I'll share a lengthy anecdote (from CO, not OH), of how absurd these suspensions can get in strange edge-cases. Also, i think this shows how most processes have "bugs", but people don't think of them that way when it isn't in software.
One day, while helping someone get their car out of an impound, i was informed by the officer on duty that my license was not showing as valid. They couldn't tell why though, said the status/notes listed made no sense to her, and i should contact the Denver office to find out what is going on. I was rather confused, as it had been many years since i had last been pulled over, for a minor speeding ticket.
Denver was similarly confused by the details. After some research, they tell me what appears to have happened was i paid my ticket years ago by check, in person. They recorded they received the check on time, but either due to a clerical error or something (they aren't sure), a late fee was assessed on my ticket prior to the payment being processed. The fee was, i think, $5.
Around this same time, i moved, and while i changed my address with the USPS, i didn't with the DMV. The DMV was thus sending my "you owe us $5" letters with "Do Not Forward" instructions via the USPS, who were knowingly delivering the mail to the wrong address (my old place).
When i discovered all of this, years later, my license had been suspended for 54 weeks due to delinquency. In CO, if your license has been suspended for over 1 year, you may not just satisfy the debt, you must also retake your driving test. But since i didn't take my original test in CO, i would also need to re-apply for a permit and pass a written permit exam before being allowed to schedule my drivers test.
The poor lady i spoke with in the Denver office recognized the sheer absurdity of everything she was telling me, but could do nothing to fix it. She also let me know the outstanding debt was now $15.
I was pulled over for something, actually it might just have been this.
"Your license isn't valid." What? Why is it suspended?
"It's not suspended, it's just not valid."
What the hell does that mean?
"You'll have to talk to the DOL. And you can't drive your vehicle from here."
I'm meant to be working the next night, so I need to figure this out.
Go to the DOL's website. It literally says my license is valid, in bold green letters. Huh. For fun, I click on "Pay any amounts owed (citations, infractions, etc.)". "There are no amounts owed on your license."
I take print outs of both of these, and am at the DOL when it opens the next morning.
Similar to you. I paid, in person, by check, a fine a few years prior. Because it wasn't "processed" til after midnight, my license was suspended, but unsuspended the same (next) day. But (and I'm not sure how this is justified) there was a fee attached to removing the suspension (that I didn't know about), so my license was "invalidated".
To their credit, at least, the lady at the DOL was very sympathetic. She stamped all my print outs with a DOL stamp, and then all the print outs of the process to revalidate my license (to try to support my case, that there was no way I could have known this, as the DOL's own website tells me my license is valid and is not subject to any restriction).
Went to court to contest the "driving without a valid license". Still took me 20 minutes of repeating, several times over, to the prosecutor this whole flow, the first fifteen minutes of which he was insistent that none of my paperwork mattered because "they would have sent you a letter, so you must have known", before finally capitulating and dropping it.
They're pretty bad at that step. They'll swear up and down it was sent, but questions like "to where" and "was it the same address I have on my driver's license," or "do you have the slightest shred of evidence" are met with deaf ears.
I had the damnedest time once explaining to the clerk why it mattered that the signature she was looking at wasn't my name, wasn't my handwriting, wasn't attached to a document with my name, and wasn't dated within a year of any ticket associated with my license. Her entire algorithm was (document_in_file && ink_in_signature_box).
It might be acceptable if you were at least entitled to a proper trial when they made blatant mistakes. The status quo causes problems though.
My license was suspended for a few weeks for a case of mistaken identity. It wasn’t deliberate identity theft as far as I could tell, but no one would tell me how I ended up the target of the court summons which I missed.
Fortunately everyone was friendly and willing to wipe my record clean, but that could easily have been much worse.
The police there are absolutely corrupt. The way the system works there is that you buy your job. This is what creates the incentive to find ways to use the system to make money. On the other hand, it also creates optimization incentives as well, so that things get done more quickly.
The harsh reality is that no system is perfect. Each one usually has its +/-'s and usually depends on which side of the fence you're sitting on.
One thing I like about America is that we have the same levels of corruption, you can just codify the same process in the law and call it due process
Many states, agencies have “expedited processing” options built in
Looks like Colorado’s DMV did not
At the state and municipal level, you might be surprised how easy it is to lobby for a tiny tweak you would personally like. You don’t have to be registered to vote there, and many times its not even a popular vote required. Just the mayor or a 5 member county board who are even more of a grifter than you are.
You make a very good point. Passport processing is another good example. However, it is so much more fun to pay someone directly where you know it is going to feed their family vs. just being an additional tax to the government. One guy once told me that my money was helping buy his kids books for school. I don't know if he was lying, but I appreciated the thought.
Have you lived in Vietnam or any country where this is a thing? It is weird, until you realize that it often works in your best interest.
For example, if I get pulled over in Vietnam while driving a motorbike, I can just pay the "fine" right then and there. While I admit, it is totally corrupt and questionable, it sure beats spending hours going to the police station and dealing with language issues.
Obviously, this isn't good for locals since it is used as a form of extortion, but it is what it is. I'm not in Vietnam to fix the problems there.
> Have you lived in Vietnam or any country where this is a thing? It is weird, until you realize that it often works in your best interest. […] Obviously, this isn’t good for locals
Most people who have lived in places where this exists were also, at the time, locals, so your description is self-contradictory.
yeah its like this in parts of Mexico too, it is convenient and fun, like "wow everyone's so cool haha what a playful land as long as you have 50 pesos on you" but it can also be annoying as the 'incidentals' add up
I haven't heard that one. And, to be honest, it doesn't really make much sense to me, because the modern Russian constitution is a pretty nice document overall, guaranteeing all the good stuff etc. It's just that it's never really been followed.
This isn't new, either - e.g. the 1936 Constitution of the USSR (adopted under Stalin) was considered a very liberal document for its time. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly were all guaranteed, there was strict separation of powers, universal franchise with secret voting, and so on. Ironically, most of the people who authored it would end up in gulags or with a bullet in their head within a few years of its publication.
That still sounds off given that Russia didn't have any constitution at all until 1906, after the first Russian revolution. Getting one was the primary demand of Russian liberals throughout the 19th century, and was stubbornly resisted by the monarchy because a ruler bound by any kind of constitution is no longer a proper "autocrat", which was an important ideological distinction for the Empire.
Even when it comes to informal, customary constitutions, the only restriction that was universally upheld was that the reigning monarch had to be Eastern Orthodox (if they weren't, they ipso facto didn't have the divine right to rule). Everything else was ultimately subject to the Emperor's whim.
In theory the humans in the process should be exercising judgement to smooth over these bugs (e.g., it's why the US legal system works (or should work) the way it does). Someone somewhere either should have the authority to do it, or has it but lacks the personal agency/awareness to use it.
Unfortunately, most humans involved in these processes are satisfied with being cogs in the wheel. Nothing wrong with that, they have their own bills to pay and a hundred other things to be worried about.
A system that can even allow anyone to “flag” potential process issues to be bubbled up will be quite useful. Such as the role played by X and Google reviews for most private businesses. Or the “How was your experience?” machines outside washrooms with three smiley buttons goes a long way than not having any feedback loop.
Public servants not following the laws to the letter can introduce legal risk. If OP had somehow found the right person at the DMV high up enough to do something about this, they probably could have, but giving discretion to bend the law at even a 'manager' level might be too much of a risk for the state.
This movie was released in 1985. At that time, a dystopian scenario like this was far out. In 2024 I don't think it's very far out—it's on the horizon.
I had a similar thing except on a much longer timeframe. When I turned 21 I went to renew my license and register a truck I bought. I paid by check. When the lady told me it'd be one sixty three (or something like that) I wrote a check for $1.63. She took it, gave me my paperwork and sent me on my way.
Fast forward 10 years the state must have digitized everything and I received a collection notice in the mail. I hadn't even lived in that state or owned that vehicle for several years. At least my license wasn't invalid.
This happened to me in California. They completely lost all records of my payment, I was assessed a late fee, my license was suspended, and then my driving record got marks. I was unknowingly driving on a suspended license for months.
Anyway, no one could do anything about it until I wrote a letter to a judge in the court system and he wrote back and was able to reverse all the damage.
So I found a copy of the letter that I wrote and it was just addressed to “Your Honor” and I physically dropped off the letter at the court in person to the front desk.
I left my mailing address and I got back a return letter in the mail a few weeks later or something.
I have no idea what you can do it for but it worked for my problem at least.
I believe you can generally get items to a judge like that, but do not do it with evidence (at least not in a proper trial). Things have to be entered into evidence, provided to the prosecution, etc.
Things like this are totally worth a try, though. The legal system can be much more flexible than it seems, and the humans underneath it are generally kind of occasionally overworked and frustrated.
I got out of a huge "parking in a handicapped spot" ticket when I was like 16. I was running late to school, the only parking space available was next to the handicapped spot. I thought I was just barely outside the space, turns out I was just barely inside (~3-4").
I just took pictures and went down to the courthouse. I told them what happened, that I didn't intend to deprive anyone of their handicap space and that I know they need them, and that even though I know I accidentally screwed up, the space should have still been usable. I asked if they could cut me a little slack, and they did. I got a little admonition about being more careful, which was eminently fair, and they dismissed the ticket.
New Jersey will take money to "lift your suspension" and blatantly neglect to mention you also have to pay a fee to "Restore your driving privileges". I think they got in trouble with this so now all NJ speeding tickets are court appearance mandatory so they can pull you into their insurance surcharges over three following years and other fee schemes legally. But the pro tip is notify DMV as soon as you move. And nowadays it is best to get set up with the DMV online.
I did, yes. Retook a "written" permit test (which is now an ipad-based test), then had to wait for my permit to arrive via mail, then had to schedule and take a proper drivers test, after paying the adjusted late fee. Was a wild ride.
It's not necessarily about IQ. I'm a US citizen (white, male, professional, no criminal record or questionable associations). For years, every time I would enter the US I would get detained and questioned by immigration officials. Once, while waiting for an immigration officer at a passport check, I noticed that she had paused and looked like there was a problem. I asked what the problem was, and she said "the computer said your face doesn't match your passport photo". I was standing right there, holding my passport, and anyone with eyes could see that I was the same person. I pleaded with her, and offered her two other forms of ID, but she refused to override the computer system and I was detained and questioned. It wasn't that she had a low IQ, it was that she didn't want to accept the consequences if her judgment call was wrong, much safer to just go with what the computer system says and not have a liability.
The next time I entered the US, it was Christmas Eve, and I flew straight to my hometown to spend time with family. Of course, they detained me. I asked what the issue was, and they said that the computer didn't match my passport photo. I told them that this keeps happening to me, and they looked a little closer and said "in the computer system where a
photo of your face should be, we have a photo of a boarding pass". I asked them how to fix it, they said it wasn't possible but suggested that I get a new passport. I never got a new passport, but after that day, I never had trouble entering the US again, so I imagine that one of the officers felt some compassion for me and managed to get the bug in the system fixed for me.
I do think that maybe that officer had a bit of a higher EQ than most.
The people who enforce rules like that know that their bosses will fire them if they don’t, and I doubt that they’re paid so much that finding another job wouldn’t be a personal terror.
Politicians and pundits love to rail against government inefficiency or bureaucracy but that’s an intentional tactic to absolve the politicians who created the problem. If the law says there’s a penalty after 52 weeks, the DMV employee can’t override it unless they’re very specifically authorized to do so.
> The people who enforce rules like that know that their bosses will fire them if they don’t, and I doubt that they’re paid so much that finding another job wouldn’t be a personal terror.
It's very difficult to fire a government employee. This is because of "due process" requirements that apply specifically to the government taking something from you (in this case, a job). The due process requirements are fairly burdensome and drawn out, so often the inept employee is just shuffled off to another office or put somewhere that he has minimal impact on others.
You’re overstating the difficulty: you have to show cause and demonstrate fairness, but in the scenario we’re talking about that’s very straightforward: show that a clerk had been trained on the rules, didn’t follow them, and didn’t improve when warned.
" ... had been trained on the rules, yet interpreted them compassionately according to sober interpretation of their intent, and didn't improve when warned ... "
liquidise says the DMV recorded they received the check on time.
If that is true, and the records show what can only be explained by a clerical error - there is always a procedure to fix clerical errors. If liquidise wrote to his senator and the senator took up the cause, I guarantee the error could be corrected by an orderly and legal procedure.
Of course, whether that procedure is known to front-line workers, and whether they can do it fast enough to achieve their call processing time targets is another matter.
Oh, no doubt. My point is that you don’t rail against someone doing their job, you follow that process for getting it corrected. Like if Verizon messes up my bill, being a jerk to the call center worker won’t do much but finding a contact who actually has the ability to authorize a change does.
