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Minor Violations Lead to Massive Prosecution Fees in Two California Desert Towns
Reason ^ | Nov. 16, 2017 12:15 pm | Scott Shackford

Posted on 11/18/2017 5:02:27 PM PST by sparklite2

In Coachella, a man was fined $900 for expanding his living room without getting a permit. He paid his fine. Then more than a year later he got a bill in the mail from Silver & Wright for $26,000. They told him that he had to pay the cost of prosecuting him, and if he didn't, they could put a lien on his house and the city could sell it against his will. When he appealed the bill they charged him even more for the cost of defending against the appeal. The bill went from $26,000 to $31,000.

Brett Kelman of the Desert Sun found 18 cases in Indio and Coachella where people received inordinately high legal bills for small-time violations. A woman fined for hanging Halloween decorations across a city street received legal bill for $2,700. When she challenged it, the bill jumped to $4,200.

(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; US: California
KEYWORDS:
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"Brazil" comes to America. You have to pay for the bullet that shoots you.
1 posted on 11/18/2017 5:02:27 PM PST by sparklite2
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To: sparklite2

Corruption is now rampant in the government as its self-serving “employees” shake down citizens to enrich themselves.


2 posted on 11/18/2017 5:10:04 PM PST by House Atreides (BOYCOTT the NFL, its products and players 100% - PERMANENTLY)
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To: sparklite2

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


3 posted on 11/18/2017 5:13:26 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (Benedict McCain is the worst traitor ever to wear the uniform of the US military.)
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To: sparklite2

People are going to die over crap like this.

L


4 posted on 11/18/2017 5:14:28 PM PST by Lurker (President Trump isn't our last chance. President Trump is THEIR last chance.)
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To: sparklite2

Is this an area controlled by liberals, by chance?


5 posted on 11/18/2017 5:17:08 PM PST by Baynative ( "If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu.")
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To: Lurker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Drega


6 posted on 11/18/2017 5:17:08 PM PST by PLMerite ("They say that we were Cold Warriors. Yes, and a bloody good show, too." - Robert Conquest)
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Comment #7 Removed by Moderator

To: All

These lawyers need to dangle from a lamp-post or a tree limb.
Right next to the politicians that enable them


8 posted on 11/18/2017 5:18:14 PM PST by LegendHasIt
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To: PLMerite

I remember that one. He won’t be the last.

L


9 posted on 11/18/2017 5:19:12 PM PST by Lurker (President Trump isn't our last chance. President Trump is THEIR last chance.)
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To: sparklite2

The authorities do NOT like independent types, seeing them as a threat.

And there is a lot of speculation that the Desert Bullying has something to do with a plan for a L.A. - L.V. $hinkansen (bullet train) line, or vacuum tube, or whatever.


10 posted on 11/18/2017 5:21:19 PM PST by gaijin (Basically Obama lawyers would blatantly make up some totally groundless allegation against a fat cas)
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To: Baynative

The Inland Empire and desert areas were what passed for conservative when I lived there. Ah, but that was long ago and now my information comes from mainly second hand.


11 posted on 11/18/2017 5:21:49 PM PST by sparklite2 (-)
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To: sparklite2

“The bill went from $26,000 to $31,000.”

The Founders killed thousands of Brits and Tories for less. Get to it, California patriots, and take your state back from the filthy fascists.

Hint: American leftists can’t and won’t fight when confronted by armed citizens.


12 posted on 11/18/2017 5:22:05 PM PST by sergeantdave
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To: sparklite2

There’s absolutely no way this is constitutional. This is obviously an outgrowth of the law that allows lawfirms bringing civil lawsuits to recoup the costs of the court case from the loser - but that was never intended to apply to governments themselves!

It’s one thing for the city to hire private firms to do prosecutions on behalf of a strapped city government. It’s entirely another for the convicted to have to pay the court fees of the government bringing the prosecutions.

So the government charges the taxpayer to write the laws, then hires a lawyer to go after the taxpayer when he breaks those laws and then writes a law to have the taxpayer pay for the court costs when the taxpayer loses.

It’s total madness.


13 posted on 11/18/2017 5:23:04 PM PST by Skywise
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To: sparklite2

Further reason not to live or do business in California.


14 posted on 11/18/2017 5:25:08 PM PST by Fred Hayek (The Democratic Party is now the operational arm of the CPUSA)
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To: sparklite2
From the Declaration of Independence:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

15 posted on 11/18/2017 5:25:22 PM PST by bkopto
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To: sparklite2

"Don't fight it son, confess quickly! If you hold out too long you could jeopardize your credit rating,"

16 posted on 11/18/2017 5:27:18 PM PST by Vince Ferrer
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To: PLMerite

Wow.

I was taken aback by this sentence:

“On August 19, 1997, at about 2:30, New Hampshire state trooper Scott Phillips stopped Drega in the parking lot of LaPerle’s IGA supermarket in neighboring Colebrook for having too much rust on his pickup truck.”


17 posted on 11/18/2017 5:31:40 PM PST by bkopto
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To: PLMerite

Mr. Drega, a citizen of New Hampshire, took that state’s motto of “Live Free or Die” seriously.


18 posted on 11/18/2017 5:34:43 PM PST by bkopto
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To: Skywise; vette6387

Sounds like the lawyer rigging it so he gets $ from the fines; see this post by vette6387

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3606067/posts?page=7#7


19 posted on 11/18/2017 5:35:35 PM PST by WildHighlander57 ((WildHighlander57, returning after lurking since 2000)
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To: vette6387

There comes a point when one cannot help but notice. Time after time. Again and again. Decade after decade.


20 posted on 11/18/2017 5:38:00 PM PST by bkopto
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