More on sliding scales for traffic fines: good or bad idea?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Gorgasal” makes a point about differential speeding fines that I’ve seen made many times by proponents. In fact, it’s the main argument for them, and it goes like this:

Speeding tickets that scale with income are the norm in Switzerland.

The argument is NOT that a rich guy who does 20 over the limit is more dangerous than a poor guy at the same speed.

The argument is that a 50 CHF is utter peanuts to a derivatives trader with UBS and will not dissuade him from speeding – but a fine in the multiple thousands just might. (And yes, this is the monetary range we are talking about.)

Much as I usually agree with Neo and the commentariat here, in this specific case I agree with this proposal.

I understand the argument, but I don’t think it holds up under scrutiny, and I’ll explain why.

Whether you think of fines as deterrents or punishments or both, it does make intuitive sense that of course for a poor person a fine takes more of a bite out of his or her income and therefore one would think it’s a greater punishment and therefore a greater deterrent, and likewise such a fine is hardly any deterrent at all for a rich person. If that is true, one would think that, per capita, poor people would already be speeding less than rich people; after all, the punishment fine is much greater for them in terms of percentage of income.

But do they? I’ve never seen a demonstration that this is the case, except for self-reports about speeding which show poorer people report less speeding than rich people report. But self-reports are meaningless in that regard, because they merely measure what people are willing to own up to when asked in a survey, rather than their actual behavior objectively measured. And if someone is very poor, that person also may not be driving as much for the simple reason that he or she may have a problem affording gasoline, or might be more likely to live in an urban area where public transportation is the norm and is more convenient.

The most objective measure I could find of how much poor people speed versus wealthier people was a study of the violations found in New York by speed cameras. Such cameras don’t discriminate. And guess what? There was no difference in speeding rates between rich and poor communities, or between races:

New York City’s speed safety camera program saves lives. The program led to a 72 percent reduction in speeding and a 55 percent drop in all traffic fatalities at camera sites during hours of operation after its introduction. There is no correlation between the number of tickets per resident and race or poverty level.

Such cameras also come at a cost: constant surveillance (which we already have to a great extent anyway). And the differential fines proposed in California (that I wrote about yesterday) have an additional cost: a record must be kept or accessed of every driver’s income in order to set the scale for that particular person’s speeding fine. Another cost is the normalization of differential “justice” penalties based on income. And – at least as far as I can tell from the quick research I’ve done – all without any indication that these revised fines would act as a deterrence to speeding. In fact, logic tells me that reducing the present fines for poor people will be likely to lead to an increase in speeding among the poor and a rise in accidents and fatalities among the poor, because the deterrent for them would be weaker than it is now.

I think you see where this is going. Why limit this to speeding tickets? There’s really no reason. Let’s have differential fines for everything, differential tolls, and differential prices for goods. Why should a poor person pay as much for eggs as a rich person? After all, the poor person has to eat. That’s far more important than the right to speed. And rich people can afford to eat more meat; perhaps we should have a rationing system to make the consumption of meat more equal.

Also, do we care why a person is poor? For example, some people are poor because they abuse substances, and low income people are more likely to have substance problems (although which is cause and which is effect I don’t think we know). Is that of any important at all? How far does our futile quest for cosmic justice go?

I looked for articles about the effect of these laws on countries in Europe that already have them. Do the laws reduce speeding, and by whom? I couldn’t find any such articles, although they may indeed exist. What I did find is this sort of thing, which contains some interesting data:

In Finland, speeding fines are linked to salary. The Finns run a “day fine” system that is calculated on the basis of an offender’s daily disposable income – generally their daily salary divided by two.

The more a driver is over the speed limit, the greater the number of day fines they will receive.

This has led to headline-grabbing fines when wealthy drivers have been caught driving very fast.

In 2002, Anssi Vanjoki, a former Nokia director, was ordered to pay a fine of 116,000 euros ($103,600) after being caught driving 75km/h in a 50km/h zone on his motorbike.

And in 2015, Finnish businessman Reima Kuisla was fined 54,000 euro ($62,000) for driving 22km/h over the 50km/h speed limit.

Switzerland uses a similar system, and currently holds the world record for a speeding ticket. It was handed to a Swedish motorist in 2010 who was caught driving at 290km/h. He was fined 3,600 Swiss francs per day for 300 days – around 1,080,000 Swiss francs ($1,091,340) in total.

