This just in! Hilary Clinton once picked up a $1 bill off the sidewalk and didn't report it to the local constabulary! After these messages our experts weigh in: does her ill-gotten gain indicate a pathology or just plain greed?
I say non-issue. How many of us have parked where we are not supposed to and Not gotten nailed for it?
Everyone at one time or another has flaunted the law, either knowingly or unknowingly,-although 17 parking tickets in 4 years IS NOT an outrageous number, I say its hypocritical to bash him for something EVERYONE has done at one time or another.
Well actually Scott, that depends. Did she pocket the one dollar bill or did she give it to a homeless person? If she kept it, its newsworthy because she IS the one saying we Americans need to give ALL our money to the down trodden!!
Actually in all seriousness though, Who cares about Hillary? We all know she won't get the nomination in '08, thus dooming us Americans to a 4 year (at least) Guilt trip, on just how racist and anti-women, we Americans really are.
Scott, down here in Racine we have a rabid left wing who went into coniptions because they thought the Executive made $7 in personal phone calls.
So take the attitude elsewhere.
If you think it is a non issue, state why....
(and try to do it without the snark.)
Sorry, but I think this IS DEFINITELY AN ISSUE!!! One or two tickets not paid is something I could understand as an oversight. But 17????? You've got to be kidding me! What it shows is a character flaw that would not necessarily eliminate him from the race, but it ought to make us do a double take. Does he think he is above the law? Was he just careless? How did he get away with having that many outstanding tickets for that length of time. I bet if the rest of us tried that, we would be hauled to jail on a warrant.
SO YES, IT IS AN ISSUE----ALBEIT A MINOR ONE IN THE LARGE SCOPE OF THINGS. Minor issues can turn into large issues if it's an "attitude problem".
It's that Kennedy attitude all over again: I'm so special that I don't need to follow the same rules you little people do. He's probably one of those jerks who zoom up way ahead when there's a lane closed on the freeway, instead of merging back where everyone else does.
Just one data point, to be sure. But a pattern is starting to emerge here.
Nice analogy Tom, I need to watch the bumper stickers on cars that do that.
I bet they do not say nuke the whales!
With the fate of the free world and the world's largest economy at stake, parking tickets will make all the difference! Who cares about war and health care and jobs when there are parking tickets involved! The voters will be outraged over parking tickets!
Shorter roseindigo: screwing up a war costing thousands of lives can be forgiven, but never parking tickets!
If you think a person who ignored paying their tickets does not matter, speak to that please.
"If you think a person who ignored paying their tickets does not matter, speak to that please." - Fred
This from someone whose choice for president:
- avoided serving in Vietnam while supporting the war
- was an alcoholic
- ran more than one company into the ground
- as governor, mocked a woman about to be executed
- flipped off a camera while governor
George W. Bush's isn't the first amoral president, and he certainly won't be the last since Americans don't want someone who is honest to them. Spare us the indignation over parking tickets when A) it doesn't matter and B) your standard-bearer has alot more in his past for which he should be ashamed. Nobody would have even heard of George W. Bush if not for his daddy and his name.
Is it possible he forgot?
Personally, we recently received notice of a parking ticket we didn't even know about, from 4 years ago. We never received notice of it then, and the information was sent to an address we haven't lived at in nearly 5 years.
- ran more than one company into the ground
OHMYGOD- someone who actually failed at something. Oh the indignation.
Your ABSOLUTELY right, Democrats have never FAILED at ANYTHING. (They just marry into THEIR money)
That settles it.
From now on I am voting Democrat.
Thank you SO very, very much for making me see the light!
How will I ever be able to repay you?
Jesus, 17 parking tickets!
The immoral bastard!
But seriously, y'know if this is the best you guys got against this guy you might as well give it up now. This parking ticket stuff is L-A-M-E.
Tell Rush to take 50 or 60 Oxycontins and go back to the drawing board... I bet he can come up with something better than this.
I tried to ask a serious question here about a Presidential candidate.
I asked to back up your opinion, all you lefties have done is ignore my requests.
IF YOU THINK IT IS NOT A BIG DEAL THEN STATE WHY.
