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Serpo
29th July 2015, 03:24 PM
New Online Petition Seeks to Make Traffic Fines Based on One’s Income (http://www.activistpost.com/2015/07/new-online-petition-seeks-to-make.html)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TKp-M6jgAns/VbgHNVQeKBI/AAAAAAAAqIk/7ygmiehtQ2o/s320/crazytrafficlight.jpg (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TKp-M6jgAns/VbgHNVQeKBI/AAAAAAAAqIk/7ygmiehtQ2o/s1600/crazytrafficlight.jpg)By Melissa Dykes (http://www.thedailysheeple.com/new-online-petition-seeks-to-make-traffic-fines-based-on-ones-income_072015)

Because “no one should have to choose between paying a traffic ticket and feeding their family,” Rich Arp of San Francisco, California has started a new Change.org petition (https://www.change.org/p/jerry-brown-mark-leno-philip-ting-tie-traffic-citation-fines-to-income?utm_source=action_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=355744&alert_id=ETYCGrwkfa_uMimNKRXzXjcHVOZhZywejYatNgJIt %2BpI5mwhjYEMxcbUVLI2Sqh%2F%2BiTEeHqbX4d) to make it so that people’s traffic fines are based on their income.

For many lower income people a $375 traffic citation could mean a huge chunk of their monthly income, while that same ticket for a wealthier person is laughable. This means the deterrent and fine only affects the poor, undermining one of the most important tenets of our justice system. Let the punishment fit the crime. In many European countries traffic citation are tied to a person’s income. These “day-fines” ensure that every person, whether rich or poor, feels the same punishment in the exact same way. Arp does have a point. For some people, $375 is a week’s income (or more) these days. Should something as low on the totem pole as a minor traffic infraction leave a person unable to pay their electric bill or feed their children? Who even comes up with these ticket amounts in the first place?

This doesn’t even take into account what happens if the person can’t pay the ticket and winds up in court with added court fees and additional fines.

Travel should be a right (unless we really are all slaves), but more and more travel by personal vehicle is being taxed and fined into oblivion. Once the new “track and tax” systems are in place nationwide (http://www.thedailysheeple.com/its-here-oregon-first-state-to-launch-pay-by-the-mile-driving-tax-via-gps-tracking_072015), only people who want to be GPS tracked and pay for every mile driven (in addition to licensing fees, inspections, gas and gas taxes, insurance, and whatever fines or tickets the person gets plus the cost of the car itself and its maintenance) will drive. Everyone else will be forced to live in a large urban center where they can rely solely on public transportation … or a bicycle. (By the way, bicycle taxes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2013/12/27/a-tax-on-cycling-too-steep-a-hill-to-climb-or-inevitable-reality/) are likely coming next…)

On the other hand, traffic tickets are just another form of extortion (http://www.copblock.org/8972/whats-the-difference-between-police-issuing-tickets-and-the-act-of-extortion/) anyway. As Arp points out, “These fines have become ‘taxation by citation,’ sometimes financing 90% of a town’s budget and their police to write specious tickets.”




Hmm. Is that why we see police departments setting up crosswalk traps (http://www.thedailysheeple.com/video-cops-set-up-trap-to-generate-revenue-er-catch-dangerous-criminals_072014) where a plainclothes officer will walk back and forth across a street multiple times in a row just to catch people not waiting and ticket them?

In Texas, for example, some tickets now magically come with added “surcharges” for “driver responsibility” (http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/DriverLicense/drp.htm)… extra fines that amount to hundreds of dollars more than the ticket itself paid every year for three years to a private corporation because…? They can. If the person doesn’t pay these extra tacked on fees, they are threatened with having their license suspended and their right to drive taken away completely. One is for not having insurance. If the person couldn’t afford insurance to begin with, how are they going to afford the extra $750 in fees outside of the ticket for not having insurance? By the way, if the person is found to have had insurance at the time of the ticket and can prove they did but just couldn’t find their card at the time of the traffic stop, [I]they still have to pay the $750 surcharge.

So what do you think? Would tying ticket amounts to income at least be a step in the right direction?

Then again considering the way many departments finance themselves largely through ticketing, if this isn’t capped in the other direction, we will likely see a shift to police mostly ticketing the owners of expensive vehicles to get the bigger fines…

Of course, once computer-run “driverless” cars dominate the roads, this will all be a moot point anyway, and a lot of traffic cops will have to find something else to do with their time.

Over 3,000 have signed Arp’s petition so far.http://www.activistpost.com/2015/07/new-online-petition-seeks-to-make.html

ximmy
29th July 2015, 03:26 PM
Just like in court...

The working man fined $10,000.00

The welfare recipient fined $10.00

vacuum
29th July 2015, 08:15 PM
It makes sense that the whole idea of punitive fines should scale with income, otherwise breaking the law is less important the more money you make. It will also give police less of a reason to harass you if you're driving an old beat up car, because they don't get as much money from pulling those over vs someone driving a new Mercedes.

The other thing that really needs to be addressed is that the revenue from these tickets and people's confiscated property shouldn't go to the justice system. Otherwise that is a huge conflict of interest. The police departments should be paid through pre-allocated taxes only. The revenue from fines should go to paying off the state's debt or road improvements or something.

Glass
29th July 2015, 08:34 PM
so the answer would be to drive a beater? That wasnt road worthy and likely to get attention anyway?

The answer is to do away with citations that are frauds. Of course that wont happen. Basically they don't want you to drive. That is clearly the message.

What would be better would be to work out the annual revenue from these tickets. Divide up that amount according to the number of tax payers with Means Testing determining what % proportion each individual should pay according to their means.

Then the Govt gets its money. People do not get robbed by highway men and the police can go back to policing, which seems to be something they don't want to do.... unless they can use their guns of course.

What he is proposing is a piss weak excuse both for a law and for a law maker. Guy needs to grow some kahuna's and go after the root cause of the problem. Institutionalized piracy.

Of course means testing is the great socialism ideal: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

Full quote for reference:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Socialism..... robbery from stupid people by people who think they are specially excluded but are in fact just equally stupid.