Monday, December 19, 2011

Trash Can Tickets In Queens

Trash Can Tickets In Queens
The scrooge award goes to the New York City Sanitation Department for the $100 tickets.

Raymond Janson says he received the $100 fine for putting his garbage cans at the curb 30 minutes early.

Read more: http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/trash-can-tickets-in-queens-20111219-lgf#ixzz1h2yg2tH3

------------------
When I say that cities are acting like HOAs, this is what I mean: they have discovered how much $$$ there is in abusing your authority by creating all sorts of absurd rules and then soaking people with fines for violating them. The police power becomes a revenue source. The same thing happened when cities discovered that mandating HOA and condo development was lucrative, which amounts to misusing the power to control land use and turning it into a revenue source instead of thinking about how best to develop the area under their jurisdiction. The political process, especially at the local level, is supposed to reflect and embody many values. Unfortunately in this country the political process has become an appendage of the market.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

> the political process has become an appendage of the market.

"I suppose I'm something of a lapsed capitalist/free-marketeer these days. The praises and mantras that we hear true believers repeating now give rise to reservations. Take the one, for instance, about the market operating via its price structure to service those with the greatest need as expressed by their willingness to pay. It doesn't. It caters to the whims of those with the ability to pay. A little reflection will show that there's a large and profound difference. If every shopping mall in the USA were nuked, I doubt if anyone would go without anything that they truly needed."

- James P. Hogan
"Greed" September 5, 2006
Mr. Hogan is a two-time winner of the Prometheus Award (1983 and 1993) given by the Libertarian Futurist Society