BTW Deb, I think someone who ignores 17 tickets is a big deal. I would never do that.
If it was Bill McReynolds I am sure the nice folks over at PMW would make this out to be the biggest scandal known to man.
Remember his bumpergate? The man did everything legally and above board and they turned it into a scandal.
I asked a question here and you people are making light of it.
I see where your double standard lies.
I think it isn't a big issue. It casts a big more of a light on his character, so if more similar stories accumulate, maybe it is something, but parking tickets? I lived in Chicago for a bit and tried to avoid tickets as best I could, driving around for forever for a legal space, yet I wound up with 7-8 for such things as being a centimeter into the yellow curb around a hydrant, when I didn't realize it was the 4th week and not the 3rd for a street cleaning, sometimes for no apparent reason (which I disputed and won), and once even got towed from a snow zone when the only snow that hadn't melted was little piles in the shade. I didn't pay most of them because at first I didn't have the money and then I realized they weren't following up. (I later paid when I got a letter.)
Other than venting about how Chicago parking Nazis tried to make up a budget deficit by overticketing people with cars, (I could see Boston being similarly strict) my point is that it is a pretty minor thing and he was probably working his tail off as law review editor and accumulating tons of debt in law school while his classmates may have said not to worry about it.
that is a "bit more of light" not a "big more"
" I tried to ask a serious question here about a Presidential candidate.
I asked to back up your opinion, all you lefties have done is ignore my requests.
IF YOU THINK IT IS NOT A BIG DEAL THEN STATE WHY." - Fred
It's a ridiculous question, Fred, which I have already answered. The current president was convicted of drunk driving. Which is the bigger deal, Fred? Drunk driving or unpaid parking tickets? George W. Bush might be callous, cowardly, ignorant, and imperious, but his drunk driving conviction has nothing to do with his performance as president. Unpaid parking tickets have even less to do with Barack Obama's potential performance as president, and no voters will vote against someone because of unpaid parking tickets.
I can't believe you are taking this seriously. How about we consider what presidential candidates will actually do as president? Isn't that kind of important?
MY double standard? Fred you are SUCH a stitch -- but nevertheless....
If you've never lived in a large city you may not have had to deal with the urban plague of meter violation citations. It is a part of every large city-dweller's life.
Collecting vast numbers of parking tickets, however, seems to be the provenance of college and graduate students. My daughter tends to collect and ignore them like they will magically evaporate, her best friend had a car towed and impounded when she racked up some astronomical amount in parking tickets.
When I was in law school in Denver we all had dozens of meter violation (i.e. parking tickets)over our law school career because the only parking was street parking and we were right next to the City and County Building so the meter/parking police were especially vicious/efficient -- if your fed your meter but it expired in the middle of class you'd rather get the ticket than incur the wrath of the professor by going out to move your car (which if you had managed to find a parking place once you knew you'd never get THAT lucky again, yet it wasn't just expired meters -- you couldn't stay in a spot more than 2 hours -- people frequently went out and wiped the chalk marks off their tires to try and buy more time -- which would also get you a parking ticket if the meter guy was sharp, and they generally were).
Once I was a practicing attorney I did what all attorneys doing business at the nearby City and County Building did -- I parked wherever I could and gave the tickets to my firm to pay. It was considered standard operating procedure by every lawyer I knew, in fact I would be yelled at if I turned in a legitimate lot parking receipt -- clearly I'd wasted time by parking farther away and walking the several blocks to court.
Obama's 17 tickets don't concern me as immoral, they concern me as an indicator that he's dumber than I thought. In the worst case I ever knew of all the traffic scofflaws of my acquaintance nobody racked up that many and left them unpaid. It's just a stupid thing to do. And he's so well-spoken I assumed he was not stupid.
But, if this is the worst thing the guy ever did I stand by my observation that it won't be enough to derail him. You guys need to try again -- I'm sure someone on your side or in Hillary's camp is already hard at work on finding something on this guy that people might actually care about.
Also -- What's PMW? Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about.
And -- Why are you bringing Mac into this?
I thought it was merely a question about a presidential candidate's parking tickets.
I was unaware that this was an excuse to vindicate the past behavior of a local politician.
My mistake.