Assuming that it's a statistically useful, predictive principle, you'd still have to gather a documented history of me consistently underestimating people's IQs in order to suspect that mine might be low on that basis.
Statistical sampling: a typically academic smart reply.
I believe smartness is an ability to intuitively see patterns that others do not obviously see. Our writing is full of signals and some people are adept at reading a lot into a simple comment. I'm not suggesting I'm any good at it, and unfortunately there are also a lot of people who think they're good but are not.
Mentioning "IQ" at all is a huge flag: often used by people that are academically successful but that is a poor measure of how smart someone is.
While my comment was written in a cheeky style, I am actually writing about my own experience as a reasonably smart person dealing with my own lack of wisdom over the years.
Don't worry: I don't actually suspect you have a low IQ.
Yes, completely off-topic, I shouldn't bite I know!
It has nothing to do with IQ, and everything with turning people into cogs in a machine. Following the rules, no matter how inane, is safe. Making a judgment call to break the rules exposes one to risk, and people who will review it later will likely be in the same conundrum themselves (i.e. it's always safer for them to conclude that breaking the rules was not justified), all the way to the top.
This is also why the larger and the more hierarchical any organization is, the more sociopathic it is as a whole, even if its bureaucracy is ran by people who aren't.
In a car centric country like the United States. Having a suspended license because of debt is just wrong.
It has wide implications against the poor. Poorer people will probably ignore it. Won’t pay it. Drive with suspended license. Have to pay higher premiums or just dropped completely from their carrier. If that person gets in an accident, they will be fucked in the form of medical debt. One can abuse the ER EMTALA for only a short time. Forgo medical treatment and physical therapy. Temporary injuries then translate into permanent disabilities.
Can’t drive. Can’t get insurance. Can’t get a regular job. Can’t afford health insurance. Can’t afford food.
It’s a vicious cycle and it’s amazing how most people are able to get out of this situation without doing anything illegal.
First, paying child support is a moral obligation.
Second, DRS is stupid (it harms the enforcer of the policy, society, and the person who is not making payments). It removes the ability of the person who is supposed to pay child support from having money to make the payment. The article points out the potential economic fallout of DRS - and there is a connection to tech: Intel is building a huge facility that will employ many Ohioans there and will have a workforce constantly at risk of having their license suspended over unpaid medical bills. The only word that even begins to describe DRS is stupid.
Third, child support is only one reason someone may have a DRS. Any payment resulting from a judgment (even administrative) can result in a DRS -- so routine collections often result in suspensions. Child support is only one of many ways someone can find themselves with a suspended license.
DRS makes about as much sense as debtor's prisons.
My impression is that paying child support is a judicial obligation, and whether it's moral or not comes down to how moral the ruling is, and whether or not the obliged payer neglects the payment for an immoral reason. To say it's by definition a moral obligation is to say that the court ruling defines morality, or that there are no valid reasons someone couldn't or shouldn't pay, and that'd be a bit silly, but I assume you're being hyperbolic.
Paying to support children you make is a moral obligation. The justice of any given court decision is going to vary. But beneath it all is a social contract that says if you made the kid, you support the kid.
Lots of men who are not the biological father were tricked into believing they were the biological father, and when they find out the kid is not theirs, are still on the hook for child support.
How many is "lots of" because it's real hard to find concrete cases of this outside of the handful of high profile ones that reddit MRAs like to parade around whenever they get a chance to bring it up.
But regardless, this is consistent and a well-understood compromise not an accidental injustice. The priority is stability in the child's life above absolute fairness for the adults. If you occupied the role of parent to a child, you may have to pay child support regardless of biological connection.
We've settled on this approach over the alternative because when unfairness occurs, it is for the adults to experience not the child.
It is likely a few percent, but having draconian collection processes and lower levels of enforcement of child support fraud are issues. There have been problems with these draconian laws being exploited where the 'Mom' takes her judgement to a new state and starts collecting all over again. While it would be fraud to sign the initial affidavit, it can be tough for the target to shake it off. I have talked to two men whom this has happened to. I am in no way saying legitimate child support claims should be upheld but automated punishment that exposes the target to arrest rather than it being at least at first a civil court process with maybe failure to appear as part doesn't seem to help anyone but a vindictive or manipulative ex.
It sounds about equally as moral as forcing some complete stranger to pay the child support(which does not sound moral).
The government could provide the child support. I would argue that forcing the victim of a paternity scam to continue paying for the child that is not theirs just continually revictimizes them.
The parent’s relationship has zero to do with assigning liability for supporting the child. Zero. None. The child's existence is caused by having sex. That is where the liability is created. I don't get to decide if a car wreck is my fault if I do not like my relationship with the other driver.
Bob gets Alice pregnant. They could have used birth control but for whatever reason they didn't—maybe they thought they wanted a kid, maybe they made a mistake. Alice thinks Bob is going to stick around and help but he gets cold feet and bails. Alice has the baby and now is a single mom.
Why shouldn't Bob be required to support Alice as she raises their kid? What does availability of birth control change here?
Today, I think the more common modern scenario is Alice voluntarily leaves Bob because she decides (perhaps rightly!) she could be happier elsewhere. In this situation, custody is often contested, but Bob usually ends up paying child support anyway. I think this is more often the sort of situation that leads people to question if there's a moral obligation to pay Alice when she's a single mom because she made the choice to be.
It is also important to note the while child support is the named purpose of the payment, in practical terms Bob is simply paying Alice and Alice treats the money as fungible and spends the money at her discretion; Bob may be (and usually is) directed to pay certain child-expenses separately and directly, such as daycare, school supplies, and health insurance. Child support is on top of these expenses and is usually assessed as a percentage of income; 15% is a common number. Generally, this number is much higher than the actual marginal cost of having a child living with you.
Bob can very explicitly say from even before conception that he has no intention of ever supporting a child and wishes for any accidental pregnancies to be aborted.
Alice can still choose to ignore all of that, have the child, and extract child payments from Bob.
You can't obligate Alice to an abortion nor opt out of the obligation to Bob jr. Also if you actually told Alice this before you got jiggy you wouldn't be getting jiggy because she would opted out of any further contact its immoral and farcical to try to ditch your kid like that.
The obligation is to Bob jr. It doesn't matter how manipulative Alice is because your responsibility is to the kid. You don't get to have consent as to her bearing a kid because its her body and the violation implied by either giving you direct say or even indirect force to apply to her by forcing her to solely bear responsibility for your kid if she refuses to have an abortion is immoral evil and gross.
You can exercise absolute control by getting snipped. If that is too extreme you can keep it in your pants or insist on multiple concurrent methods of birth control.
The number of men who wish to opt out of responsibility is legion the number of weirdos who saved their dudes sperm to "inseminate" is microscopic.
The net average good of instituting the system you imagine is so far into the red its not off the page its off the continent.
The legal obligation (child support) in this case may be intended for Bob Jr., but it is paid to Alice with an extremely weak enforcement mechanism to ensure it benefits Bob Jr. at all.
Realistically, it tends to be responsible people who would have paid child support anyway who pay it, but often end up overpaying because money is fungible and it doesn’t take 15% of a good earner’s income to support a child. The irresponsible fathers who don’t care end up not paying regardless of court orders. Obviously most Alices are not blowing the money on nothing but it’s reasonable to question whether the current system is very useful for its intended purposes compared to other systems and what the second order effects are. There are probably better ways to ensure Bob Jr. is supported. For example, maybe in custody proceedings we should more highly weight financial ability to support the child when awarding custody.
I understand why the system in the article exists - you can’t force people to pay (they can stop working or work under the table or…), so you need some sort of threat as an additional deterrent. I doubt it increases collections much, though.
I don't think attacking professional or drivers licenses is useful nor do I think incarceration is. That said.
> Realistically, it tends to be responsible people who would have paid child support anyway who pay it,
This is a bold assertion that seems extremely unlikely. Most workers work for a wage and cannot trivially become an under the table construction worker to spite Alice. I would guess that given the enforcement mechanism most people who are able to pay end up paying. It's also pretty trivial to imagine that without the threat of at least garnishment or seizure lots of folks wouldn't pay. If you are going to assert it you should actually prove it.
> For example, maybe in custody proceedings we should more highly weight financial ability to support the child when awarding custody.
You already need to be able to support the kid including the other sides court ordered support in order to get custody in court now. Weighing it more heavily towards wealth to avoid charging Bob seems extraordinary. Why?
> it doesn’t take 15% of a good earner’s income to support a child.
You should probably redo the math on that and start with the median individual income and tell me how it went.
> There are probably better ways to ensure Bob Jr. is supported.
Bob Jr being supported unlike the many complexities of child rearing is a function of whether or not sufficient resources are transferred from Nonscustodial parent to custodial parent. Court orders, garnishment, seizure are the only way to get from A to B.
> This is a bold assertion that seems extremely unlikely. Most workers work for a wage and cannot trivially become an under the table construction worker to spite Alice.
People working a steady job are more likely to be responsible people. Irresponsible people will tend toward various side hustles, personal businesses, frequent job-hopping, day laboring, etc., because employers get tired of them not being responsible.
Obviously this is a generality and we both know plenty of exceptions.
> You already need to be able to support the kid including the other sides court ordered support in order to get custody in court now.
This varies tremendously by state and the eccentricities of whatever chancery court judge you end up in front of. If you even end up in court - sometimes it can be done administratively.
> You should probably redo the math on that and start with the median individual income and tell me how it went.
I am. This is especially true if daycare is not a factor. I know one particularly egregious case with three children by different fathers and a live-in grandmother. (With the children. Alice here is usually absent. Right now she is living in a different county.)
> Bob Jr being supported unlike the many complexities of child rearing is a function of whether or not sufficient resources are transferred from Nonscustodial parent to custodial parent. Court orders, garnishment, seizure are the only way to get from A to B.
Why do the funds need to be transferred to the custodial parent at all? Moreover, remember this system is taking place in a world where we don't actually know the real custodial percentages; Bob was maybe assigned every other weekend, but maybe in practice Alice is often busy and Bob takes care of Bob Jr. approximately 50% of the time.
If for example - Bob is ordered by the court to pay for health insurance and daycare directly, which is very common...why not say "Bob must also fund a $200/mo SNAP allowance for Bob Jr." It seems clear that if the Bobs of the world believed the money was going to Bob Jr. rather than Alice, it would increase compliance. That's the number one complaint I hear and in many or most cases it seems absolutely justified. I know many particularly egregious examples in my own life, one of them collecting sizable checks from three different fathers and they are not being spent on the kids. In general, I don't think the old narratives apply anymore. In my personal experience nearly every case has simply been Alice felt she could do better than living with Bob, and was functionally rewarded for it. One recent more extreme example: mom of 5 left her husband, who she told me is still today her very best friend, entirely because she wanted more experience and he was all she'd known - she had no issue with him at all. He attempted to fight the divorce to no avail. Usually I hear from Alice she just wasn't in love with Bob anymore. Either way, the larger point is that cash payments to custodial parties is not an effective way to make sure that cash goes towards anything for the child, although in most cases at least some of it does. But that's not much comfort for Bob watching 15% of his check vanish.
I think it is worth considering whether we should try stronger disincentives on splitting households for shallow reasons. Of course, this also comes with the risk that we endanger people experiencing domestic violence. It's a hard tightrope to walk. Sometimes when I hear a particularly bad family court story (recently heard one about kid forced to stay with drug-addicted dad) I wonder if we'd be better off without the system at all and just improve the safety net.
I am speaking as a custodial parent who is owed child support and expects to never receive it, FWIW.
> Why do the funds need to be transferred to the custodial parent at all? Moreover, remember this system is taking place in a world where we don't actually know the real custodial percentages; Bob was maybe assigned every other weekend, but maybe in practice Alice is often busy and Bob takes care of Bob Jr. approximately 50% of the time.
This in a reasonable world would be addressed by the court. Real performance obviously varies edge cases aren't a good reason to change the overall pattern rather its an argument for reforming the process.
If you want more fairness reform how the court calculates how much it costs Bob Sr. to live. I've seen from an associate how nonsensical that can be. I admit i have no first hand experience with the system and I wouldn't be shocked to find it unfair in many instances.
Unfortunately, these aren’t edge cases, they’re common cases. Courts tend to rule based on spherical cows. The reality of family law is incredible messy, judges have incredible levels of discretion, and any real fact-finding is not practical in almost all cases. It’s almost always unfair, it just comes down to how much and to who.
In the example given, you can go back the court, usually, and have it corrected to reflect reality if you’ve carefully documented it and the judge’s whims are with you that day, but even getting the court date could be months or years out and of course most people don’t have the confidence or knowledge to do this without a lawyer, which will be at least a few grand and which they’ll see as a lot of money to spend on a gamble that could make things worse for them.
