Travis Rowley: Parking Tickets- Driving People

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Travis Rowley, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

Hey, maybe the unions really stepped in it this time.

Taking some time off from manipulating the local economy in their favor – and thereby completely destroying it – the Cranston police union seems to have been the impetus for a retaliatory issuing of dozens of parking tickets throughout two districts of Cranston last November.

You know, the type of pub-talk and kitchen-table controversy that actually revs the engine of the local voter.

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It’s sad, but true: $17 trillion in national debt has nothing on a $25 parking ticket when it comes to electoral politics.

While denying any political motivation, Captain Stephen Antonucci of the Cranston Police Department – who is also the president of the Cranston police union – has admitted to ordering patrolmen to ticket cars throughout the wards represented by City Councilmen Steven Stycos and Paul Archetto, who just happened to vote against a police contract known to be favored by Antonucci’s union.

During the course of two days following the vote, 66 tickets were issued throughout Stycos’ ward while Archetto’s constituents received a total of 62. During the same time period, only 9 tickets were issued throughout the remaining streets of Cranston.

Adding to the suspicion, anonymous sources have told the ACLU that, rather than giving the ticketing order over the department’s radio network, Antonucci delivered it via cell phone.

This adds more weight to the rumor that Captain Antonucci is currently developing an i-Phone app that will enable labor bosses to more efficiently unleash their thugs upon the taxpayers.

In Their Pockets

This latest controversy is not unlike the ObamaCare debacle – Democratic legislation that is now causing millions of average Americans to either receive cancellation notices for their insurance policies, or witness drastic hikes to their premiums and deductibles.

Suddenly, a complex issue concerning one-sixth of the entire US economy – a matter that dwelled within the fog of political bickering for months, forcing busy Americans to cut through arguments over “affordability,” “racism,” “socialism,” free markets,” and “fairness” – is now being boiled down to everyone’s bottom line.

Oh, now I get it. This is going to cost me more!

Just as widely understood is a parking ticket. Everyone gets them. Everyone hates them.

Go right ahead, attempt to articulate to your neighbor the long history of fiscal thuggery committed by organized labor – including all the anti-business regulations and protectionist laws, the forced unionization, the countless lawsuits against the taxpayers, the corrupting connection between elected politicians and public union leaders, and all the economic devastation that has resulted from it. Point to the fact that Rhode Island has been under the strict control of union-Democrats for decades, and that the unmistakable result is a seemingly irrecoverable private sector, a dismal business climate, millions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities, the highest unemployment rate in the nation, and off-the-chart property taxes. Talk to your neighbor about the bankruptcy of Detroit, and all the alarming similarities that Rhode Island shares with that once-electrifying city.

Presuming your neighbor doesn’t collapse from boredom, he’ll surely recall something he heard about unions sticking up for “the workers” who are always being exploited by “the rich,” “greedy CEOs,” and “evil corporations” – that old Marxist canard; that wicked class warfare; that emotional liberalism that so effectively gets thousands of Rhode Islanders to yank that master lever for the Democratic Party each and every election cycle.

But then go tell your neighbor that organized labor is responsible for those parking tickets last year.

What? The union is responsible for those parking tickets? Those scumbags!

Speaking To Voters

Of course, I mention all of this in the context of an election year. In 2014, Republican politicians shouldn’t shy away from dumbing things down in a manner typically reserved for Democrats.

More Republicans need to acknowledge that people are emotional. That is to say, voters are emotional.

Translation: The candidate who wins the debate doesn’t necessarily win the election.

Republicans need to abandon their naïve idealism. They not only need to learn how to articulate the moral dimension behind a limited government, but also how to be ruthless while remaining truthful.

And not just because it will help them win elections, but because Democrats deserve it.

This is hardly the first time organized labor – empowered and emboldened by the Democratic Party – has “worked to rule.” What happened in Cranston is not an isolated incident. Rather, it is part of the union-Democrats’ culture of political thuggery.

That’s the truth. And Republicans need to know how to say it, and then defend it.

In 2014, when speaking about the people who have made it their mission in life to make as many people believe that Republicans represent greedy racists who hate gays and wage wars on women, the message should be as follows:

Democrats were wrong. Democrats were wrong about ObamaCare. Moreover, Democrats lied about ObamaCare.

In the sixth year of Obama’s presidency, the economy still falters and millions of Americans have dropped out of the workforce. Democrats were wrong to vouch for socialism at the expense of capitalism.

Here in Rhode Island, the primary use of the local economy is to illustrate to other states the devastation that occurs when you allow unions and Democrats to set policy for 70 years. Rhode Island is entirely incapable of rebounding on its own. We are in a life raft, waiting for a national recovery.

Democrats lied. Democrats destroyed. Democrats lied. Democrats destroyed.

Repeat it as often as possible.

Democrats lied. Democrats destroyed. Democrats ticketed your car.

Travis Rowley (TravisRowley.com) is the author of The RI Republican: An Indictment of the Rhode Island Left.