A Key Reason America is No Longer Great: The privatization of state and (especially) local governments, in both the services they provide and in the way these governments (especially the local ones) are funded. [UPDATED.]

Coberly/ July 21, 2016 10:26 am

mike

instead of begging to differ, why don’t you try to explain your case better?

it sounds to me like you are arguing that ignoring traffic violations in black neighborhoods will result in more black on black crime including homicide.

that could well be the case, but i don’t think anyone is suggesting that a lack of normal policing is the answer to police killing black (or white) people who are not posing a threat.

so whatever you are proposing has failed to make itself clear to me.

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Me/ July 21, 2016 11:15 am

Yup. Just think of all the homicides that have been prevented by the incessant traffic stops of black motorists for a burned-out taillight.

In Michigan, btw, by law you get just a warning for a burned-out taillight or turn signal, since people don’t necessarily even know that the light has burned out. You get the light replaced and mail in or drop off at the courthouse a receipt for the repair within 10 days, and there is no fine.

Which makes a big difference. A huge amount of excessive policing of minor traffic violations, real or fabricated, is the result of conflict-of-interest funding of local government, including and probably principally law enforcement–the police, the courts, the local jails. And the less wealthy you are, the likelier you are to have a burned out taillight or turn signal, because you are likelier to have an older car. Michigan’s law removes this issue.

And the federal government should enact it nationwide–which, in anticipation of a states’-rights/freedom/it’s-unconstitutional push-back, I’ll just say at the outset that it would be clearly constitutional under the Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause and specific authorization in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section 5.

— An exchange between reader and occasional AB poster (on Social Security) Dale Coberly and me this morning in the Comments thread to Mike Kimel’s controversial July 19 post titled “Interactions Between Black People and the Police”

If the public really wants meaningful change and wants to make America great again, one critical component would be to reverse the privatization of what should be, were for most of this country’s history until the Reagan Revolution, and are in virtually every other advanced country, government functions.  And to drastically limit the percentage of government spending that can be paid for by fines for traffic violations and ordinance violations.

And, yes, federal statutes can, within the parameters of the Constitution, be enacted to accomplish these things.

Notwithstanding Freedom and Liberty and states’ and municipalities God-given right to violate individuals’ constitutional rights that have nothing to do with gun ownership, religion, or the purchasing of officeholders via campaign donations or personal-finance donations.*

Really.

*Sentence rewritten for clarity after posting. 7/21 at 5:16 p.m.

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UPDATE: Comments thread exchanges:

Warren/ July 21, 2016 2:15 pm

“[One] critical component [is] to reverse the privatization of what should be… government functions.”

Such as?

 

J.Goodwin/ July 21, 2016 3:08 pm

Prison management?

 

Me/ July 21, 2016 5:25 pm

Ambulance and firefighter services, for another. Which bill people several thousand dollars a shot.

And entire police departments and court systems and local jails are supported by exorbitant fines and court fees and late fees and this fee and that fee for having gotten a traffic ticket or some such.

Didn’t used to be that way. Used to be that normal taxes paid for these things. Y’know; back when America was great.

 

Lyle/ July 21, 2016 4:26 pm

Note that Ca has a similar thing called a fix-it ticket, that once you get it fixed you drive to a police station have a cop sign that it is fixed and you get the ticket dismissed

The New York Times has been writing a lot on various aspects of this issue, but it’s completely ignored by most candidates for, well, any government office.  Bernie Sanders was the exception, and I think (but I’m not sure) that Elizabeth Warren has discussed some aspects of it, as well.

But Hillary Clinton should discuss it.  It’s tremendously important to many, many people’s lives, and lies at the very heart of much of the blacks-versus-police-and-the-courts issue.  Clinton shouldn’t dodge this.

Added 7/21 at 5:41 p.m.