I didn’t even propose a system. You just presented a strawman and claimed it was impossible to even discuss.
Also, your spiel about the obligation being to bob jr is 100% bullshit. The mother can choose to give the baby up for adoption and voila, she magically has no more financial responsibility. Funny that.
A court system that forces someone to financially support another single parent they wanted nothing to do with from the outset is broken. The revenue to help a single parent with raising a child (if that is our intent and it’s not some just fallacy bullshit of making the missing parent “pay”) should not vary with that parent’s income.
There needs to be consent from both sides before birth that they want responsibility for the kid. If they don’t, they lose custody rights and obligations. If neither do, baby goes up for adoption. If it’s only one, the government can provide assistance for low income single parents.
> Bob can very explicitly say from even before conception that he has no intention of ever supporting a child and wishes for any accidental pregnancies to be aborted.
Bob needs to ensure he can't cause the woman to conceive for this to work.
What is Bob finds out belatedly that kid as actually Jim's and Mom neglected to ever mention that 'uncertainty' or worse knew but decided Bob has deeper pockets? Many states have decided that once your on the birth certificate your stuck, as otherwise the State suffers having a financial burden.
Yes. Acknowledging paternity (or marriage in a jurisdiction with a conclusive presumption of paternity) creates, and ought to create, obligations which cannot be abandoned easily unilaterally.
It you are unwilling to accept that responsibility it's easy enough not to do those things.
A deeper question might be is it reasonable to be able to take your name off in the first place after affirming it. In a contrived example we may imagine bob discovers he isn't the father while the ink is still wet after being deliberately deceived.
Less contrived examples are apt to be on average more complicated. The uterus isn't an egg timer. Exact date of conception is liable to be fuzzy. The person on the birth cert is more apt to be the long term boyfriend or spouse than the richer fellow. The failure to communicate uncertainty a function of shame not greed. Discovery might be years later after the obligation is deeper than a signature. At that point do you have a right to reject the child you asserted was yours. I don't think so. I think if you asserted that position you own that obligation for your life. Sometimes the law affirms what we as a society hold to be general true and is optimized for the general case not edge cases.
Bob wouldn't be allowed to get upset had she instead choose to abort, seems sort of unfair that he has to support her and the kid for the rest of their lives should she decide not to.
Alice could've married Bob if she wanted a longer term commitment like marriage.
When people say it to Alice they are explaining why Alice cannot be allowed to control her own body. When its told to Bob it's explaining why he can't control Alice's body.
Not quite! People are arguing about why a man should be required to pay even though he had no right to choose. You were so close to getting it, though.
There is no reason to imagine that your obligation to bob JR who you helped create ought to depend in any way shape or form on whether you were OK with aborting him. In the first place he wasn't part of the transaction. In the second place you never meaningfully made a decision you made a suggestion hanging your obligation on whether you made a suggestion in writing is nonsensical. If you want to point out
Ascending from the moral to the societal perspective every unconnected man ever would file an order of NMPB (not my problem bitch) at every unplanned pregnancy with a woman they either weren't in a committed relationship or with whom they decided they didn't want to raise a kid with either at inception or at any time before the local limit to abort expired.
One might predict an uptick of abortions. There would certainly be some additional further decreasing our birth rate which is already below replacement but the truth is there is already a strong incentive in that direction. It's already hard to be a single mother. It's already hard to make a fellow contribute. Many women already do without. I think the majority would have their baby and go their own way.
We would see a generation of children raised with even less help, in greater poverty, in greater privation. Society would bear more costs in terms of medical benefits, food stamps, housing assistance or society would bear the cost in terms of crime and generally poorer social outcomes.
I'm not "close to getting it" You are advancing the same position as 16 year old me. I just had an extra 27 years to think about it.
Apparently you thought about it too much and came to the wrong conclusions.
Morally, sex is the last decision you get in the matter for both parties, or it is for neither party. No special pleading for how being the woman is special will be convincing.
"Think of the children" is also unconvincing for this line of reasoning, since we'd just ban abortions under that thought process and render the entire argument null and void. If adults matter enough to give one choice in pregnancy outcomes, then both adults should have some agency in how the pregnancy affects their lives. And if the government or "society" has a vested interest in making sure babies are made, they should be footing the bill rather than foisting it onto an unwilling father. Just like we did to women in the past, you would be taking away agency against his own body. A percentage of all of his efforts will go to something he doesn't want, enforced ultimately by the violence of the state, since you can lose your freedom of movement partially through a revoked license (idiotic) or completely through debtors prison if you fail to pay.
Since the pregnancy doesn't directly impact his body–only state imposed policies do–people don't connect the dots on it being a similar concern of "my body, my rights" for men. Or maybe they just don't want it to think about it as an issue of agency for men, because people generally do not care about men's agency or lack thereof (and to be totally fair, I believe people generally do not actually care about the agency of women, either).
Men do not exist to carry out the will of the state or "society".
> Not quite! People are arguing about why a man should be required to pay even though he had no right to choose.
He had a right to choose. The fact that his right to choose ended at an earlier point because his body ceased involvement at an earlier point does not change that the right exists and was exercised.
Again, same argument could be used for women to justify abortion bans. If you didn't want to have a baby, shouldn't have had sex. The fact that her right to choose ended at an earlier point despite her body having involvement at a later point does not change that the right exists and was exercised.
To be clear, I don't hold the above position, I just mean that your argument doesn't convince me because it's the same principle applied inconsistently.
Why is Bob more responsible than Alice? Wouldn't that be patriarchy?
If not, and Bob is more responsible for some undefined reason, shouldn't he be the head of the household as he can be held to a higher standard than Alice? Why must Bob accept responsibility without authority?
Bob isn't more responsible than Alice. Bob has LESS control after the fact because the baby is growing in Alice's body. Alice's greater control of the situation directly stems from the simple nature of human physiology.
You made your choice when you jizzed in her bits. Don't want a child? Don't jizz in the lady. Want a child but the lady doesn't? You gotta find a different lady to jizz in.
Sometimes, if you trust a lady enough, you two will decide on a strategy on how you can jizz in her bits and still not have a kid. However, none of those methods are perfect and you are explicitly taking a chance.
The risk you take when you jizz inside a lady that doesn't want an abortion is that you have a child. If a lady does not want an abortion and you don't want a kid, don't jizz inside her. You don't have to be a participatory father, but you will be expected to financially support whoever ends up raising the kid, unless you both choose to give up the child for adoption.
Like, fuck guys, it's not this difficult. I'm an idiot and I've figured it out.
>My impression is that paying child support is a judicial obligation
If you don't want to carry the responsibilities of making a child, then don't screw with someone. Simple.
Those who screw and then refuse to answer to their deeds are by far the most worthless people on the planet. Children born to such parents deserve better, and the courts are just making certain-as-they-can of that.
Also, note that this is very different from someone who can't carry the responsibilities, that's another and far more complicated story.
There's at least one case of an underage boy having sex with an adult woman who seduced him, got pregnant with his child, and then forced him to pay child support, even though the court ruled that he was a victim of statutory rape.
That's what I mean by those who can't carry the responsibility, cases like yours are a different matter.
What I speak of are two consenting adults having sex and making a child intentionally or otherwise. If those parents subsequently don't want to pay child support or otherwise don't want to own up to their acts, they are worthless people and the child deserves better.
That sounds great, but we've seen the legal system doesn't think the same way, and will happily condemn a rape victim to decades of paying child support.
Well, in a case where the intention at the outset is to have sex for pleasure only and explicitly try and prevent it from happening, is it more immoral to take it to completion against the others intention to participate, or more immoral to excuse yourself from raising it on the basis you don't think you and the other parent will be able to raise the kid without too much conflict?
Seems nuanced to me.
If you go at it alone despite obviously bad circumstances, and you end up not winning that roll of the dice on your ability to do it alone long term, did you fuck up or did they?
There is always a non-zero chance for conception if you engage in sex. That means you (and the other party) have a responsibility to care for the child if you hit that non-zero chance.
If you don't want to (or know you can't) be responsible for such consequences, the responsible way forward is don't have sex. It's really that simple.
I reiterate: Those who consensually have sex and then refuse to own up for their behaviour are worthless people.
> If you don't want to (or know you can't) be responsible for such consequences, the responsible way forward is don't have sex. It's really that simple.
> I reiterate: Those who consensually have sex and then refuse to own up for their behaviour are worthless people.
Nah, sex is great, mistakes happen, get off your high horse and stop casting judgement.
If you have a child, you should pay to support it. This is a moral obligation. It doesn't matter if you didn't intend to have a child, it doesn't matter if you're not currently in a relationship with the other parent.
Maybe it is a moral obligation, maybe it's not. Depends entirely on the circumstances and in your framework for morality. Maybe paying child support prevents the parent from getting any sort of stability in their life. Maybe the money is squandered. Maybe responsibility should fall on society more generally, and the fact that basic needs of children depend on the financial capacity of the parents is itself immoral. Or the way society organizes itself around money is immoral. Not saying that that agree in general with those statements, but your categorical statement just irked me.
> My impression is that paying child support is a judicial obligation,
You're wrong. Plenty of people work out child support without having to even go to court specifically for that. Most people do the moral thing and take care of a child they were responsible for bringing into this world.
Plenty of people work out how to collaborate in raising kid in a variety of ways, including as an incidental aspect of going to court, but "paying child support" colloquially is a judicial imposition that may or may not be grounded in moral reason. I'm not saying that paying to support a child is not a moral obligation, I'm saying paying child support or getting
someone to do so is not a moral consideration more often than it is a judicial obligation. Others can explore the obvious hypotheticals, but plenty of the time one party ends up destroyed in proceedings.
Any two parties should approach the prospect of raising a child with extreme diligence, unfortunately not everyone does, accidents happen, emotions take over and later things may or may not go horribly.
I'd say it's a toss up, in terms of an unintentional pregnancy, in no particular order.
Prospective mother could decide on her own to keep it, and the prospective father is stuck with either guaranteed child support payments or trying to raise the kid.
Prospective mother and father have hormones take over and both decide to commit even though objectively it's going to be a brutal road ahead.
In what are probably quite rare situations now, the man forces the woman to have the kid against her will.
One of the two parties merely convinces the other it'll work out, and they both try and figure it out.
The parents of either party get involved and create a bunch of other branching variations because they've got money or want grand kids or that's how they did it.
I don't think it's untrue to say it's the woman's choice ultimately, particularly in places where abortion is legal, but it is an unfair characterization, because creating life is incredibly messy, fraught with all sorts of complicating factors culturally and logistically.
The concept of “morality” absent justification or rationale, is at best laziness and at worst a subtle form of manipulation.
It is a way to get someone to do something that is not in their interest by making an assertion that to do otherwise would be immoral. However “immoral” is an empty word, it means everything and nothing at once.
To various people: Eating pork is immoral. Saying “Jesus Fucking Christ” is immoral. Sex before marriage is immoral. Smoking weed is immoral. If you’re a Catholic priest or Vestal Virgin even marriage itself is immoral.
We shouldn’t accept statements of the form “X is immoral” as well-formed arguments. “Drinking and driving is immoral” is not an argument. “If you drink and drive you might kill someone”, that’s an argument.
And it seems dumb because that isn't how it works. I swear there should be a SomePerson's Law that says, "If a currently functioning system can't possibly work that way, then it probably doesn't." Like over the years and years this system has been in place and the many people involved in it y'all really believe no one has thought of this before?
You don't just get your license suspended if you stop paying, you get a suspension when you...
1. Stop paying child support.
2. Get a notice of from the government telling you to get in contact with them to set up a hearing to address the non-payment and ignore it.
2b. Set up the hearing, fail to have good reason for non-payment and refuse to negotiate a payment schedule and...
3b. Don't appeal the decision or fail to make your case at the appeal.
While with any system involving humans you can get a series of fuck-you-in-particular's there's quite a few checks. It is explicitly the charge of the DCS to keep this very catch-22 from happening by having lots of different enforcement mechanisms and taking the person's finances into account. If you don't have a job and are making a "good faith effort" to get one they won't suspend your license.
Once there is conception, only 1 side of the population is allowed to choose not to take on the consequences of producing child. We shouldn’t take that choice away, but we should extend the decision of taking on the obligations to the otherside.
No, you made your choice when you jizzed in her bits. Don't want a kid and scared the lady won't abort if you get her pregnant? Don't jizz in her. That's like, part of sex.
Don't like that you don't get to raw dog her now? Too fucking bad, man up. Find someone who agrees with your choice to not have a child including having an abortion if necessary or don't jizz in her.
She literally cannot get pregnant without you jizzing in her.
Why does that alter the calculus here? It's still a practice that isn't far removed from debtors prison—the incentives we've set up to pay the debt can, if used, actually prevent the debtor from paying their debts.
