Reuters reports:
California legislators have raised fines for traffic infractions to some of the highest in the United States to generate revenue, and the poor are bearing an unfair burden, losing cars and jobs because they cannot pay them, civil rights activists said on Friday.
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area said in a new report that the $490 fine for a red light ticket in California was three times the national average. The cost was even higher if motorists wanted to attend traffic school in lieu of a conviction or were late paying.
"Our state is raising money off the backs of California families to balance the budget for special projects, and it's using traffic tickets as a revenue generator instead of to protect safety, instead of to do justice, said Elisa Della-Piana, the group's legal director.
The nightmare created when Jerry Brown allowed public employees to unionize continues to reverberate. Those sweet pensions that the unions got the legislature to grant are just about unaffordable now and are becoming more so every day. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but Brown doesn't care since the 80 year old governor will soon be feeding the worms. His dad Edmund helped build the state, and the son has now done just about everything he can to destroy it.
It will be grimly interesting to see what new fees, taxes, fines and costs the desperate blue staters will come up with to curse us with to try to meet the costs of all the promises they have made in our name over the last few decades.
You may not have heard but there is a bill in the legislature to give California a single-payer health plan system. To fund it they will levy a tax of $490/mo on every person in the state. That's what I call progressive.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to be leaving CW. They want to turn CA into Venezuela. Now I just have to sell my house. It's listed.
Best of luck with the sale. Once you get to Arizona, you might want to open a refugee center for Californians. We'll need it if they keep on like they are.
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ReplyDeleteI lived in CA for over 30 years. I'm glad I moved out 5 years ago. I miss Emeryville, Solana Beach, Encinitas but they're still nice places to visit, I wouldn't want to live there anymore.
ReplyDeleteAtlas Shrugged anyone?
ReplyDeleteGo Galt.
Deletepoor and working people speed more?
ReplyDeleteis this already hitting the poor and working people more? simply raising the fees hits the same people, only harder.
don't get me wrong, i think any indirect tax like this for gov is despicable, but lets not make this a class issue...
if we increase $ penalties for drug convictions, the argument will be it unfairly targets minorities...
In my state, also a pension bankrupt state, DOT officers are everywhere pulling over commercial drivers. Pulled one of our customers over 4X in the past two weeks.
ReplyDeleteaverage fine is $300 and I think a lot of it depends on the mood of the revenue agent and your attitude when pulled over. Not sure how many more owner operators can afford to keep their trucks on the road when getting fined once a month or more. And not for obvious safety issues like cracked brake drums or leaking wheel seals. More like a reflector light fell off or brake lines not painted.