Dear John: Two weeks ago I received a speeding ticket for traveling 65 mph in a 40 mph zone.
I am not denying that I was speeding. After sitting in a traffic jam on 287 for over 40 minutes, I became frustrated and found an exit to a side road, where the speeding occurred.
This was my first speeding ticket in over 50 years. The ticket was $175. With New Rochelle court penalties, it totaled $238. I paid that amount.
Now two weeks later I received a notice from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles about an assessment for $300, which was called the driver responsibility assessment statement.
This means that my first ticket in over 50 years totaled $538.
When our vehicles are disabled due to bad road conditions and neglected potholes, our recourse is a waste of time, energy and cost of repairs. Just thought this would be of interest to you. J.S.
Dear J.S. The only thing I’m amazed about is that you have avoided getting a ticket for 50 years!
Traffic tickets are the cost of doing business in modern society. I can only assume you’ve been incarcerated for the past half-century or you would have gotten one. Glad to know you are finally out of jail, J.S.
Look, the job of modern states is to find ways to separate people from their money. Fining careless, guilt-ridden motorists extra for their misdeeds is just one way New York state — in fact, every state — stays solvent.
Thanks for your donation.
But let me get serious for a minute. You shouldn’t speed. But you, I and just about everyone else on the road does. When it’s your time, you will get nabbed.
My last ticket was about seven years ago in New Jersey, where I live. It was a local cop. You just shut up, take the ticket and deal with it later. (I don’t want my obit to say John got shot after mouthing off to a traffic cop.)
You learn in NJ that you never plead guilty. The municipal cops and judges will almost always let you plead the traffic stop down to a non-moving violation. That’ll save you the insurance surcharge.
But there’s a catch. You’ll have to pay a premium like the one you did in New York. So, essentially, the cop and judge will cut you a deal that steals the surcharge from the car insurance company and gives it to the town.
Why the insurance industry allows this is anyone’s guess.
The only other thing I have to say is, “Slow down, cowboy!”
Dear John: I always look forward to reading your column and agree with you most of the time. I just need to comment about your idea for people with IRA money to be allowed to purchase real estate without being penalized.
I assume you are not talking about retired people, since most of them already own a home and certainly don’t need to buy another one. Renting it out is also a bad idea, since most people wouldn’t know how to be a landlord.
As you correctly say (and you are the only one saying it), keeping the interest rates near zero is hurting people greatly. Our government (both parties) is at fault for having turned over control to the Federal Reserve.
Personally, I am only spending my money on necessities due to these abysmal rates. It’s almost the same as putting your money under the mattress (except for the fire hazard!).
Of course, since the Dow is doing great, everyone in the country is also doing great, don’t you think? (ha, ha, ha) LJD
Dear LJD: If you read my column, you already know what I think: The Federal Reserve’s policies are causing the greatest and most unfair transfer of wealth in this nation’s history.
Savers are essentially paying a hidden tax so that Washington can help its friends on Wall Street.
And, yes, Congress messed up this country’s fiscal policy so badly that it essentially dumped the problem on the Fed, which did its best to screw things up even more.
Now my suggestion: I believe anyone should be allowed to take money out of retirement accounts and invest in real estate on some tax-advantaged basis.
Why should we discriminate against any particular group? There should be, however, some limitations based on the amount of money in the retirement accounts. The details, I have to admit, are still being worked out in my head (since nobody else seems interested).
As you say, the Dow Jones industrial average is in its own little world thanks to intervention by riggers, including central banks from around the world.
So why is investing in the Dow any safer for retirees than allowing them to buy another house with their money?
And, in a bigger sense, buying a house helps the US economy. Forcing people to use their retirement money to buy stocks and bonds simply enriches the rich on Wall Street.