The question isn't whether the debt ought to be paid, it's whether this method of enforcement is counterproductive.
There's very few tools available, so license suspensions have been just a general purpose tool to annoy people.
In cases like child support, I think it probably does work to some extent. They have a ton of people that they think could pay, but are dragging their feet.
Would you prefer send them straight to jail?
BTW I take the extreme stance against almost all license sanctions. That said, I have to admit without them, and without the threat of jail, many crimes would have little deterrents. Same story IMO with criminal records and going after people's careers.
We would need to develop creative new sanctions, and arguably should anyway; but I see no good ideas.
>The simple solution is to have the government pay out the child support and make the debt to the government.
AIUI, a number of US states deal with child support in exactly that way: Payments are made to the responsible state agency and they remit the funds to the custodial parent.
Suspending a Dad's driver's license because they fail to pay child support works out well how? Now that they've lost their job (because no drive, no job) and so they have a real excuse for not paying it?
Nothing says "have money to pay child support" like "don't have money to pay child support because you got fired from your job and have fines for having a suspended license because you were behind on child support."
Exactly. This is the US we're talking about, and figuring out ways to make poor peoples' lives even worse, and increase the wealth gap as much as possible in order to cause social unrest and eventual societal collapse is an integral part of the country's government. They're bent on self-destruction.
Even if the cause is good, the mechanism is a lose-lose. You can’t pay anything if you’ve lost your job because you couldn’t drive to work or are busy in court for driving without a license.
And the courts typically take that into account. It’s not unusual for someone convicted of a crime to be allowed to use a car for work, and work only as a condition of the sentence.
>And the courts typically take that into account. It’s not unusual for someone convicted of a crime to be allowed to use a car for work, and work only as a condition of the sentence.
When I was in college (back before the dawn of time, when dinosaurs ruled the earth -- also known as the late 1980s), one of my fellow students got his second (or third?) DUI (this is also in Ohio, BTW) and had his license suspended -- except to drive to and from work and to drive to and from the local jail where he spent weekends for several months, paying off his debt to society.
Which was geared toward making things difficult for my fellow student (weekends in jail, only driving to/from work, etc.) as recompense for the DUIs, while at the same time not destroying his life. Which seems to be the better idea, IMHO.
But what do I know, I haven't lived in Pennsyltucky in 30+ years?
Paying off one's debt to someone implies that said someone receives something valuable. What value does the society receive from a person spending every weekend in jail?
It's just a punishment, there to make them suffer, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with any "debts to society". I wish we'd stop dressing our punitive justice system up in fancy wording like these, or "correctional facilities", so that we can pretend it's something that it's not.
We simply shouldn't be doing this with cars being so essential to our society. It should be jail or sanctions (driving restrictions).
I imagine under this system some extreme repeat offenders would still be banned. Perhaps a few less extreme getting suspensions. Taking someone's license as a general penalty for many offenses is terrible. This has really fed outlaw culture in the USA.
I would also like to see public transit options that make this less of an extreme issue. Perhaps this could be achieved in 5-50 years.
I don't want to see my friends contemplating suicide after a first offense or considering the legal life to be impossible after one or two more.
The article isn't clear on it but a debt related suspension only applies to legal debts to the court like fines or unpaid child support. Medical debt isn't considered in this equation.
Still assinine however and is a debtor prison in all but name.
Based on this argument then - if driving is so integral - shouldn't the US government provide each citizen a car once they hit whatever age Americans are allowed to drive?
You joke but if you add up the per capita cost of roads and parking mandates, you probably exceed the value of a used car within a few years.
Most states spend about twice as much on roads as they take in via fuel tax and registration. The difference is made up via the general budget (income and sales tax). https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding.... The Federal gasoline tax has not been raised in 31 years and has lost half its real value.
Local zoning laws mandating minimum parking around each building has large implicit costs. Housing shortages. Needing to commute. Car dependency and needing to drive for every single outing.
Americans generally disapprove of “handouts” or cash transfers. But if the subsidy is designed as a good or service provided below cost there’s less opposition. If you call it a refundable tax credit it also becomes more palatable.
I ride a bike. Most people can do that, especially folks who aren't paying child support. Obviously there should be a hardship exemption in cases of physical impairment, or a need to travel an extreme distance every day (more than about 30-40 miles).
Pretending that it's impossible to live without a car in the United States is an insult to those of us who do it everyday.
Ohio resident, Ohio is not very bike friendly. There's recreational trails but a lot of metro areas don't have bike infrastructure (unless you count painting a little biker icon on the right traffic lane).
It's also of limited use for someone with dependents (kids, disabled) or a home owner (invariably you'll end up transporting large items owning a home unless you're going to coordinate deliveries).
In addition, it can get quite cold in the winter -20F wild chill and it tends to rain the majority of May/June. Frequently near or above 100F in late July/August. These are all surmountable but require a fair bit of outdoor gear and a decent bike.
This completely ignores all the folks that live outside metro areas. A bike is a complete non starter for anyone with a farm (which is fairly common outside metro areas...)
The town I grew up in had a "drive your family's tractor to school" day before homecoming in high school since you can drive a tractor at 14 (I think without a license)
My entire point is "yes there are edge cases, but most people could cycle if they really needed to." You point to some perfectly reasonable counter-examples, which I specifically referenced. However, most people here, including yourself are taking the position that "if it can't work for everybody, then it can't work for anybody" which is nonsense.
You point out that there aren't cycling facilities, while pointing to cycling facilities. You point to things like deliveries as though that isn't simply an inconvenience. The Ohio has six cities with populations in the hundreds of thousands.
Again, I'm not saying I agree with the policies here. I'm saying that losing a drivers license, especially in the wake of at-fault collisions, moving violations, fines, as well as many other reasons why the state might want to compel individuals to fulfill some reasonable request is not always, because America, a hardship. Alternatives exist for many-if-not-most people.
Driving is an earned privileged, not a right. If a hardship exists, it should be considered, but there are alternatives in many, many parts of the country, even Ohio.
"If it can't work for everybody, then it can't work for anybody" is indeed nonsense.
However, in Ohio, very few people are able to productively survive with only a bicycle as transportation. Some can, and some do (whether by force or by choice).
But just because it can work for some doesn't mean that it must also be able to work for many, or for most.
Neat. I suppose that the small subset of people who can manage to survive in Ohio with only a bicycle must neatly overlap with the small subset of people who have had their license suspended as a punishment for debt, then, since that's the only way that these words of yours support your greater concept.
My standard for bike infrastructure is: Is it safe enough for a 65 year old woman to ride comfortably? Spandex wearing elite bicyclists who dare to ride in the shoulder of a 55 MPH road are much braver than most.
My point is that a cycling instead of driving might be a hardship for a 65 year old woman living in a certain area, at certain times of the year. That does not mean it's a hardship for everyone all the time.
We are talking about the court's ability to revoke a drivers license to specific people, who live in specific places. Sometimes it's a hardship, other times, it's not.
The constitution does not actually give you any right to the pursuit of happiness.
The declaration of independence was a breakup letter, not a legal document.
If you wanted to murder someone in the "pursuit of happiness", that would be still be a crime. Driving is a privilege and you have zero inherent right to it.
I'm not sure which area of the country you live in but the vast majority of people in the southwest and southern california likely do not live within walking or biking distance of their places of work.
I'm not sure what part of the country you live in, but here in southern california a huge number of people live within reasonable car free commute distance. It's almost certainly easier to manage than in Ohio due to the weather and public transit on top of biking.
You dont hit the interstate on your bike you cant just take the existing commute and do it on a bike most places. Also Southern CA isnt the country or even very representative.
Why did you think virtually nobody commutes via bike?
The comment I was replying to explicitly used socal as their example of unbikable. That's why I am talking about it. Many socal commutes are unbikable, but not the "vast majority" and even fewer when you extend to other car free options. I biked to work this morning in LA (4 miles of surface streets).
> I ride a bike. Most people can do that, especially folks who aren't paying child support.
Very significant portions of the US completely lack the infrastructure required to safely bike, especially in lower income areas. It is not uncommon at all for places in the US where >95% of commutes are by car, for a commute to require travel on a highway without sidewalks or bike lanes. Much of the US is covered by undivided highways with shoulders unsuitable for safe cycling.
Given this fact, I am kind of curious - how is DRS any different than debtors prison in America? I get how in Europe where driving is a privilege and alternatives are available some scheme like this could be effective, but when you literally have to be able to drive to work to produce money to pay your debt it really does feel like the exact same as debtors prison - something that does the exact opposite of the goal it sets out to achieve
About half of US states have reformed their laws and are no longer doing this. But the biggest difference is that, well, it isn't actually prison.
There are other situations which might be better compared to debtors prisons, like being sentenced to jail for contempt of court for nonpayment of judgements, etc.
Maybe I am too risk adverse. I imagine if I were in debt enough to have my license suspended, then riding a bicycle might be more risky than it's worth from a cost/injury point of view.
Healthcare costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US, and I imagine any accidents would be beyond detrimental to one who is in bad enough debt to have his or her license suspended.
The average person commutes by car 10 hours per week. The average person doesn't live a bike commute from their job. What you are describing as extreme distance is extremely average.
Then there is places that get extremely cold or hot.
Places where biking is very unsafe.
The fact that most people are physically unable to bike 30 miles.
The lack of an extra 10 hours per week to commute without giving up sleeping or becoming unable to pick their kids up or be there after school.
Most people cant bike to work or replace their car with a bike.
The US census which gives times not distances . The average person only averages 8-10mph on their bike and most take a more indirect route so as to avoid highways when commuting by bike.
I misspoke insofar as the average citizen taking 10 hours total by car in fact its 5 which an average one way commute time of slightly under half an hour. I believe it would be reasonable to suppose that the average commute time would somewhat more than double to aprox 1 hour 1 way for an increase in time cost of 5 hours per week.
Given the average persons existing time commitment and fitness I don't think an extra 5 hours and 100 miles per week on the bike is altogether reasonable on its face.
If you take the intersection of those who are at least median closeness, sufficiently fit, and have the time to spare probably about 10% of the pop could commute that way. If we would like to achieve anything like that we probably need to make biking a bit friendlier than it presently is.
We eat bicyclists for breakfast. The most dangerous roads in the US for bikes, are on Long Island.
Cycling to work, hereabouts, is worth your life. A lot of undocumented workers do that (can't get licenses), and they get hit, fairly often. I'm starting to see a lot of electric scooters.
But I really wish it weren't so. I moved here from the DC suburbs (MD), where they had really good support for bicyclists.
No, it's not an insult. I live in North Dakota and it would be extremely difficult to get around on a bicycle for half the year.
I could move close enough to my job that walking or biking, even throughout most of the winter, would be ok. Going to the nearest grocery store would be fine for half the year or so. Going most anywhere else around town, I'd have to rely on our crappy bus service.
The article specifically focuses on job postings that mention that the job itself requires a valid license. So ride as many bikes as you want, you will not be commuting to work at that job.
You have to be willing to be a self starter and work incrementally. Most people will just throw up their hands and say it is impossible. Some obstacles are more obvious than others. Being sweaty might require a shower or a change of clothes. Similarly, extreme cold will require proper attire. Spiked ice tires on a bicycle offer greater traction than the typical 4WD vehicle.
Aside from equipment, people need to build up their skills and traffic awareness. These are not instant fixes which can be purchased at a store. This is where incremental growth is important. You wouldn't expect a rookie driver to drive on a highway on his first trip. Comfortably operating inside traffic without being disruptive is a skill unto itself.
Yes, it is possible, but if you're not an enthusiast, you're probably not going to develop yourself in these areas.
Don’t do it, don’t go that way :P You’ll get dozens of Dutch and German people who will tell you that “they do it all year long so you can also do it”. You can’t win.
It's absolutely doable in Netherlands and (parts of, usually urban) Germany. That doesn't make it doable in the car-bound hellscape that is much of the US.
I ride a bike or take public transit almost every day too, and live car-free, but I had to leave the US to do it.
This link from the footnotes has more details[0] and in the PDF we learn the following are the "debt-related suspensions":
“License forfeiture suspensions” occur when a person is charged with certain driving-related misdemeanors and either fails to appear in court or fails to pay a court fine.
“Judgment suspensions” occur if a court issues a judgment finding a person responsible for property damage or personal injury caused by use, care, or maintenance of a motor vehicle, and that person fails to pay the amount owed.
“Child support suspensions” occur when a driver fails to pay child support or fails to appear in response to a subpoena or warrant for child support issues.
“Noncompliance suspensions” occur when a driver does not show proof of insurance at a traffic stop or at the time of an accident.
“Random selection noncompliance suspensions” occurred when a vehicle owner did not provide proof of insurance in response to a request from the BMV mailed to randomly selected drivers.