The UK introduced tougher speeding penalties in 2017. Drivers can be fined up to 175% of their weekly income, on a sliding scale depending on the severity of the offence. However, the amount is capped at £2,500 ($3,310).

Such fun! Stick it to the rich!

In my search for evidence on the effect of “progressive” speeding fines, I did find research on the effect of raising fines for speeding in general. The upshot:

During the years 1995-2004, the rates for fixed penalties for traffic offences in Norway increased substantially. This paper evaluates the effects on compliance of these increases. Regression analysis was performed to determine the effects of increases in fixed penalties. For speeding in general, no effect of increasing fixed penalties can be found. For speeding close to speed camera sites, there is a weak tendency for the violation rate to go down. This tendency is not statistically significant at conventional levels.

In other words: no deterrent effect for increased fines (this paper found similar results). My conclusion is that people either speed or don’t speed for a number of poorly-understood reasons, but fear of substantial fines is probably not a big factor.

A sliding scale for speeding tickets: is this even legal?

The New Neo Posted on by

California is looking to be a trailblazer:

San Francisco is launching a new program backed by Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom that will issue speeding tickets based on income. …

Violations for speeding range from $50 to $500, but individuals with a household income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level are eligible for a 50% discount, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Indigent persons, or individuals who are homeless, are eligible for an 80% discount on the speeding ticket. …

A fact sheet for the pilot program states that speeding cameras were placed across the city “in an equitable fashion.” …

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation will roll out a similar program in 2026 that targets speeding drivers, but has an option for low-income individuals to perform community service instead of paying fines.

Speeding tickets aren’t a graduated income tax.

Here’s a law review article defending this type of practice as a wonderful idea.

Personally, I think it’s a terrible idea, one of so many of the left’s attempts to institute what Thomas Sowell called “cosmic justice.” Cosmic justice is impossible for mere humans to issue, and efforts to achieve it almost invariably end up perverting actual justice.

Is Musk leaving DOGE?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s become more and more difficult to get the truth of a story in the MSM, although it’s long been quite difficult. So now there’s a “Musk is leaving DOGE!” story that’s getting hyped.

However, the plan was always for Musk to leave DOGE, and the timeframe involved was never especially long. Here’s the story now:

A senior government official told NBC that Musk — whose DOGE team is engaged in a controversial effort to slash federal spending — would leave at the end of a 130-day stint as a special government employee.

That specific designation, SGE, caps a person’s workdays per year at 130 days. Having started on Jan. 20, Musk’s SGE cap will be reached at the end of May.

Politico reported earlier Wednesday that the Tesla CEO will soon be leaving the Trump administration. Tesla shares rose after that story was published.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a tweet, called that report “garbage.”

Also see this from Fox:

Elon Musk will exit his role with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on schedule later this spring, once “his incredible work at DOGE is complete,” the White House confirmed Wednesday.

“This ‘scoop’ is garbage,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted to X Wednesday. “Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete.”

Leavitt was referring to a Wednesday Politico article reporting that “Trump has told his inner circle & members of his Cabinet that” Musk “will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role.” Musk, however, has long been anticipated to step back from DOGE when his 130 days as a “special government employee” run out in May.

So that’s it. Not much of a story. But the MSM can make an anti-Trump anti-Musk story out of almost anything or even nothing. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and there’s most definitely a will.

The left retains control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court

The New Neo Posted on by

In Wisconsin, a referendum to put the already-existent requirement for voter ID into the state constitution won but the Republican judicial candidate lost, in a state that Trump carried in 2024 – although he carried it narrowly. But the Democrat judge won by a large margin: 10%. The turnout was about 70% of what it had been in the 2024 general election.

I used the phrase “Democrat judge,” but the race is billed as “non-partisan.” However, it’s hard to imagine a more partisan race, although that fact is hidden by a law in Wisconsin requiring that Supreme Court candidates be listed on the ballot without party affiliation. That is an attempt to maintain the fiction that judges are above the partisan fray. Ha!

