Ding ding ding! We have a winner in the Toxic Governance Sweepstakes that is modern America.
Georgia man Connor Cato got slapped with a $1.4 million speeding ticket near Savannah.
Assuming it was a mistake, he called local authorities only to be told it was genuine — with a functionary reportedly threatening, “You either pay the amount on the ticket or you come to court.”
Cato discovered, after likely suffering a near-heart attack, that it was simply a design quirk in the software the court system uses.
It’s still enough to have him (or anyone else!) shouting Georgia delenda est.
And can you imagine a better metaphor for the absolute state of the social contract we make with our elected officials and their administrative henchmen?
Hand over your last nickel or face the consequences . . . . Oh no wait, oopsie! That’s wrong — but it was someone else’s fault.
And the lesser fine Cato will pay ends up in the same hands that created this sad-as-it-is-funny situation in the first place.
Do we really want to trust Larry, Moe, and Curly with our tax dollars?
Cali residents will soon be asking themselves the same question: Six cities will be setting up street cameras that will auto-ticket speeders as of next year.
A fine idea on its own: Speeding is as antisocial as shoplifting.
Yet this is California, a state that’s spent almost $10 billion on a high-speed rail system that doesn’t exist (and never will).
Where crime and drugs run rampant in cities; woke school boards dumb down curricula; and years of government incompetence on forestry have created a massive wildfire problem.
Not an outfit anyone should trust when it proposes yet another way of reaching into the public’s pockets.
Don’t forget Geraldine Tyler, whose house was confiscated in 2010 by Hennepin County, Minn., over $15,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties and sold for $40,000, with the difference insanely pocketed by officials.
Happily, the Supreme Court ruled the move unconstitutional in May. But Tyler had to go to the highest court in the land for redress, and it took more than a decade!
As HL Mencken once joked, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
From Cali to Georgia to the Empire State, our public employees — by behaving like our comically incompetent bosses — are trying hard to prove him right.