“Security suspensions” occur when an uninsured driver causes an accident that results in more than $400 worth of damage or injury and the other party submits a crash report to the BMV.
“Court registration blocks” can be imposed by a court for unpaid fines or fees and prevent a vehicle owner from renewing their vehicle registration.
“Warrant blocks” prevent a person from obtaining or renewing a driver’s license or vehicle registration and can be imposed by a court for any person who has an outstanding warrant.
This changed the impression I had after reading the link.
I don't think that is the 'gotcha' you think it is. It's still a debt trap for poor people that destroys lives. Robbing people of their ability to drive and earn a living for failing to make child support payments is so self-defeating and malicious it's crazy.
The main alternative punishment for people who won't/can't pay fines is jail, and it's a lot worse than a driver's license suspension for making it harder to work a job (or get a new job).
How else is the state supposed to punish people who won't/can't pay fines? I guess it'd be good to see more work-release jail, but my impression is that these programs are sort of logistically cumbersome and expensive to operate. E.g., El Paso charges $22/day, which is already 1.5 hours of the workday at minimum wage.
You can show the court you have a job, and they'll restore your license. Or if you dont have a job, attend a seek work program or show why you're unable to work:
Well, to be clear, they'll verify your job and enforce a garnishment order on your wages, and then they'll restore your license.
(I'm not saying whether they should or shouldn't, I'm just saying, you're implying "just show the court you have a job and you'll get your license back", which is not the case.)
I have mixed feelings. I agree with you regarding the "Child support suspensions." But most of these categories seem like non-crazy (can't quite go so far as "reasonable") attempts to enforce laws relating to responsible operation of a vehicle. I think it's helpful to point that out, since the article at least facially makes it sound like this is about purely private debt.
Your point still stands about these being debt traps though. But in many cases they're downstream from some other payment that the government requires, like registration fees, or the requirement to hold a private auto insurance policy. Maybe we should worry about these in the first instance and not just the license-revocation rules designed to enforce them.
What if we just didn't have a registration fee? Or maybe we should socialize auto insurance so the poor aren't priced out of driving in the first place?
If most of those boil down to pay n dollars and keep driving why don't we pursue normal collection methods designed to collect n dollars. This has the nice effect that if there is any disagreement or misunderstanding you can keep driving to work while working through it or collect the money over time where appropriate.
For instance the state of SC sent a tax bill to the wrong address and 30 days later suspended my wife's license which we discovered in another state while traveling. We believed that we had paid the taxes for the car as part of the purchase as is normal. Although the tax bill for her car was tangentially related to her license using one to enforce the other just led to complexity and stupidity.
> pursue normal collection methods designed to collect n dollars
There is no such thing, at least not one that can effectively recoup any money. To a first approximation, unsecured debts are never collected in the US. Collectors purchase debt for pennies on the dollar because only 1-5% by value of such debts are ever paid.
Turning over child support debt to the private unsecured debt collection industry means that children won’t be supported.
Debt collection is an entirely different matter when the creditor has something to hold over the debtor’s head, which is what is happening here and it’s a good thing. Child support payments are determined in large part by ability to pay. The state absolutely should use the leverage at its disposal to ensure children are provided for.
Child support is based on oft fictional "ability to pay" that may or may not be grounded in reality.
Garnishing wages and seizing assets already has teeth and child support payments are already far more collectable than credit cards.
Attacking licences in 99% of cases attacks ability to pay in a counterproductive fashion.
The state should avoid "leverage" and stick to direct consequences like taking your money to give to your kids or taking licenses because people are unfit to drive.
Shall we attach state ID next or ability to ride on public transit.
Once you stop caring about principals and start justifying means based on ends you stop having a meaningful theory of how government ought to work.
One alternative to method would be education about resources and options.
There was a time when I was younger that I was way, way behind on child support. My wife got injured and could not work; I was keeping the house alive on one self-employed income and doing the best that I felt I could to keep everyone afloat. I now understand that I could have petitioned the court to adjust the amount I was expected to pay [based on their interpretation of my ability to pay], but (lacking omniscience) I didn't understand that at the time and I had no readily-apparent way to seek guidance about my options, so I fell further and further behind. (Even a fucking photocopied pamphlet would have been helpful.)
Another alternative might be community service as an intermediate step that happens before jail and/or license suspension. A person who is working for free, and by force, at a recycling center every weekend while being able to maintain their usual income is certainly better-equipped to be able to pay child support than a person who is in jail or who is unable to drive to work.
But neither of those options seem to be commonly (if ever) used in Ohio.
You said it yourself: "crazy". That should be your first indication maybe you should look at it closer.
Child support payments are ordered based on the parents ability to pay, not to exceed the needs of the child.
The court can reinstate your license if they reassess the amount and/or you agree to a new payment plan. The court can also give you a hardship license, that permits you to drive for specific purposes: like from home to work.
I dont have a ton of sympathy for deadbeats that want to joyride in their car while their kid is at home hungry.
I don't have a ton of sympathy for people who choose not to notice that this enlightened balanced adjustment to penalties hardly ever actually happens. Just enough to say it exists so someone like you can talk about joyriding deadbeat dads.
Yeah, those people do exist. So what?
Actually those adjustments do happen. Rich white kids get sympathetic breaks all the time, even aside from the fact that they can show up to traffic court with a lawyer.
Yeah, the thing about this list is each item is able to sound reasonable to a substantial portion of (maybe vindictively-thinking) voters but whole net of constraints results in a trap for the poor as well-described in the article.
Perhaps this is an incentive for people to think twice about the sanity of having random punishments of one form meted out for a violation of a different form.
It is sort of amazing how debt can lead to all sorts of consequences.
The book "Debt: the first 5,000 years" by David Graeber is a pretty eye opening book.
It used to be possible for a man's wife and children to be sold into slavery because of his debts.
The spanish conquistadors had a whole debt pyramid starting with the expedition funding and leading to the oppression of millions of conquered people trying to repay it.
You would think we were more enlightened nowadays.
There is this strange pervasive myth that everyone who lived before current_year-20years was an idiotic barbarian and current society is peak human evolution.
>There is this strange pervasive myth that everyone who lived before current_year-20years was an idiotic barbarian and current society is peak human evolution.
Even just some cursory thought should put the lie to that. As Steven J. Gould ruminated[0] upon quite some time ago:
... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
Whats a lie exactly? My claim that a lot of people (I guess you could call them "progressive") believe in this myth? Because the post above clearly shows that it is true.
I'm trying to wrap my head around this... Ohio law allows the suspension of drivers license over and unpaid _private_ debt? Or are these unpaid traffic fine debts?
If you don't pay child support they take your drivers license, which means it will be harder to get and keep a job to pay your child support. It makes very little sense. The state should garnish the wages. Taking away the means to get to work to earn money for debt is ridiculous.
I agree that the policy of suspending licenses seems counterproductive, but in many cases these deadbeats are working off the books for cash so there are no official "wages" to garnish.
the private debts are failure to pay court ordered child support; and failure to pay for damage or injuries caused by a motor vehicle crash that you were found responsible for by a court.
Too poor or bad with money management to pay your child support? We take away your ability to legally drive to work in a state that is heavily dependent on private transportation for financial success.
Hope you can get that sorted out in the next 15 years or so!
Child support is a percentage of your pay, so it has nothing to do with poverty. So that just leaves people who are bad with money management. Yes, threaten to take away their driving privilege instead of jail time. Put them in a position that forces them to meet their legal obligations. Child support is not some tax or fee or fine. It pays for food and shelter for children. The poorer spouse is usually the one that gets it. So if you don't enforce it, then you are directly punishing the poorer spouse (with the children) because the other one is "too bad with money management".
That ratio doesn't mean shit when you are homeless and starving to death due to poverty caused by having your means of transportation taken away from you, or by the combined effects of having that taken away from you along with the added fines and penalties of breaking the law by driving when it's illegal for you in order to try to break out of the loop.
All it means is your kid gets less and thinks less of you for it. Poorly thought out plan that punishes the poor and the children dependent on them.
> Child support is a percentage of your pay, so it has nothing to do with poverty. So that just leaves people who are bad with money management.
Ohio's minimum wage is $10.45/hr, $21,600/year. With one minor child, the state will require ~$2,000/year in child support (processed for an additional 2% charge).
ADP's net pay calculator says that that will mean you take home $365 a week. $1,400 a month after your child support comes out.
Saying "it has nothing to do with poverty" isn't exactly accurate, either.
> Child support is not some tax or fee or fine. It pays for food and shelter for children.
Wait til you hear about states where the man can be on the hook for child support for a child that isn't his because he "acted as a parent" (because he didn't know this). Sure would seem like a tax or fee or fine to me if that was the case.
One of the ways you can get your license restored is to just show you are employed -- yes, so the court can issue a wage garnishment order because the person apparently won't pay on their own.
And if you aren't employed, you can attend a seek work program.
Is the alternative "child support is now paid entirely on-time as a result of working"? (It seems not, as there is a judgment in place to show otherwise.)
The more likely alternative seems to be "Too poor or bad with money management to pay your child support? Just don't pay it and there are no consequences that puts money towards the support of your child."
Child support is not private debt, it's court ordered debt.
It's actually considered one of the highest of all types of debt. It can even take precedence over IRS debt, which is otherwise the debt with the highest precedence.
That’s what I was asking. The word debt in the title is pretty intentional click bait; there are many better words that could describe the issue in a far more precise manner for a headline.
This is yet another argument against car centric city design. Cars represent shackles that allow city and state debt collectors to get their claws into the most vulnerable Americans. If we had a working public transit system and pedestrian/cyclist friendly cities then this would be a non-issue.
However, by forcing people into cars, we suddenly have significant problems. Especially considering the housing crisis that makes cars the primary residence of a couple hundred thousand people who can't afford a parking ticket. Much less a $1500 reinstatement fee.
It's absurdly expensive to be poor. Cars are yet another reason for that.
I am in 110% agreement with everything you are saying here.
There's a quite bizarre thing here, though: In typical American car-centric areas, suspending someone's license because of debt takes away their ability to pay back debt. This seems just as counterproductive to creditors as debtors prisons were (and sometimes are).
Why would a better public transit system make this a non-issue? People could be banned from it just as easily as people could have their driver's license banned.
How exactly do you ban someone from public transit? And why would you? In every major city I've visited, there's no way to track who used the system: you either pay with cash (buying a ticket), or you put money on an anonymous stored-value card and use that in the fare gates. Anyone with cash can ride.
To punish them. For all the talk about rehabilitation and compensation, our "justice" system is fundamentally still about making some people happy by letting them watch other people get hurt.
Public transit is public. I.e. the government controls it. They could implement a transit pass tied to identity and prevent anyone with debts owed or other poor "social credit" from obtaining one.
Police have much more legal power to stop, identify, search and harass you if you are in a car. For instance, your 4th amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure is nullified by forced identification laws and implied consent. A simple pre-textual stop for "Possible intoxication" makes it easy to target undesirables for searches and forced identification.
This is not nearly as easy on public transportation or for pedestrians. Terry stops have much less power when you don't have a hundred traffic laws and licensing requirements that you can get a car driver for. In addition, you can't revoke someone's walking license if they don't pay child support.
No. Cars aren't the problem here. This is targeting the clouds for raining on your clothes. The problem is you put your clothes out to dry when it was raining.
Car, bike, walking, they are all means of transport that the government can restrict easily.
Cars are just good to travel in low density areas.
Where were you living that you weren’t allowed outside?? Everywhere I know people would still go on walks, enjoy parks, etc. Just while keeping a distance from each other
At least here in SF, walking was explicitly allowed during the lockdowns. As long as you said it's for exercise or for a necessary activity like grocery shopping.
That's not what was meant by the comment. Walking as a means of transport doesn't exist if you have no legal destination.
It's not rocket science. Unsure how many of you are struggling here.
Suspending your license doesn't stop you from sitting in, using or driving your car, just stops you from driving it onto the road.... you know, like walking and lockdowns.
A grocery store is a destination and we were explicitly encouraged to walk there instead of driving. The logic was that driving accidents lead to higher utilization of medical services than walking accidents and we needed to keep capacity free for Covid patients.
No one said they did. But that's what a lockdown means. It means people aren't allowed to participate in public. Even by means of transports such as walking.
You can't just say "lockdown means no walking" and somehow imply that the COVID lockdowns that happened redirected walking. That doesn't even make sense, and it seems like you have some ulterior point you aren't making.
I can mean lockdown means no walking, because that's exactly what happened. You could not walk anywhere. It's not like your legs fell off, you were mandated to not use any form of transport to locations because those locations were prohibited. They in essence removed your license to walk places.
If you can't see the simple point in front of you now, you never will. How are you guys still struggling with this? The government does control your freedom of walking as a transport. You can pretend like they didn't and all those empty city photos were just photoshopped or fake news... if you want I guess.
