Posted on 03/18/2018 6:31:28 PM PDT by Simon Green
If Mark Zuckerberg and a janitor who works at Facebooks headquarters each received a speeding ticket while driving home from work, theyd each owe the government the same amount of money. Mr. Zuckerberg wouldnt bat an eye.
The janitor is another story.
For people living on the economic margins, even minor offenses can impose crushing financial obligations, trapping them in a cycle of debt and incarceration for nonpayment. In Ferguson, Mo., for example, a single $151 parking violation sent a black woman struggling with homelessness into a seven-year odyssey of court appearances, arrest warrants and jail time connected to her inability to pay.
Across America, one-size-fits-all fines are the norm, which I demonstrate in an article for the University of Chicago Law Review. Where judges do have wiggle room to choose the size of a fine, mandatory minimums and maximums often tie their hands. Some states even prohibit consideration of a persons income. And when courts are allowed to take finances into account, they frequently fail to do so.
Other places have saner methods. Finland and Argentina, for example, have tailored fines to income for almost 100 years. The most common model, the day fine, scales sanctions to a persons daily wage. A small offense like littering might cost a fraction of a days pay. A serious crime might swallow a months paycheck. Everyone pays the same proportion of their income.
For a justice system committed to treating like offenders alike, scaling fines to income is a matter of basic fairness. Making everyone pay the same sticker price is evenhanded on the surface, but only if you ignore the consequences of a fine on the life of the person paying. The flat fine threatens poor people with financial ruin while letting rich people break the law without meaningful repercussions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Insane. The cops will spend all their time pulling over expensive automobiles on trumped up charges just to levy huge fines, claiming the driver was spending when he or she was not.
Screw that.
Let’s make it easier. Let us have “journalists” get a license to write—after they get a mental exam, a physical to see if they have gonads, and post a million dollar bond to make sure they have the balls in case they pass the physical.
Where have you ever seen a "journalist"?
For your screen name.
It's when the government codifies discrimination into the law that there is a problem.
-PJ
Along the same lines, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
The Five W's are rarely followed, if even they're taught.
Along the same lines, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
The Five W's are rarely followed, if even they're taught.
This is the $151.00 parking ticket case. The woman FTA’d a bunch of times...
“We spoke, for example, with an African-American woman who has a still-pending case
stemming from 2007, when, on a single occasion, she parked her car illegally. She received two
citations and a $151 fine, plus fees. The woman, who experienced financial difficulties and
periods of homelessness over several years, was charged with seven Failure to Appear offenses
for missing court dates or fine payments on her parking tickets between 2007 and 2010. For
each Failure to Appear, the court issued an arrest warrant and imposed new fines and fees. 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. 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 a $151 fine and having already paid $550, she still owed $541.”
If she is homeless and unemployed, showing up to court ought to be dead easy. If she has trouble remembering, just set an alarm on her Obamaphone.
Seriously, how can anyone not see that failure to appear is a separate offense.
Around here, if you show up for court instead of mailing the fine in, they always reduce the fine by at least half.
How about “leftist journalists get ten years in jail for a speeding ticket”.
That sounds like “equal justice before the law” to me. ;-)
“If she is homeless and unemployed, showing up to court ought to be dead easy. If she has trouble remembering, just set an alarm on her Obamaphone.”
So the rich must pay more. Simple.
What business is it of the government’s how much money I make? The IRS and the state government have already declared entitled themselves to that. I’ll be d@mned if I’m going to readily let the mouth breathing local government officials know what I make (although I’m sure they already know). That kind of information just makes you a target for anyone who has it.
>>Granted. But it is discouraging when I pay a marginal tax rate of about 50%. I work 12-14 hour days, nights, weekends, and holidays so someone else can enjoy the fruits of my labor. Gets old real fast.
Yes it does. This is why i say that labor should not be taxed. Labor is time traded from a finite life in exchange for money. It is immoral to steal time from one life to give it as money to another person.
How about the chauffeur of a Billionaire if the chauffeur makes the same as the nurse?
I think there is merit in apportioning a fine based on one’s ability to pay and in keeping with the principle of deterring a repeat offense. The idea is the punishment should be comensurate both with the nature of the offense and the offender’s circumstances.
Its not wealth redistribution. People pay what they owe no more and no less. That’s not favoritism. You don’t want to let people off the hook but treat them as befits their station in life.
Its not fair to treat Zuckerberg and a janitor the same when a fine is due because a flat fine affects them very differently. How much should each offender owe? That’s for society to determine.
ML/NJ
Another, intellectually dishonest use of the “equity” theme.
And the sheeple??? What about the sheeple??
They are Indoctrinated to not even understand they are getting a theme packaged as “Liberal” or “Progressive” when it is nothing less than another variation of Marx “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”.
You are right that private individuals can ask and contract work as they see fit. I do not know where the line is that something legal creeps in and you find you have to offer the same rates to all comers. Perhaps it is when you advertise?
Does the wealthy offender still have the right to be secure in his possessions and papers over a traffic violation, or does the government have a right to see the wealthy offender's bank statements and tax returns in order to assess the fine for simply speeding or running a red light?
Will traffic court judges now be summarily issuing fourth amendment warrants to see bank and tax records just because somebody got a ticket, so they can assess the potential fine even before the person shows up in court to contest it or pay it?
-PJ
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.