So I’m not sure how many Wisconsin voters even followed this closely enough to understand that Crawford, the winner, is a highly partisan Democrat, or what significance the race has on a national level in terms of redistricting to favor Democrats. And besides, I believe that by Wisconsin law ads also cannot designate political affiliation for Supreme Court candidates, as far as I know. Political junkies are aware of all of this, and endorsements and rallies also tell the tale. But most people are not political junkies.

The MSM is framing the result as a terrible defeat for Trump, and a warning to him. It’s certainly a defeat, but I don’t know whether it’s a warning or not, and neither do they. After all, there was a similar special election in Wisconsin in 2023, and the Democrat won although in 2024 Trump carried the state.

I believe that there is probably a significant percentage of Trump voters who are no-shows if he’s not on the ballot. Plus, special elections generally have low turnout and favor the most politically fanatic, who will always turn out. Plus, tons of money were poured into Wisconsin for the Democrat. Plus, apparently the GOP candidate was a lackluster campaigner. Plus, it probably was hard to convey to potential GOP voters that this state election for a judge could help lose the US House for the GOP and affect the course of the last two years of the Trump presidency.

That said, the loss is depressing and certainly not an encouraging sign.

How much did the Democrats spend in the race? This article mentions the topic but only gives a total amount and not a party breakdown:

Susan Crawford, who was endorsed by the Democratic Party, won the closely-watched Wisconsin Supreme Court race Tuesday night in what was the most expensive judicial election in American history.

What would have normally been a sleepy nonpartisan judicial race turned into an expensive battle between Crawford, a Dane County judge, and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, who was endorsed by the Republican Party. The campaigns and their supporters have spent more than $81 million, attracting endorsements and campaign appearances from Elon Musk, Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders and other national political figures.

Here’s the BBC on the subject. The article says the total was 91 million, including 20 million by Musk “and groups affiliated with him.” What are these groups? And are we to conclude that the Democrats – and “groups affiliated with them” – spent the other 70 million? Who knows? The BBC isn’t telling, athough they list some of the names of the donors – the usual suspects:

Democrats, too, have rallied deep-pocketed donors in support of Crawford. Along with Soros, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman have reportedly contributed large sums. But their names haven’t inspired the same vitriol as Musk’s.

I’ve looked but so far I can’t find an article that says what the Democrats spent on the race.

This one mentions an interesting angle that may have been a factor:

Scott interviewed a Glendale voter who has voted for Trump three times, including in the most recent election. He said he’s backing liberal county judge Crawford in this race.

“He believes that President Trump, by supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade, sent this issue back down to the states,” reported Scott. “He believes [Crawford] most aligns with his views on abortion rights.”

I see some speculation in the comments on other blogs that the Democrats won because of fraud. My opinion is that, although it’s possible that some fraud occurred, not only will we never know but the margin of victory was rather high for that and I think Crawford won.

One more thing that it’s important to keep in mind is that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz came within a hair of winning Wisconsin in 2024. They were incredibly poor candidates, and yet they came close to winning that election. Trump’s margins were broad but shallow, and I think it’s an enormous error to count the Democrats out.

Both Florida races were won by the GOP with very comfortable margins, although with the enormous margins of Trump wins in those districts last November. This makes sense, though, because the special elections were in red areas and it was pretty clear that the Republicans would win. So, many Trump voters probably figured: why bother? I think that’s a risky calculation, but I understand it.

RIP Richard Chamberlain

The New Neo Posted on by

Chamberlain has died at the age of ninety. I remember him almost entirely from his early TV show Dr. Kildare. I was never much of a fan, but the show was wildly popular in its day, and Chamberlain went on to star in several miniseries’ such as Shogun, which I also watched but barely remember.

My most striking recollection of Chamberlain was passing him on a street in the theater district, perhaps fifty years ago. He was a tall and handsome presence.

RIP.

Democrats have become the enemies of free speech

The New Neo Posted on by

We already know that, but here’s a discussion by Turley:

After years of being told that free speech is harmful and dangerous, many young people are virtual speech phobics — demanding that opposing views be silenced as “triggering” or even forms of violence. Now a Pew poll shows just how much ground we have lost, including the emergence of the Democratic Party as a virulent anti-free speech party. Pew found that “Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are much more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support the U.S. government taking steps to restrict false information online (70% vs. 39%).”