>This is yet another argument against car centric city design.
If there were debt-based suspensions of the right to ride public transport, would you categorize this as an argument against public transport centric city design?
This is a plain ridiculous assertion.
EDIT: the point here is that bad policy that involves something you happen to dislike doesn't lend strength to the viewpoint that the thing is bad.
I mean, I happen not to like pitbull-type dogs, but I acknowledge that a putative law which prevented debtors from getting dog licenses would not be an argument against owning pitbulls.
You're continuing to miss the point. The license is an irrelevancy. If you can have your license suspended for <stupid reason> you can also be banned from public transport for <the same stupid reason>.
Banning people from using transportation that they probably need for work is dumb, bad policy, and bad economics. It tells you nothing about the merits of the kind of transport from which they're being banned.
Can you ban someone from walking to the store if it is less than a mile away? Or riding their bicycle to work if it is less than 4 miles away? If your government can do that, cars are not going to save you from the totalitarian dictatorship you are living under.
This argument makes about as much sense as claiming "they" might ban someone from eating spaghetti, and when challenged, responding "I'm not sure how such a ban might be implemented,as stupid as such a ban might be, but that doesn't stop folks from trying."
Such a ban can't be practically enforced, and there's no indication anywhere of anyone even trying such a thing just to be mean to people. Your link is about someone who actually abused the public transit system (i.e. assaulting someone while riding), so of course being banned from the system is a normal response. Presumably, in such a case, the transit police might be watching for that person . It's much like bans on using computers for people convicted of certain computer-related crimes: it's a little hard to enforce, but these cases are unusual and they can check up on you and look for evidence you ignored the Court's punishment.
>Presumably, in such a case, the transit police might be watching for that person
And how might these hypothetical "transit police" do so, at least in New York City?
There are 472 active subway stations spread across 36 subway lines and the trains run 24/7[0], carrying ~5,000,000 passengers per average weekday[1]. And since you can buy access tickets with cash or just evade the fare[2].
So, no. such a ban can't practically be enforced, but as I mentioned, it hasn't stopped some folks from trying...and failing.
Again, I still don't understand why you think anyone would try this. Why would they try this instead of a ban on eating spaghetti, for instance? The entire line of reasoning is absurd. Where has anyone ever tried to do such a thing? Never. So why do you think this is actually a danger?
Imagine: you're at the end of a cul-de-sac, ten miles from anything you need like a grocery store or a doctor, and there's only one 55-70 mi/h road connecting them. Now imagine you also don't have a car.
We don't even need government to restrict people's movement; car companies, 70 years of terrible land use policy, and good ol' fashioned NIMBYism did it for us.
Now imagine you never had a car and the grocery store was out of stock because they also didn't have cars (trucks) and the amount of customers was too high.
It's not terrible land use policy. Cars and suburbs are amazing for our quality of life. But yes people are given too much power to control the natural development of locations.
Oh sorry you don't care about electricity killing people because it is actually great and people will forever be selfish enough to put themselves and others in danger? Yeah me neither.
Not sure why the idea that cars killing people keeps getting posted here as if that makes cars a bad thing.
I don't think anyone is arguing that the cars should be taken away - well, OK, someone probably is, but there's someone arguing everything on the internet - it's more about having options where losing your car doesn't stop someone from getting to work so that they can pay off the debt that is keeping them from using their car.
Poor people don't use public transit because it has been dismantled to the point it's unusable. In fact, it has been demolished explicitly because poor people use it.
People don’t use public transportation because there is people with mental issues on them causing fights, teenagers causing fight, addicts causing a ruckus. Public transportation isn’t safe for a majority of the population
I have yet to have a single issue with public transportation. In addition, all the people fighting on public transit aren't crashing into each other in multi-ton vehicles.
The problem with constitutional, parliamentary democracy is that the bulk of the government is an bureaucratic, administrative structure which is not elected, and doesn't change. Thus, the entire government, as such, actually isn't democractic at all. Most of it just cares about its job security more than anything else, and also about ensuring the most funding for its own division. If you understand this one thing, a lot of politics falls into place.
Partisan bureaucracies are even worse. Imagine the new governor firing most government employees and replacing them with party loyalists. It was called the “spoils system.”
I don't entirely understand the concept - in Ohio (or is it the whole of the USA?), they can suspend your driving licence because you have unrelated debts?
Your confusion is natural, because the authors wanted you think something like that. The "debt-related suspensions" are in fact not just normal commercial debts.
As usual, it varies by state. Some states only suspend licenses for moving violations, either because they are unpaid or sometimes as a direct penalty for serious infractions.
Ohio has a reputation for being particularly rules-y, and it's not undeserved.
Two points of anecdata, sourced from a cross country trip that took me through ohio:
- we went to a beer garden at the end of a long day of driving (>12 hours). We sit down to order and know exactly what we want. The waiter comes to take our drinks, but patently refuses to take our food order because "that happens next". He had a tablet to put orders in. Would've saved everybody time. It was ~30m before the next waiter showed up.
- the next morning, we stopped at a diner to get breakfast to-go. They had eggs, bacon, and toast on the menu but no egg sandwich. We asked if we could get a bacon egg and cheese to go, off menu, offering to pay an extra couple bucks for the trouble. A 15 minute back and forth with the kitchen ensued culminating in a frustrated and confused register person grumpily handing us two styrofoam containers with the various ingredients (not assembled, because I guess this counted as "on the menu"). We end up building our own sandwiches right there, on the counter, and throwing out the bits and pieces that didn't make sense in a sandwich because they also refused to "hold" anything like the apparently obligatory fruit cup. This completely awkward state of affairs paradoxically seemed to bother nobody.
There was more weirdness throughout the state, all along the lines of "technically correct but actually awful" from the airbnb to the highway toll booths (they wouldn't take anything other than exact change and we had to cajole them to keep the difference because who the hell keeps nickels in this day and age?).
Wow, another post I can relate to. This was me many moons ago, except I was actually arrested. I give it a 2/10 rating, rude staff.
I did learn to sleep comfortably on cement with toilet paper as pillow. I can also resist horrible toilet stench while sleeping. The recent family murderer in my cell was joyful and friendly and I made heroin addict friends. There was commotion in a nearby cell, others told me it was rape, good thing I avoided that.
Also, an interesting fact, apparently it's not just abu-ghraib type torture prisons that keep prisoners in very cold concrete only rooms and move you around to different holding cells and cellmates every few hours (i assume it is to sleep deprive and freeze you so much you cause less troubles?). I suppose prison is supposed to be unpleasant but they could have waited until I was tried and convicted. Seems a bit much as well for expired government documents where the reason is debt instead of safety, at least for America.
I now hate car ownership (likelihood of police interaction being one of many reasons).
From my read, many of these suspensions COULD result from bad driving, because they result from a ticket that may be a moving violation that is unpaid.
That is, my interpretation is that if you get a moving violation, don't pay the ticket, have your driver's license suspended, you got a suspension due to "bad driving". Their interpretation is that only if you have your license suspended for a specific incident that it would be due to "bad driving".
But, I have no idea how many of these are parking tickets, driving without insurance, repair issues or whatever. But fines do have a public safety purpose, it doesn't seem right to lump them all in as "debt".
Yikes. between the article and the underlying legal aid society paper:
1.7 million Ohioans have a suspension in a given year. Meanwhile the state has 8M licensed drivers, so 20% of the people in the state are suspended at a given time? Wild.
Unfortunately, the legal aid society betrays the "bullshit" angle that the Fed article obscures. On page 5 they talk about the types of "debt related suspensions" in their dataset - the biggest single category with over 50% of the "affected" drivers is "non compliance suspension" - which is drivers which fail to produce proof of insurance during a traffic stop or accident. The second biggest category is "forfeitures" which is people who were charged with a traffic violation and didn't bother to show up to court or to pay the fine.
The article makes it sound like most "license suspensions do not stem from bad driving; instead, they arise because the driver owes an unpaid debt" - and then opaquely bucket "not having insurance DURING A TRAFFIC STOP OR ACCIDENT" as "unpaid debt" rather than "bad driving." The Fed article doesn't make any reference to the insurance thing at all, but that's literally the largest bucket.
It feels a bit of a stretch to me to then portray the data as discriminatory towards the urban poor - the article works very hard to make these suspensions seem punitive towards those communities where it seems that the real causality is "urban poor have a low rate of having insurance" -> "not having insurance causes a license suspension" both of which are kinda predictable and reasonable, and would make for a dull article.
The 3rd largest group of "suspensions" is unpaid child support - behind "didn't show up to court for traffic violation" and "no insurance." This is indeed a "debt related" suspension but conveniently the Fed article doesn't feature the term "child support." We can still debate whether unpaid CP is grounds for license suspension, but for an article that relies to much on emotional flavor (eg describing affected communities etc) it seems remiss to ignore that the subset of those communities most impacted (besides those who fail to show up to traffic court and those who don't have insurance) are child support deadbeats.
It's funny that the authors of this debt and payment related article on the Federal reserve website are called Kyle FEE and Brian MikelBANK.
> 1.7 million Ohioans have a suspension in a given year. Meanwhile the state has 8M licensed drivers, so 20% of the people in the state are suspended at a given time? Wild.
In a given year, not at a given time.
It's the kind of metric that's likely to overcount people with multiple suspensions in a year, too.
The very best way I know to get someone to pay a debt they owe is to remove their ability to drive to/from work, and add impounding fines to the vehicle, after it's towed, since the driver can no longer legally drive it home again.
Suspending a driver's license because of debt is an absolutely bone-headed idea. Who the hell thinks it makes sense at all to punish a debtor by making it hard to get to work and earn money to pay off the debt?
Who the hell signed this into law? It just seems like a complete "fuck you" to the poor, designed to kick them while they're down and punish them for being poor.
I don't even care if the cause of the debt was outright tax fraud. Make the punishment fit the crime. If someone owes a debt to the government, garnish wages. If the debt is due to fraud, throw them in prison. But to make a sweeping law that takes away driver's licenses and most of the people affected are poor has no logical basis. It does nothing to solve the problem of unpaid debts, it merely makes them worse.
EDIT: Re-reading, I notice the article doesn't state the source of the debt. If it's unpaid traffic tickets, then I do think it makes sense to suspend the license, but an afternoon of traffic school should suffice for most moving violations. If it's unpaid taxes, hell no.
> Re-reading, I notice the article doesn't state the source of the debt. If it's unpaid traffic tickets, then I do think it makes sense to suspend the license, but an afternoon of traffic school should suffice for most moving violations. If it's unpaid taxes, hell no.
When I was younger, I was working three jobs to keep my head above water. I got a speeding ticket and forgot to pay it. My license was suspended. I had to not only pay the fine but to pay to reinstate my license. I could only afford to pay in installments to reinstate my license. I missed one payment and my license was suspended yet again. This is a trap that now seems crazy I could have ever fallen into, but it is a vicious cycle.
I got a speeding ticket once in Orlando, Florida. I didn't forget to pay it, but they had a very strange system. I had to pay, physically, at the address listed on the ticket, which I did. After I paid it, I had to physically deliver the receipt of payment to a DMV for them to register it in the system.
I paid the ticket within the time-frame, but I forgot to do the second step, and my license was suspended. I didn't realize my license was suspended until I got pulled over a few months later, and the cop informed me that I was driving without a license, and that's a felony in Florida. Apparently I also didn't have auto insurance either, because my insurance company wouldn't insure someone without a license.
Fortunately for me, the cop was sympathetic to my story, and just gave me a regular speeding ticket, and the next day I had to get my sister to drive me to the DMV, and I was able to get everything sorted out (this was before Uber was a thing). I had to pay an extra $100 for my license to be reinstated.
It was a huge pain in the ass, and added a lot of extra steps for something that realistically could have been solved with an email from the payment place to the DMV. I was lucky to have the vacation time banked and was able to miss work to fix this, but it would have been so much harder if I had hourly wages.
I think Florida has made this less horrible now (I haven't lived there in twelve years, and I don't own a car anymore), so maybe this particular thing has been resolved, but my point is that sometimes you can have your license suspended even when you pay on time.
> Who the hell thinks it makes sense at all to punish a debtor by making it hard to get to work and earn money to pay off the debt?
> Who the hell signed this into law? It just seems like a complete "fuck you" to the poor, designed to kick them while they're down and punish them for being poor.
People who govern by inflicting suffering instead of leveraging data to encourage rational and data driven outcomes. We see this as a bug, others see this as a feature.
According to Road To Nowhere, the OPLC report this article's sources (the Fines and Fees Justice Center and the Free to Drive Campaign) are based on, in 2020 there were 1,133,810 suspended drivers in the system:
22.8% (258,730) were license forfeitures. When a person is charged with a misdemeanor driving offense and either does not show up to court or fails to pay the fine.
