaw, the city's chief executive, effective immediately. The statement also said
a nationwide search for Shaw's replacement would begin immediately.
Thing is....if Ferguson is 67% black who elected all these racists???
Abuses? They have not (to my mind) proven any pattern of abuse outside of what happens to all of us in areas with cash-strapped local governments.
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