The Latest Fad in Government Thievery

Thomas DiLorenzo
LRC Blog
February 25, 2008

The local media in Balimore have run quite a few stories recently about dozens of citizens who are willing to go to court over fake parking tickets. This is when you return to your car parked on a city street with a half hour or more still on the meter, and a “time expired” ticket already on your windshield. The cops say they’re “looking into it.” (Yeah, as soon as they’re finished looking into all those cop-taser incidents).

But there can never be enough money for government, whose motto is: You’ve got it, and we want it. The latest racket is for the tax collectors (oops! I mean, “police officers”) to write tickets without even getting up out of their swivel chairs at the station. They simply write tickets to randomly-chosen license plates, as this woman, who left Baltimore more than ten years ago, recently discovered. She was not even a resident of the state of Maryland any longer, and her car was no longer registered in the state, when she got a $23 ticket in 1997 which, with fines and interest, is now up to $1100. She’s being hounded by a collection agency employed by the city government, which has advised her to travel from Florida to contest the eleven-year-old ticket in court.

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