4.8% (54,802) were judgement suspension. When a person causes property damage or personal injury due to a car crash and is fined, and does not pay the fine.
6.7% (75,906) were child support suspensions. Self explanatory.
59.9% (679,014) were non-compliance suspension. Non-compliance suspensions is when the driver is asked to provide proof of insurance at a traffic stop or scene of an accident and does not.
3.8% (43,630) were random selection suspensions. Random selection suspension is when they take a random sample of people shown in their system to not have vehicle insurance and ask them to provide proof of insurance, and then they do not.
1.9% (21,728) were security suspension. Security suspension are people with active criminal warrants.
Additionally there are "blocks" (527,058) where a person has a valid license or registration but cannot renew it either due to an outstanding warrant (378,523) or unpaid court fines (148,538).
As someone who was struck and injured by an uninsured driver, not only should uninsured drivers have their licenses suspended, any vehicle they are found operating or in possession of regardless of who owns it should be shredded and recycled with the scrap value going to a fund to compensate victims.
edit: also, I have been driving for 30 years and never been issued a ticket, been at fault in a crash, or had a single insurance claim except for chipped windshields. My insurance is so low I don't even know how much it costs. It is my assertion that operating vehicle in a manner that avoids accidents, fines, and court cases is easy, especially since I'm entirely average in my abilities, and I have very little sympathy for those who cannot do so.
Insurance seems to be the reason for most of the suspensions. I don't have a ton of sympathy for driving without insurance, but it seems quite likely that there is a feedback cycle of punishment here that could probably be improved. Like it can be harder to get insurance once you've been caught without insurance, and there might be additional fines involved, and once you get your license suspended there's often more steps to go through to resolve that as well.
The goal of the system should really be to get everyone insured, and I suspect there are people who don't just have financial problems resolving this but also a hard time navigating the bureaucracy.
It's probably because there are people so marginal and enforcement so lax wherein you have to get pulled over to get caught that it may make economic sense to skirt the system this way. You could make it hard to pay taxes on a car or keep owning it without also getting insurance on it to curb this. Cars with no current plate are pretty noticeable.
> any vehicle they are found operating or in possession of regardless of who owns it should be shredded and recycled with the scrap value going to a fund to compensate victims.
Assuming you take the vehicle, you should sell it as-is if possible, it will likely provide more value than shredding it. Even if you have to sell it to a dismantler, the parts are probably more valuable before you shred them.
It certainly doesn't seem fair for the government to take a car from an owner if its use was unauthorized, but if you want to do it for authorized use vehicles, then you should seek to get a reasonable sale and the funds should go towards a specific debt incured by the user; if the vehicle sells for more than those debts (less cost of sale), the balance should be returned to the owner. Same as if it were a house foreclosure or an abandoned car.
>Random selection suspension is when they take a random sample of people shown in their system to not have vehicle insurance and ask them to provide proof of insurance
Why are we only randomly sampling this rather than exhaustively?
>any vehicle they are found operating or in possession of regardless of who owns it should be shredded and recycled with the scrap value going to a fund to compensate victims.
So you're saying that next time someone steals your car for a joyride, you'd prefer if it got destroyed rather than just left somewhere?
I can only imagine that there is a lag in reporting from insurance companies, maybe they're batched, so instantly sending out a notice to everyone showing a lapse in coverage would result in a lot of unnecessary letters being sent out.
> 22.8% (258,730) were license forfeitures. When a person is charged with a misdemeanor driving offense and either does not show up to court or fails to pay the fine.
I didn't show up to court once, over a civil matter.
Thats because I was kicked out of my parents house. Homeless. And when I tried to go to the BMV to declare homeless status and NOT to send mail to that address, they refused me. I got a civil summons in the mail. Parents destroyed it and all mail addressed to me. And I got a summary judgement against me.
I tried to change it to my email address with the BMV, as that was stable. Of course not. Homeless people are less than humans who deserve derision and hate... and judgements against you.
I wonder how many of that 258730 fell into the same boat?
> If it's unpaid traffic tickets, then I do think it makes sense to suspend the license
No, it still doesn't. Modern societies have a kink for adding requirements for basic survival, but at the same time decreeing those same things "privileges, not rights" so that they can deny them with minimum oversight.
On places people have no other ways to move around, this is a human rights violation. Nothing less. (And yes, people should have options, that doesn't mean you can just say that out loud and take people's rights away. You have to do something if you want to use that claim.)
People get tickets for violating motor vehicle laws. These laws exist to protect all users of the road. If you can't follow the rules, you don't get to operate a vehicle that can easily kill other users. The only issue with license suspensions as a result of unpaid tickets, is that you can pay the ticket to buy your way out - an issue most places rectify by having a points system, so that drivers can't violate the law repeatedly just because they can pay.
> On places people have no other ways to move around, this is a human rights violation. Nothing less.
By this argument, driving tests should be illegal too. Or age limits on licensing. Or fees to renew plates or permits. If there's a "human rights violation", it's letting motorists known to repeatedly violate the law (putting my life in danger) continue to operate a vehicle.
The safety of other people does not hinge on money, other than liability insurance.
If you want to correct someone's bad or even intentionally irresponsible driving, there is nothing about the problem that implies money.
In fact it's if anything, the opposite. Making the penalty for a ticket be money just means I can just pay the ticket like paying for the priviledge to ignore that rule.
In fact I do this wrt to the front plate on one of my cars where it would be ugly. I don't want a plate there, but this state's rules say otherwise, but I get to just have what I want anyway. Once in a while, I get a ticket for it. I just pay it and continue not having a license plate on the front of that car. It's been over 20 years and several cars.
How nice for me that the penalty for this important rule is just money!
No, you've mis-identified the problem as "the punishment is only a single sum of money."
What actually makes it ineffective is "it's a fixed sum which some people (like me) are rich enough to casually ignore". Compounded by "infrequent enforcement."
The truth of this is easy to illustrate: Simply imagine that instead of a ~$100 fine every ~5 years, the missing plate was detected every week and the fine compounded by +5% each time until it reached 10% of your wages. It's technically still "just money"... but would your behavior be the same?
Just raises the bar. It's still a penalty that doesn't relate to the misdeed, and hurts different people differently.
The problem is we use money as a form of pain, because that is one facet of it, money can sure hurt, but taking money from one person is like taking away a finger or a leg, decimating their ability to function at all things in life, and then everyone punishes that person even more, now for not being a productive contributing member of society. Meanwhile another person can supply "fingers" all day and not be even inconvenienced let alone handicapped.
But taking money as a form of pain appeals to assholes, and funds their organizations, win-win!
Uh, yeah, because you claimed it was a fundamentally weak bar people could walk though. I raised it to illustrate you were actually stepping over it instead.
> It's still a penalty that doesn't relate to the misdeed
They are literally related by cause and effect. Trying to force some broader poetic Hammurabi-style connection is a non-starter, since it means my overdue library book would require a local librarian to break into my home and seize one of my own books as a hostage.
As amusing as that sounds, the abstraction of an overdue-book fine is wayyyy more practical and easier to do in a just and proportionate way. (Especially if all the books I have are from other libraries.)
> hurts different people differently
Which is why fines should be scaled better, like I said in my last post, rather than being fixed sums that some can ignore, like you described in yours.
> The problem is we use money as a form of pain
Anything the transgressor doesn't like is going to be a form of "pain", the least we can do is use something which is both (A) adjustable and (B) reversible.
Perhaps the problem is that we us the same money for both necessities and luxuries.
It allows assholes to decide to see everything as a luxury that someone they don't like doesn't deserve.
There is nothing about a traffic infraction that requires money as the penalty, instead of say, an annoying class or community service, or limiting their use of a vehicle to work or school, which is a thing that is done sometimes.
Money is just easy for the administrator at the (no pun) expense of the subjects. That's a shit reason to do something that way. But the majority of the rule-makers and system-designers are people that this setup doesn't harm. What a strange coincidense! That right there blows all these crybaby excuses how it would just be so hard to even try to think of anything else right out of the water.
The money is the economic incentive. The points resulting in license suspension fills the other loophole.
> Once in a while, I get a ticket for it. I just pay it and continue not having a license plate on the front of that car
Yes, I agree - your state shouldn't have this loophole. Since the economic penalty doesn't work, you should also be receiving non-monetary penalties for this behaviour that would have resulted in revocation of your driving permit (and further violations would be criminal).
You shoulda decided whether this is a "economic sanction" infraction or a "we can't let you drive for safety reason" infraction. If you decided it's the former, you shouldn't get to change it to the latter just because it turns out the driver can't pay.
The fine is intended to curb the poor behavior. If they can’t (or won’t) pay then it seems reasonable to proceed to a different punishment to curb that behavior.
I’m all for pegging fines to income to reduce the likelyhood that fines cause serious harm to violators, beyond the desired effect. But at some point it may not be possible to do anything but take a license.
Yes, I covered that in my comment about points systems (they exist everywhere I've lived - get too many tickets and your license is suspended, regardless of if you pay it off). Unless you mean that there should be no fee to renew your license, no nandatory insurance, no gas taxes, etc?
¿Por Qué No Los Dos? You're setting up a false-dichotomy where the only valid reaction to unsafe-driving is waiting for a major disaster and then taking their license away entirely.
Compare to: "OSHA shouldn't be fining MegaCo for lacking metal safety-railings around the ManMangler 4000 unit, because if it was reeeealy about safety they'd shut down the entire factory until it was safe. Fines prove they aren't serious about safety and have some other dubious motive."
Fines are a totally valid way to change behavior and deter the unsafe behavior from happening again in the future. They are both adjustable and reversible, unlike imprisonment or eye-for-an-eye. While I would love to see fines scaled by wealth to avoid disproportionately severe (or ineffective) effects, that's not the same as rejecting fines entirely.
I agree with you that taking away someone's driving privileges in many cases can be impinging on their human right to travel freely. And you are kinda right that generally human rights should not be violated.
But one human right can always be violated to preserve another human right [1]. In this case, a person X's human right to travel freely is balanced by everyone else's human right to travel freely (or particularly the subright to be able to travel without risk of bodily harm).
The latter is why we have licenses for driving. If someone does not respect other people's human rights then their human right can be taken away.
I would however, oppose, taking away someone's license for lesser reasons than other people's human rights. For instance, I would support poor people not having to pay license fees.
[1] In fact, a huge part of law is how we balance each human right against other human rights.
By that logic, do you also believe everyone should be allowed to drive without any liability insurance? Just like speeding tickets, it is also a cost imposed around behavior that is considered to be endangering other people.
At what point does a hypothetical/rare edge case of "trapped unable to travel anywhere unless I drive my own vehicle so I need to be allowed to do it badly" overwhelm the the commonplace issue of bad-driving causing harm?
people keep talking about drivers being uninsured but i have to ask, is that not part of what car registration is supposed to cover? where i'm from there's mandatory third party insurance which is bundled in with your rego, its impossible to drive a car that is registered unless you have insurance, is that not the case in the US? what do your rego fees go to?
Details might vary between different US states, but to generalize from my own experience, proof of liability insurance is never needed for periodic registration. It's asked for when:
1. You're in an actual accident.
2. You get pulled over by the police for some reason.
3. Before driving away a recently purchased car from a dealership and the car has a lien on it. It's a requirement of the bank that lent you the money using the car itself as collateral. If you purchased it fully, they don't care.
Fees for yearly car registration/renewals go towards transportation projects in the state/county/city.
TLDR: Americans can get away with driving uninsured on public roads for quite a while before getting caught.
> Details might vary between different US states, but to generalize from my own experience, proof of liability insurance is never needed for periodic registration.
In California, it is required within 30 days of initial registration, and within 45 when the previous insurance was cancelled (insurers are required to share this information with DMV.) This is mandatory liability insurance (which you can substitute with a bond, instead); if you are buying a car on credit, the lender will generally require it be covered immediately, and that the coverage include sufficient coverage for the loss of the vehicle, not just legally required liability coverage, because the lender wants to be sure they are paid no matter what happens to the car.
New York has a process where the insurance companies are required to notify the state if the policy lapses. There is exactly a 5 day grace period before an automatic suspension after this.
> Re-reading, I notice the article doesn't state the source of the debt. If it's unpaid traffic tickets, then I do think it makes sense to suspend the license, but an afternoon of traffic school should suffice for most moving violations. If it's unpaid taxes, hell no.
From the article:
> From 2016 through 2020, the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) and third-party creditors levied an average of about $150 million in charges and fees related to DRS [...]
Third party creditors are permitted to [ab]use this system. Sounds like it's not just traffic tickets.
This happened to my dad ~20 years ago. His debt was unpaid child support, because he lost his job. In a sense the debt was owed "to me", and that punishment didn't help the situation worth a damn.