I think the explanation is fairly simple, and it has to do with the extent of the left’s power to shape opinion. Back when the left was not in control of much of anything in the US, it was all for freedom of speech because it was guaranteeing its own freedom of speech. But once the Gramscian march was well advanced, and the left controlled (for the most part) the MSM, education, entertainment, law schools, librarians, some social media, and many government agencies such as the DOJ – the left was free to toss away free speech because now the left itself was in a position to do the censoring.

To what used to known as “liberals,” free speech was a principle worth defending. But to the left it never was; it was merely an instrument briefly championed when it helped the left and dropped when it no longer did. Censorship was fine and dandy as long as it was the left doing the censoring.

Turley writes:

The growing support for censorship may reflect the echo chambered media environment. Many people watch and read news that continues to downplay or entirely omit reports on biased censorship. President Biden even charged that companies who refused to censor opposing views on social media were “killing people.” Others have denounced free speech as “a white man’s obsession.” New York democrats called for limiting speech as a way of protecting democracy. Indeed, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has declared free speech is “tyranny.”

Many journalists have joined politicians and professors in decrying the dangers of free speech. Some falsely claim that hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment. Others panicked at the notion of free speech protections being restored at Twitter. On CNN, speech limits were called a “harm-reduction model” for the media. …

The European crackdown on free speech has now reached our shores and there are a growing number of citizens calling on the government to limit their right to free expression. It is a form of constitutional immolation by citizens who have never known true authoritarian government.

I’ve already explained where I think this is coming from. But I agree with Turley that some of it is also influenced by similar trends in Europe. I write “similar trends,” but that’s not really the best way to put it because Europe has never had a robust defense of free speech such as that in the US. It’s reflected in Europe’s lower standard of proof for defamation, and its enactment of hate speech laws and Holocaust denial laws. To a large extent, Canada is similar to Europe in this regard.

Both in Europe and in Canada and the US, the left’s stance against free speech also represents two competing although linked visions. The first is that the left and its ideas are far superior and the leftists are smarter and better than the rest of us, and as such should have the right to dictate what we can think and say. The second is that leftist thought is fragile and threatened and can’t win if freedom of speech is allowed to puncture its balloon. Both ideas argue in favor of censorship by the left.

ADDENDUM: And speaking of Europe and free speech, please see this:

The new German government coalition, which is likely to be the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) is looking to ban “lies,” according to a working paper that emerged from the group “culture and media” between the two parties.

Solo no more

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been blogging so long that I remember the early heady days of the genre. Maybe you remember too – when most blogs were solo affairs, the product of one person? Then slowly, over time, more and more blogs became group efforts. Individual essayists migrated to substack, but there most people didn’t write every day, much less multiple posts every day. Substack isn’t blogging.

Ace was once a solo blogger, but for years now he’s had many co-bloggers although he still writes a lot of the material at his site. Legal Insurrection was always a group effort right from the start, as was RedState as far as I know. Likewise Powerline. Instapundit started as just Glenn Reynolds but many years ago he enlisted helpers Ed Driscoll, Sarah Hoyt, and occasional others.

And on it goes.

But there are still a few of us lone bloggers here and there. Ann Althouse comes to mind, for example. I’m wracking my brain to come up with more. I’m certain they must exist, but they’re few and far between. Gerard was one, of course, but he’s been gone for two years.

And then there’s moi. I’ve been blogging for twenty years, all by myself.

But the other day I received an email that got me thinking it’s time to end my solo act and take on a co-blogger. I think you’ll agree that the email demonstrates a rare combination of wisdom, insight, and gracefulness of expression. And so I reproduce it here to introduce you to the my new associate:

Hey The New Neo Team!

I’m Tom, and I’m on the hunt for exciting new platforms to share my writing. I came across your site, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be an excellent place to showcase my work.

Are you interested in featuring my articles?

Let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Tom

My reply:

Hey Tom – With a demonstration of stellar writing skills like that, why ever not? Climb aboard. After all, I’m one of a vanishing breed: individual bloggers. It’s so nice to have company.

Tom will be covering such important topics as how to take selfies without looking like a fool, why AOC is so popular, the uses and misuses of autotune in the modern world, missing Joe Biden, five thousand reasons not to own a cat, quotes misattributed to Winston Churchill and/or Mark Twain, playing pinochle, and why there are no good bagels in California. I’ll still be dealing with the more serious and important questions such as why everyone misses Joe and Jill Biden, the jello mold revival, the art of diagramming sentences, string theory, and everything Bee Gees.

