Like most Americans, I pride myself on being able to detect irony at seven paces. Skimming through the news, I can certainly detect sarcasm (which is to irony what a cannon is to sidearms), as in this first paragraph from Reason magazine’s online pages:
Los Angeles City Council today approved a new citation system.… This new system allows the Los Angeles Police Department to cite residents for a whole host of minor crimes that used to result in warnings (and potentially misdemeanor charges if police felt like pressing the matter). Now it’s a way for the city to extract more money from residents for minor issues, and I’m sure that won’t be abused at all.
The point that Scott Shackford is making: the new system will be abused. When he tells us that “the city predicts it’s going to take in $1.59 million in revenue a year,” we see the reason for predictable abuse: money as well as power.
Mr. Shackford worries about the effects, about the people who will be caught in this net for all sorts of small little infractions of laws that they probably don’t even know exist. He wonders, he says, “if I should warn my neighbors, several of whom have friendly dogs they take outside to walk without leashes. It’s rarely a problem and I don’t hear complaints (except for this one little dog with a Napoleonic complex. There’s always one).”
My big worry? These sorts of laws (like: don’t put signage up on telephone poles, though “everybody is doing it”) hit the poor the hardest. The fines, starting at $250 a pop, are not insignificant.
A few of those and you might as well call yourself a member of a persecuted class.
Welcome, friend. The modern state seems bent on making us all members of that class.
No irony, here; just Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
8 replies on “Sweat the Small Stuff”
Apparently, this is typical for “D” run municipalities. I just read an article about Ferguson, yes, that Ferguson, having been run that way for years. And, who gets the most punishment? Why, the poor minorities who continue to vote for “D“ ‘s.…. Sounds to me like the KKK is still alive and well without the robes and hoods.
Time to put a hard stop to ‘predatory government.’ Where government fears the people…
This city council DOES have to run for reelection. And people don’t HAVE TO live there.
People get the government they deserve ( settle for).
This is nothing new.
It’s been going on at the federal level for yeas.
The question is, when are the sheeple going to wake up?
That was supposed to read “years”.
So much for spell check. LOL
and in that vein, “what immigration problem”…
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/09/17/Cops-searching-for-teenage-illegal-alien-for-cartel-assassination-attempt-In-Texas
Los Angeles City Council is an overblown nest of busy bodies, who do nothing but think about ways to raise income. & yet at the same time they permit sub council members to stop a multi-million dollar Target project because the building is too tall. Hundreds of jobs would be created. Jobs so people can afford these numbskull fines the council has just dreamed up.
Why is Los Angeles in such dire straits? Because of all the give me programs. If you know how to work the system (& certain “refugees” learned this under Soviet rule) you can have almost free rent, get paid to go to school, get start-up money for businesses, free healthcare & cash & prizes. LA is broke; but rather than fix the system they’ll just fine the rest of us so that more dollars can go into the black hole of Government waste.
Like in the red light camera scam. The money hungry muni’s made the yellow lights shorter, and yet shorter to increase the revenue stream. The cities will slowly but steadily, increase enforcement, not for safety’s sake, but to feed their crack-like addiction to government spending.
Drik’s point above is on target. I would only add that the government we settle for will find a way to extract money from it’s residents. Legal or otherwise.