I don't even know what to say about that. Unpaid child support due to a lost job should be self explanatory. Not sure:
A - Why taking your father's license was necessary?
B - How taking your father's license was supposed to help get the child support paid? (Assuming paying the child support was the ultimate goal.)
Just thinking there must have been some rationale behind laws allowing that to happen. It'd be interesting to get the explanation of that rationale from those who had a hand in enacting laws like this. Because on its surface, that seems like madness.
> If it's unpaid traffic tickets, then I do think it makes sense to suspend the license
In a society as car dependent as ours, this is tantamount to a loose house arrest sentence, and worth noting that it still falls in exactly the same way as your original point about how outrageously stupid it is to levy fines and then interfere with someone's ability to earn due to failure to pay those fines. Not to mention, in that aforementioned society, you can't not drive. So of course these people are driving illegally, and then they can be cited for that which will give a fresh case for yet more fines, more fees, and more court dates for them to miss.
And before you say "well it should prevent people from breaking traffic laws!" there is in fact a wide body of evidence showing that stiffer punishments for any crime does extremely precious little to affect the rate of offense.
No, it's quite clear these laws are designed to turn poor people into a steady revenue source for the cities and counties that have budgets to balance, same as it always was. It's a perfect solution: they have fewer resources to fight the tickets or the unfair circumstances, their low position in society means nobody gives a shit about them, they usually can't afford legal representation, they'll have a harder time making court dates and paying balances, and as such, municipalities get to drown them in all kinds of bullshit fees and charges, and if they still fail to pay, then they get to throw them in prison to boot. Another set of hands to work in the only method we have for legal slavery these days.
I agree for the most part. A single traffic ticket, even unpaid, should not result in severe punishments. No loss of license, no jailtime, no additional fines, etc. It is too likely to escalate someone's existing financial problems.
Would you say the same for repeat offenders? A traffic ticket that does not carry the risk of a compounding punishment might as well not exist. I can agree with ignoring one traffic ticket, but I do think a "three strikes and you're out" rule should be in place to prevent people from taking advantage of the system's leniency.
The system doesn't have to be lenient because we want to be nice to the repeat offenders, the system has to be lenient because the infrastructure of our country is built on the presumption of everyone owning a car. Mass transit in the states is largely a fucking joke once you leave one of the major metropolitan areas (and hell, even in them depending which city we're talking). Like, I cannot overstate, as someone who lives in a smaller town in rural Wisconsin, you can't live without a car here. We have a bus service, sure. The schedule sucks and it basically takes 90 minutes minimum to get to anywhere from anywhere if you want to use it. Cycling is just straight impossible for about 5 months out of the year, and the rest of the time you have to cross roads that are not designed for bike traffic, next to drivers who are notorious for not paying attention to pedestrians, or even other cars for that matter.
Like, let's say the worst case scenario is true: you have this person who is willfully bucking traffic laws on the regular, for some reason that we are not privy to. They just won't stop. Okay? What do you want to do about it? Do we imprison them for a completely non-violent offense? Do we just continue fining them? Do we take away their right to drive, and make them functionally immobile, and also completely still capable of driving illegally?
If you'll allow a quick gripe, at the social scale, we hold an inconsistent view of work, morals, and economics.
1. Does the economic system allow for full employment.
2. If not, then it stands to reason that among the unemployed, a portion is temporarily unemployed and a portion is chronically unemployed.
3. Is it moral to blame the chronically unemployed for their unemployment if fill employment is unattainable?
4. If full employment is unattainable, and it's immoral to blame the chronically unemployed, then what purpose do unemployment punishments serve? Why make a system where someone is guaranteed to lose, and then punish the loser?
> Suspending a driver's license because of debt is an absolutely bone-headed idea.
There are people who have money, yet won't pay debts, unless you force them to. This system ostensibly was designed to solve this problem while at the same time ignoring the impact on low income people.
> If someone owes a debt to the government, garnish wages.
You've never had your wages garnished, have you? If you think suspension of a drivers license, which is just a temporary paperwork condition, is somehow preferable to actual taking of up to 25% of your income from your check, I'm incredibly surprised.
> designed to kick them while they're down and punish them for being poor.
Finally.. you shouldn't assume that all poor people are victims of some external circumstance. It's not a uniform "class" of people you can think of this way.
>Finally.. you shouldn't assume that all poor people are victims of some external circumstance.
sure, some are victims of some internal circumstance, but I can't really think of someone who is willingly poor, more like incapable of getting over their internal problem.
> but I can't really think of someone who is willingly poor
It's not an isolated choice. Their choice to be poor is usually a consequence of them deciding that some other activity is easier and better than attempting to build wealth for themselves.
I've lived this way for large portions of my life. America is not fun to live in while facing this proposition, and the current climate seems to require a certain tolerance or willingness towards corruption that I personally cannot abide even though I am poorer for it.
It wasn't a judgement. It's just an anecdote about how solving the problem may look quite a bit different than the frothy suggestions posted here.
>Their choice to be poor is usually a consequence of them deciding that some other activity is easier and better than attempting to build wealth for themselves.
I would say your choice to be middle class or not wealthy is a direct and easily understood consequence of deciding that some other activity is easier and or better - for example I'm going to be a Public Defender and help people!
Also I guess I want to learn about Ancient Sumerian instead of pursuing an MBA!
But those are not choices guaranteed for poverty, they are choices not to pursue wealth.
choices for poverty are generally not willingly chosen or are at least not direct and clear consequences but sure I bet you can with diligent searching turn up some examples.
> But those are not choices guaranteed for poverty
Your encoded is assumption is that not only did they make these choices but that they were successful in choosing them. You're also missing the most obvious way people make this choice:
Having a child. Which, is not always a _predictable_ addition to life.
Everyone is acting like I've got some "anti welfare queen" bias here, when in reality I have an "anti bleeding heart" bias here. We should solve the problems. To do so, we should first be /honest/ about what those problems actually are.
> It's not an isolated choice. Their choice to be poor is usually a consequence of them deciding that some other activity is easier and better than attempting to build wealth for themselves.
Fucking hell, talk about the seething techbro in this utter screed.
Poverty can be related to choices you did. But it's usually choices your parents did, and the community you live in.
Schools are funded with local taxes. Naturally poverty areas get shit schools.
Same thing with any govt resource. The poorer, the worse.
Poverty is a disease, the more widespread it is, and serves as a trap for all who are in it.
But it's easy, especially for capitalists, to turn systemic problems into "individual choices cause bad". Easier to dismiss and deride individuals that way.
> But it's usually choices your parents did, and the community you live in.
What is your source for this assertion?
> "individual choices cause bad"
So, your expectation is, if you fund the schools and fix the "resources," everything is suddenly going to be better because everyone will make the best choices naturally? What experiences or data are you drawing from here?
> at the same time ignoring the impact on low income people.
That's a HUGE problem.
> If you think suspension of a drivers license, which is just a temporary paperwork condition
"temporary paperwork condition"?
Are you advocating driving on a suspended license? Because someone who can no longer drive to work either loses their job or it's suddenly very expensive to drive.
> you shouldn't assume that all poor people are victims of some external circumstance. It's not a uniform "class" of people you can think of this way.
Well no, of course not. Some people are poor because of shitty choices.
But poverty is extremely difficult to escape, whether or not it's because of shitty choices. I think it's fair to try to improve the lives of people that are poor because of external circumstance, even if it means we end up helping people who you feel don't deserve help because poor choices led them to be poor.
It may be large, but do you have any information that can put the size of this problem in context with the others?
> Are you advocating driving on a suspended license?
I'm merely recognizing that doing so is possible without bringing further harm to yourself, while having your paycheck garnished is entirely unavoidable. Further if you're driving for an actually good reason, I doubt most police officers would make an issue of the paperwork condition. Finally there are many states where simply driving with a suspended or revoked license is not an arrestable or towable offense.
> But poverty is extremely difficult to escape
If you are unwilling to change anything else about their lives, then yes, it's hard to make the same actions have a different result. In particular, even if you try, you're probably just moving consequences and risk around the system in a careless fashion.
> even if it means we end up helping people who you feel don't deserve help
So far I've failed to witness "throw money at the problem" or "let them off the hook" actually _improve_ anything other than the conscience of the people who advocate for it.
You say I miss the point entirely. I grasped one of your points, though we may agree to disagree.
But your claim that "most law enforcement, even after discovering your license is suspended, upon hearing "but I'm just going to work", are going to say "oh well, far be it from me to make you late", and let you go"... needs citation.
Well, you also ignore that while you may not be arrested, you are going to be charged with at least a misdemeanor in all fifty states, if not a felony (and in some states, after X driving on a suspended license misdemeanors it becomes a felony) - so it's not as simple as "cool, just keep fining me, I'll pay you eventually, maybe", and no other consequences.
> I notice the article doesn't state the source of the debt. If it's unpaid traffic tickets, then I do think it makes sense to suspend the license
Yes, it's unpaid tickets and tolls. That's common in most states. If you have unpaid tickets or debts, you can't register your car. If you can't register your car, you get more tickets.
I'm not sure why you changed your opinion of this being "the worst thing ever" to "it's fine" because it's based on fees instead of taxes. Either way it has the same impact on the poor.
> Suspending a driver's license because of debt is an absolutely bone-headed idea
If the car has to be re-possessed, it's unfair to let the person keep using the vehicle (and perhaps even destroy the vehicle). Now whatever financing created the debt might have originally been predatory, but that's a separate study (probably badly needed!). Nevertheless, debt collection just wants an extra reason for a cop to pull somebody over and enforce the debt.
I stand corrected.
Nov 2023.
This was so recent I had not realized.
2-3 years ago I though Ohio was one of the crazy right wing states. I guess things have shifted. (and not just reading about it, I was traveling there at the time of the miscarriages issue, and there were ton of Trump flags in yards, so guess I can assume some)
That’s called contempt before investigation. Lots of assumptions, imagine what else your could be wildly wrong about due to your lack of knowledge, understanding and research.
You do realize people don't keep up with the ballot initiatives in every state on every election. And that there is an overwhelm stream of information to digest?
I was in Ohio just a year ago and it did seem radical, and that was first person observation. So not a huge 'contempt before investigation'. But, to be fair, I was in the countryside, and I did not run my own state wide Gallup Poll.
> We very much DO have debtor prisons. They're just through a judge who signs off.
Yup.
I'm always reminded of the gentleman (Joseph Prudente of Florida) who was put in jail without bail for failing to upkeep their lawn to their HOA's standards. The legal reason was contempt of court for not following the judge's order to upkeep their lawn.
As an aside, contempt of court doesn't have a sentence length, nor does it require you to be found guilty of any crime.
Not really the same thing, but I'm reminded too of the HOA in Texas that foreclosed on a woman in her late 80s from her home for $180 in unpaid HOA dues (apparently her husband had managed finances and died recently).
Egregious enough. Then the real details hit, and made a bad thing worse:
- A member of the HOA Board had moved to foreclose on this home despite the small arrears (even relative to other members of the community)
- Someone made a very short offer on the house (IIRC, in the order of $125K for a $4-500K home)
- HOA Board voted to accept the short sale offer
(You might have seen this coming) Spoiler alert: The HOA board member who lead the vote to foreclose, the person who made the short offer, and the board member who voted to accept that offer? All the same person, who had a healthy little business as a landlord.
In this specific case, some good Samaritans came around and fixed the lawn for him while he was imprisoned. Had they not... I don't know how it would have been possible.
One day, while helping someone get their car out of an impound, i was informed by the officer on duty that my license was not showing as valid. They couldn't tell why though, said the status/notes listed made no sense to her, and i should contact the Denver office to find out what is going on. I was rather confused, as it had been many years since i had last been pulled over, for a minor speeding ticket.
Denver was similarly confused by the details. After some research, they tell me what appears to have happened was i paid my ticket years ago by check, in person. They recorded they received the check on time, but either due to a clerical error or something (they aren't sure), a late fee was assessed on my ticket prior to the payment being processed. The fee was, i think, $5.
Around this same time, i moved, and while i changed my address with the USPS, i didn't with the DMV. The DMV was thus sending my "you owe us $5" letters with "Do Not Forward" instructions via the USPS, who were knowingly delivering the mail to the wrong address (my old place).
When i discovered all of this, years later, my license had been suspended for 54 weeks due to delinquency. In CO, if your license has been suspended for over 1 year, you may not just satisfy the debt, you must also retake your driving test. But since i didn't take my original test in CO, i would also need to re-apply for a permit and pass a written permit exam before being allowed to schedule my drivers test.
The poor lady i spoke with in the Denver office recognized the sheer absurdity of everything she was telling me, but could do nothing to fix it. She also let me know the outstanding debt was now $15.