So, in Washington D.C., seat of government of the world's most powerful nation, the beacon of freedom, the place everybody wants to get to or be like, you know what can get you a parking ticket?
Parking in your own driveway.
Yes, if you park in a certain part of your driveway, you can get a ticket. Not because you have a cruddy old clunker that looks like Bo and Luke jumped it over one too many washed-out bridges. Not because you've got it plastered with bumper stickers for causes that make Lyndon LaRouche say, "I think that's a little out there." Not even because it's one of those "Scourges of Nichols Hills," a pickup truck out where everyone can see it.
Nope, just because you parked it too close to the street. According to Washington city ordinances, the land on your lot between the property line and what they call the "building restriction line" is actually public property that you maintain for them because you're such a swell old bean that you like doing things like that. In practice, according to the linked story, that means everything past your front door is city property, and you can't park your private vehicle on public property.
Now -- for a price -- the city will lease that land to you and you can consider it yours. This may have been what you thought that money you sent to mortgage company was supposed to be doing, but you are obviously a small-minded un-public-spirited yahoo. A city official says that the lease agreements and tickets are not extortion.
Of course they're not. Extortion is what you call it when people use illegal means to threaten you with some kind of harm in order to get money from you. The ordinances, tickets and lease fees are all legal, created and enforced by duly-elected officials and employees doing their jobs.
It's not extortion, it's government.
(H/T Galley Slaves)
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