Balancing the Budget with Traffic Fines

If you want to help with the budget deficit, get a traffic ticket or two or three.

A $70 failure-to-buckle-up citation ended up costing an L.A. driver more than ten times that amount, after a shitload of fees and surcharges were added. Damn, I thought only banks could do that. And cell phone carriers, hotels, car rental agencies…

I’m actually in favor of this approach to generating revenue, but ONLY for traffic laws that actually protect the public. If somebody wants to go barreling down the highway without a seatbelt, that person is not endangering anybody else.

In the town where I live, everyone (everyone except the police department, for whatever reason) seems to agree that the city could balance its budget overnight if the cops started ticketing drivers who go careening through pedestrian crosswalks.

You already pay an arm and a leg and your firstborn for parking in a handicapped space if you aren’t handicapped, and driving by yourself in the carpool lane. And DUI of course.

Once in awhile somebody actually gets a ticket for driving too slowly and/or failure to get out of the passing lane so another driver can pass. And once in awhile doesn’t cut it. THIS is where we need a fine so brutal, so crippling, that all motorists will keep a constant eye on the rearview mirror (just like we all learned in Driver Ed). As soon as another vehicle appears in the rearview mirror — “oh shit, somebody wants to pass; I’ve gotta pull over right now!”

And above all, let’s set these traffic fines on a sliding scale. Yes, I’m a class warfare-mongering socialist who hates the free enterprise system; and that story out of Switzerland just made my day. A $290,000 fine for speeding in your Ferrari? Goddamn right!

If you’ve got money coming out of your ears and you’re driving recklessly, or clogging up the left lane while you eat, text, comb your hair and change the CD — you’ll help us balance the budget. Works for me.

And in other news, the latest from the Vatican: “My Pedophiles Had Nothing To Do With It. It Was Their Pedophiles!”

OK, we’ve got that settled.