San Francisco: Most expensive parking tickets in US

From yesterday's SF Chronicle telling us that San Francisco now has the most expensive parking tickets in the country:

Paul Rose, a spokesman for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees parking enforcement and sets fees and fines, described the increases as "adjustments meant to keep increases incremental and predictable" and keep pace with increased enforcement and administrative costs, which have gone up 3.5 percent. Since the agency began the SFPark program, which is testing the notion of parking fees that rise and fall with demand, along with other changes, has installed modern parking meters that take credit cards as well as coins and allow parkers to pay by phone. Those changes have made it easier for motorists to avoid getting tickets, Rose said. "We've seen a steady reduction in the number of tickets being issued," he said.

Right. The MTA has to keep up with rising "administrative costs" because it has a 5,000-employee bureaucracy to maintain[Later: As of 2015, there were 6,263 employees in the SFMTA and Reiskin makes $304,000] along with Ed Reiskin's $294,000 salary. I bet Rose makes well above six figures, too, since he's been bullshitting for the MTA for years.

Any reduction in parking tickets cuts into the agency's "predictable" income, which the Examiner reported more than three years ago, and was confirmed by this retired meter guy in a Chronicle story. The MTA does in fact have a quota in the number of parking tickets its individual "parking control officers" must give to those unfortunates who have to drive in San Francisco.

Rose and the MTA like to say that parking meters are all about "managing" parking in the city, but the reality is that parking tickets and parking meters are a major source of income for the city.

See the Transportation Fact Sheet for the numbers: In FY 2011-2012, the city made $47,138,412 from its parking meters (page 8) and $83,290,024 from parking tickets (page 11). Note that the city made twice as much from parking tickets as it did from parking meters.

Spencer's response to attack that the Huffington Post refused to publish

 

Kolbe Academy Should Be Standing For Free Speech

By Robert Spencer

Nathan Lean's piece attacking me in Friday's Huffington Post is at least the fifth such op-ed Lean has written solely devoted to defaming me and spreading falsehoods about my record, activities and beliefs. Lean also, well aware of the many death threats I have received from Islamic jihadists, has published on the Internet information he believes to be about my location and my family with the clear intent of endangering me and my family and intimidating me into silence. The FBI is aware of these veiled threats from Mr. Lean.

The editors of the Huffington Post, of course, may not have been concerned that they were publishing the rantings of an obsessive and threatening stalker, since they agree with his politics; however, now that he has spread his misinformation, it is incumbent upon me to set the record straight.

Lean claims that "civil rights organizations" have labeled me a "hate group leader." In my own defense, I must also note that far from being an actual "hate group leader," I have instructed the FBI, CIA, and U.S. military on Islam and jihad. Lean's calling me "anti-Muslim" would be like calling foes of the Nazis "anti-German."

And as for the "hate group leader" charge, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have both (particularly the SPLC) come under strong criticism in recent years for irresponsibly labeling as "hate groups" many organizations that simply disagree with its extreme political stances. It is also telling that the SPLC doesn't classify any Islamic jihad groups as hate groups, despite their poisonous rhetoric calling for the mass murder of Americans.

Lean also claims that the Norway terrorist Anders Breivik cited my writings, without mentioning that Breivik cited many people, including Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, and Thomas Jefferson. Lean tries to mislead readers into thinking that Breivik was inspired to kill by my writings against jihad terror, but Breivik was not actually an opponent of jihad terror: he wrote about how he wanted to aid Hamas and ally with jihad groups. Breivik also explained that his real inspiration for his violence was not us, but the Islamic jihad terror group al-Qaeda, about which Nathan Lean has never written a critical word.

Nor does Lean mention that we are appealing the rejection of our trademark application for Stop Islamization of America. it is ironic that while large numbers of valiant secularist Turks and Egyptians are resisting the Islamization of their countries, that Lean would smear as bigoted an attempt to preserve American freedoms from subversion by provisions of Islamic law that even many Muslims reject as oppressive.

Lean criticizes my work exposing what he calls "the supposed threat of radical Muslims in the United States." It is odd in the extreme that anyone would write about a "supposed threat" in the wake of the Boston Marathon jihad bombings, as well as the Fort Hood jihad massacre and the many foiled jihad plots around the nation in recent years. It becomes more understandable when one notes that Lean is an employee of Aslan Media, an organization headed by Reza Aslan, a Board member of what a federal court has determined to be a front group for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Meanwhile, Lean claims that a Board member of our organization once "recommended burning all mosques and sending Muslim immigrants back to their countries," trying to give the impression that these are positions of our organization. In fact, the man he claims is a Board member is not one, and these are not positions we espouse.

As a result of smears and defamation from Lean's counterparts in Britain, my colleague Pamela Geller and I have been banned from entering that country. The basis for this ban was a petition from the Left-fascist group Hope Not Hate, which falsely claimed that we called all Muslims "savages," which we have not done. The Home Office's letter banning me from entering the country said I was being banned for saying that Islam has a doctrine mandating warfare against unbelievers, which it manifestly and demonstrably does indeed have. A preacher of that doctrine, the Saudi Sheikh Mohammed al-Arifi, was recently admitted into the UK. He has said: "Devotion to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer." Yet I who advocate no violence or hatred of any kind am not allowed in.

Lean also writes: "Spencer has argued that there is no distinction between American Muslims and radical, violent jihadists." This is sheer misrepresentation. What I actually said was that U.S. Muslim organizations have been slow to expel violent jihadists or report their activities. They move freely among peaceful Muslims. The Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the Boston Marathon, were members in good standing of the Islamic Society of Boston. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's most vocal Muslim organization, has counseled Muslims in the U.S. not to speak to the FBI.

Lean claims that our ads "equated Muslims with savages." In reality, the ad said: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad." The savages to which we were referring, obviously, were those jihadis who have massacred innocent Israeli civilians and celebrated those massacres. Is Lean suggesting that all Muslims support those massacres? If so, it is he, not our ads or organization, who is presenting "violent acts of notorious terrorists like Osama bin Laden as normative of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims." In reality, we have never done such a thing.

Lean wants the Sacramento Diocese to rescind my invitation to speak, saying it should "follow the actions of the Worcester Diocese in Massachusetts, which rescinded Spencer's invitation to speak at a men's conference in Massachusetts in March." Actually this was done following another libel-based demand made by a local Muslim leader named Abdul Cader Asmal, a man who is a vocal and open supporter and friend of convicted al-Qaeda terrorist Tarek Mehanna. This is the lead Nathan Lean wants the Bishop of Sacramento to follow.

It is ironic that throughout Lean's vicious attack piece he speaks repeatedly of "hate speech," when it is he who is spreading hatred, falsehood and defamation in his weirdly personal ongoing obsession with my activities. My work is dedicated to defending the equality of rights of all people before the law and above all the freedom of speech. I hope that Kolbe Academy and the Diocese of Sacramento will not bow to the tactics of an enabler of jihad terror like Nathan Lean, and stand firm in defending that most fundamental of freedoms.

 

The petition to the Sacramento Diocese. The petition against banning Spencer and Geller from Great Britain.

 

Thanks to Jihad Watch for the links.