Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Kerry used campaign funds to pay for parking tickets
No decently run public company in America would allow its employees to expense parking tickets, even if they were, er, "incurred" on company business. Not only is the idea inherently offensive, but it creates a moral hazard. Why would employees be careful about where they park if the company is going to indemnify them for the ticket?
So while it may be just fine under our laughable campaign finance laws for members of Congress and presidential candidates to use campaign funds to pay civil penalties -- a parking fine is a civil penalty, in case nobody noticed -- it is wholly inconsistent with the experience of most of the American electorate. The interesting question is whether John Kerry understands that and does not care, or whether he just doesn't understand it.
Via Roger.
6 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed May 04, 05:27:00 PM:
I'm no Kerry fan, but I am told by my building contractor that he factors parking tickets into all of his downtown jobs, because otherwise the crew trucks would be unable to get close enough. I hear that FedEx and their ilk also negotiate bulk ticket rates with the city. It all sounds plenty immoral, I'm just not sure about the "no decent company" aspect of your argument -- M.
By 
TigerHawk, at
Wed May 04, 05:38:00 PM:
It's not immoral, it is just asinine.
However, it is one thing for a building contractor, in a specific project, to just decide that the exigencies of a specific job site require violating local parking ordinances. There are probably also places where delivery companies have to make certain compromises with local officials because otherwise their productivity would collapse. It is another thing for a politician's campaign to take the point of view that it will pay the tickets of its staff who drive around in its cars.
By Gordon Smith, at
Wed May 04, 09:36:00 PM:
...but when Bush or Santorum use public money for fund-raising junkets or partisan demagoguery, it's somehow better...
Damn that John Kerry and his purple hearts and his parking tickets!
By TigerHawk, at
Wed May 04, 09:37:00 PM:
By TigerHawk, at
Thu May 05, 08:50:00 AM:
I'm not even going so far as Cass -- my point was only that this is yet another example of politicians acting in ways that suggest tht they do not understand the reality of everyday Americans. Kerry and Bush are both wealthy men by any measure, but Bush at least understands what makes middle Americans tick.
By TigerHawk, at
Sat May 07, 03:11:00 PM:
I dunno, Cass. That's a pretty rough standard. Under any plausible reading of that theory, Bush's DUI bust should have disqualified him.
However, that you have managed to live in DC your entire life and never have a parking ticket is beyond astonishing. I lived there one summer, and I always tried to obey the law, but I found the farookin' signs to be incomprehensible and the cops so intolerant that I did, in fact, suffer the slings and arrows of a ticket. And Princeton -- don't even get me going. This is the only place I have lived where the cops write tickets for "encroaching on the line." So not only do you have to feed the meter, you have to park, like, perfectly.
I view most parking tickets -- certainly those for overtime meters -- as the moral equivalent of driving 56 miles an hour. A violation of the law to be sure, but not immoral.
But, if one of my employees got a speeding ticket, I wouldn't pay for it.