Deb, Progressive Majority Wisconsin, I did not mean to call out you in specifics, I meant the leftier posters.
CA POL JUNKIE, I can't even talk to you.
you are out of your mind.
Deb, I do thank you for that response, it was the most reasonable of all.
Btw, when I was at UWM, I paid for a parking pass, and collected precisely no tickets.
I'm sure that I have a few unpaid parking tickets out there but honestly don't remember. I think it is incredible that Obama could keep a list of unpaid parking tickets in the back of his mind for SEVENTEEN years then pay them only because he didn't want it to come out during his presidential run.
In a kinky sort of way, I would have had more respect for him if he just said "no, I'm not paying them - Harvard and the city of Cambridge got enough out of me over the years." But he sat on this until he HAD to do something, not because it was right or wrong.
I will say that someone with this kind of memory and attention to detail could make a great president - or card counter.
I just had an idea - instead of the IRS trying to keep everyone honest through the threat of audits, why don't we just force everyone to run for President every four years?
Hmmmm, actually debra stated the problem quite clearly when she said: "17 tickets don't concern me as immoral, they concern me as an indicator that he's dumber than I thought."
EXACTLY!!!
It's a minor precautionary note about someone, but it is one small indication of his character. As I said (and apparently Junkie wasn't listening again so he could bash Bush) it's no reason to eliminate him from consideration, but it does say something about the man.
I don't think it's a big deal at all. I break the law several times a day. This morning I broke the law at least three times- I drove 5MPH over the speed limit, I switched lanes without using my turn signals and I jaywalked.
The fact that he didn't pay the tickets until he announced his candidacy probably doesn't mean anything. I'm sure that as part of their "exploratory committees", prospective candidates have people that search public records for exactly this sort of thing. They probably discovered these tickets (from decades ago), and brought them to his attention.
BTW, parking tickets are a civil, not criminal offense.
DJ, so glad you pointed out that parking tickets are a civil offense. Next time I get one I'll ignore it. Good thing to know that one can. If Obama can do it, then so can I.
As for breaking laws, I'm sure all of us do it every single day in various little ways, which proves one thing to me-------WE HAVE TOO MUCH GOVERNMENT MAKING TOO MANY LAWS!!!
"CA POL JUNKIE, I can't even talk to you.
you are out of your mind." - Fred.
Oh, please... You can't talk to me because you can't reconcile getting in a huff about unpaid parking tickets when your man was a drunk driver. You live in a glass house, Fred.
I can not reconcile how you can not deal with a single issue on its own without trying to draw a parallel.
I could play the same game all day long.
It is counter productive and you use it to absolve the sins of your own.
Ya know junkie, EVERYONE, including you, has things in their background we'd rather not have out in the open. The point is that when someone runs for office, those things that come out in the open all need to be considered in the equasion. That does not mean one eliminates a candidate; but it does mean that you get a clearer view of his character, and thus you might get some clue of what to expect while he's in office. That also does not mean we refuse to vote for anyone, since everyone is guilty of something. What it does mean is that you make choices about someone.
In my case I know all of Bush's faults and voted for him anyhow because the other candidate had, in my opinion, more faults as well as policy issues with which I disagreed. Nor does it mean that because I agree with the need for the Iraq war I agree with everything Bush says or does. I could give you a whole list of stuff I am even very angry with him about.
So quit your crap. The issue is: Are 17 unpaid parking tickets part of a man's character? I say they are; so is drinking, extramarital affairs, cheating on your taxes, slips of the tongue, etc., etc.
BUT ULTIMATELY WE HAVE TO VOTE FOR SOMEONE----usually it's just the lesser of two evils according to our beliefs.
How exactly did he break the law? By not paying the tickets? But he did pay them, albeit years later.
Are we really going to start criticizing our politicians for paying their bills late?
Next, we'll be harping on them for smoking cigarettes! oh, wait.
Or, heaven forbid, that they look "too french", or "too stiff" or "too feminine" (or masculine)
Just more evidence that American political is devolving into trite, celebrity obsessed superficiality without any regard to substance.
