I’ve been receiving food benefits in New York State since April, 2010. (What I got is a plastic card with my photo ID. The card is scanned at checkout counters. I did not get “food stamps” or scrip. I thought of applying for the card because by the end of each month, my $1,065 monthly Social Security check left me with enough money for a roll and coffee a day. I have no bank account, no phone, no credit card, no employment. My only periodic work is as volunteer arbitrator at Bronx County Small Claims Court, and as an arbitrator with the attorney-client fee dispute program at NY County Lawyers Assn. The 90 I got on the Census Bureau test did not lead to a job. Applications at, say, Barnes & Noble, did not lead to a job. NYC (under Mayor Giuliani) a bit more than ten years ago and backed by HUD, manipulated property taxes to destroy my family’s real estate management business — but that is another story. (I will add that one Anthony Weiner sent an improper letter to the bankrutpcy judge in that matter, filled with lies and smears against my family.)
What I have learned, as recently as today, by way of my poverty status, is that the notion that liberal politicians are compassionate is a crock.
I had a hearing for seat-belt only violation, this morning. After realizing that I lost my case on the facts, notwithstanding technically unreliable testimony from the police officer and his acknowledgment that he did not give everyone he stopped for seatbelt violation a ticket, I applied to the hearing officer for relief as a hardship case and offered as proof my benefits card.
The hearing officer said he could not consider that request and told me that I must pay in two weeks and have 30 days to appeal. The fine– $130, which is 12.2 percent of my social security income. He directed me to the payment counter for more information. At the payment counter, I was told that I could
request an additional two weeks to pay, but I had to return on another day to make that request. Could I get mroe time? No, was the abrupt answer.
Where, in all the instructions from the hearing officer and the payment-counter clerk is a sense of empathy for poor people? There is none, of course.
Note that the fine for a seat belt violation in New York is the same as the fine for cell phone violation. Common sense should counsel that a cell phon violation is rather more serious than seat belt, but we have scant exercise of common sense by liberals in NY state (with conservatives meekly following the left’s lead).
I would also note that when Gov. Mario Cuomo (Cuomo I) gave us seat belt laws, he assured us that summonses would not issue for seat belt violation only. And so, the fact that we now have seat belt-only summonses is proof of the duplicity of public officials in New York.
Just one other point. My hearing was conducted in a building on East 125th Street in Manhattan. One does not see people in suits and ties as defendants here. Now as to the suits and ties who perhaps drive cars(or are driven in cars) with heavily tinted windows — I doubt that such people will receive seast belt only violations. How can the police officer serve a summons for seat belt violation only if he cannot see through the car window?
And so — where is the anti-nanny state conservative who will demand an end to seat belt only violations — OR the requirement that heavily tinted windows in cars should also be prima facie indication that a violation for a serious traffic offense is taking place on the other side of the tinted class?
And where is the conservative who will demand a human face be applied by government toward the poor who get hit with seat belt only violations and are
liable for a fine that is the same amount as a fine for cell phone violation?
I would add that if liberals can establish violations for seat belt only violations, accompanied for draconian fines — vis-a-vis poor people, why should we be surprised the left believes it can get away with Obamacare — and, indeed, any laws it the left can think of, provided the laws are tied to a health peg. Also, if healthcare costs are the justification for seast belt only violations, how soon until seniors will be fined for getting ill, and, therby, adding health care expenses to society at large?
There is, I believe, another word for “nanny-state.” The word is — tyranny.