Abraham Lincoln and FDR would never have been elected in today's America. Instead, we get politicians that have been shaped and molded by focus groups and aides to be as bland, unoffensive and telegenic as possible, who cares about substance. Today, the main qualification for president is that he or she looks good in front of a camera and comes across as someone who'd be fun to drink with.
Outside of the rarefied circles of political debate on the right and left, nobody knows what a candidate's position is on issues of vital importance, or cares for that matter. Like Neil Postman, I blame the TV.
"I can not reconcile how you can not deal with a single issue on its own without trying to draw a parallel."
I have. I have said that unpaid parking tickets don't matter when the president has a big impact on war, peace, the economy, the environment, etc. I don't think drunk driving matters next to those other issues. You seem to think that unpaid parking tickets represents a character flaw which should give one pause about supporting them for president. If you don't feel that drunk driving is a concern in a presidential candidate, then why are unpaid parking tickets?
"In my case I know all of Bush's faults and voted for him anyhow because the other candidate had, in my opinion, more faults as well as policy issues with which I disagreed."
In other words, you came to the same judgment I did: other things are more important than drunk driving. Surely unpaid parking tickets are even less important.
Junkie, you didn't get what I said once again. But that's OK. It seems like everything is black and white to you, either/or, this or that---when in life it never is that clear.
I do agree with DJ that we have allowed the political process to descend into trivia courtesy of our irresponsible news media. However, since that is pretty much all they give us to go on, that is all we have to base our vote on, unless we do some private digging which, for most of us, is extremely time consuming. I don't know about you, but I have a busy life to lead and can't research everyone on a ballot. That is the job of the news media, and they have let us down BIG TIME!!!
My philosophy is that every little bit helps me to define character of the person running for office, and 17 parking tickets that WERE NOT PAID FOR THAT MANY YEARS, is just one indication of a man's character. However, if his policies agree with my views, then I would likely vote for him anyhow, unless there is someONE who agrees with my views AND HAS A CLEAN SLATE too.
Another comment regarding this: By ignoring the small signals, that is exactly how we turn ourselves into victims of one sort or another.
If I'm in a lonely parking lot and some guy in scruffy unkempt clothing is heading in my direction, my caution button ought to be blinking red. If I ignore it and give him the benefit of the doubt, it could very well be I will be accosted or even killed. He may be harmless, but since I don't know that, my survivial instincts come into play---or at least they ought to come into play unless I've been indoctrinated to be a sheep.
It's the same when I vote. All the little bits of a picture (which are factual) fit together to give me some idea of who I'm dealing with. He/she doesn't have to be perfect, but they'd better be on the up and up in most of their actions, and to me recent actions count more than ancient history even though I throw ancient history into the picture somewhere. And yes, paying your bills late, smoking incessantly, drinking, cheating on a wife, saying one thing and doing another, lying to the media, all those tell me something about the person and his character. Because the small things also indicate how that person will handle most big things.
It's not rocket science.
(And god knows, I would never vote for anyone who looks "too french"!)
"Abraham Lincoln and FDR would never have been elected in today's America. Instead, we get politicians that have been shaped and molded by focus groups and aides to be as bland, unoffensive and telegenic as possible, who cares about substance."
Yes, I agree. However, we seem to be stuck with this sort of candidate, and as I said, the only option we seem to have is to vote for the lesser evil.
Democracy at its finest! What an example of democracy we are to the world----NOT!!!
I can't believe this issue has 34 posts on it and a contentious debate. Not because I can't believe people see it two ways, but because there just doesn't seem that much to discuss.
Anyway, Fred, I will defend Cal Pol Junkie's Bush point by trying to rephrase it yet again. Whatever CPJ originally meant, I think the point that if Bush got elected with a worse record that such minor things really aren't going to have much of an impact. It's true Obama has a sterling image and Bush didn't, but if such minor issues are going to come out first, then people may very well accept he isn't perfect and be less apalled if anything meaningful does come out. Perhaps Obama's camp itself helped this parking ticket thing come out.
Or, heaven forbid, that they look "too french", or "too stiff" or "too feminine" (or masculine)
-Has anyone else noticed that Hillary is the most manly looking of the democratic bunch, or is it just me?
inquiring minds wanna know!
Thank you for proving my point
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