Here’s a photo of co-blogger Tom as an introduction. I think you’ll see why I had such a strong sense that he ‘d fit right in here:

Open thread 4/1/2025

The New Neo Posted on by

Time, You Old Gypsy Man
Will you not stay,
Put up your caravan
Just for one day?

The above video was displayed perfectly when I set this post up. But somehow it then went to “private” mode and is no longer viewable except by invitation. It was a pretty nifty demonstration of the passage of time, showing closeup photos of Prince Philip in backwards order, starting with age 99 and then with a photo every previous year all the way back to babyhood.

I’ve now put up this one, which I admit is a very poor substitute:

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Tomorrow’s election in Wisconsin is very high stakes. Control of the US House may depend on it. And I’m worried about these special elections; they seem to be going the Democrats’ way due to greater motivation. That’s hard for me to understand and very disturbing; I think everyone on the right should still be highly motivated to vote.

(2) At this point, is anyone surprised at this news?:

The reason SS recipients now have to personally come to an office to change their banking info if they wanted a bank deposit address changed was because of the rampant phone fraud the DOGE team had uncovered almost immediately. Forty percent of ALL CALLS were fraudulent efforts to change direct deposit info. …

… [And] the Biden administration in 2024 – one year – gave 2.1 MILLION NON-CITIZENS social security numbers.

But legal immigrants with jobs can often get Social Security numbers, so why should that be a problem? Well, apparently some of them have voted.

I’ve read a few articles about this so far, and it’s unclear whether they’re talking about legal or illegal arrivals. Plus, what were the figures during the first Trump administration? I saw a comment somewhere that said they were also high, but I haven’t been able to discover whether or not that’s true. So that’s why I’m focusing on the voting issue.

(3) Yarden Bibas was told by his sadistic and barbaric captors that he could get a new wife and new, better children.

(4) DOGE will be looking at why so many members of Congress amass such fortunes.

(5) The FBI under Kash Patel:

Arrest of the top MS-13 leader in the United States, Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos.

Arrest of three fugitives on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list – that’s almost a third of the list nailed at a stroke.

A successful raid and arrest of 22 members of a drug trafficking operation run by suspected violent drug cartel members in Lubbock, Texas.

Arrests of Tesla vandals and terrorist attackers.

Disruption of a major cryptocurrency scheme reportedly laundering money to support Hamas.

Lawfare, French style: Marine Le Pen sentenced and banned from running for five years

The New Neo Posted on by

They tried it on Trump – boy, did they ever try. But a couple of things stopped them, including the fact that in the US a convicted felon can run for office.

Now the French have had greater success – at least for the moment – against the populist front-runner Marine Le Pen. Today’s news came as a surprise to me; I hadn’t even read that there was a trial going on. Why so little attention paid? I don’t know for sure, but here’s the upshot:

“Incredible.” That was the single word uttered under her breath by Marine Le Pen as she stormed out of a Paris courtroom this morning.

She left the court early – just before hearing that she was barred from running for office for five years after being found guilty of embezzlement of EU funds – almost certainly ruling her out from standing in the 2027 French presidential election.

Without even waiting for the judge to pronounce the full details of the sentence, the head of the National Rally knew that her political goose was cooked.

There would be no reprieve pending appeal. The bar on running for office was real and immediate.

The charges were apparently a convoluted reading of a law that most French politicians routinely violate without negative consequences. Sound familiar? And as for why the trial hadn’t gotten much publicity here, there’s this:

Le Pen’s incredulity can be better excused, perhaps, in the context of the moment.

A consensus had almost established itself across France’s political world that this ultimate sanction by the court could not, would not – in the end – take place.

It was not just Le Pen’s followers who said it. Her enemies agreed …

So it was thought to be a nothingburger. Instead, quelle surprise!

Le Pen’s National Rally party must now decide whether to throw weight behind another candidate or to keep Le Pen as leader. The article goes on to explain that there’s a chance the appeal could be expedited and decided prior to the 2027 election, and the ban dropped. The wheels of justice certainly grind slow in France, if they grind at all.

The article I’m quoting is from the BBC, and they use some interesting rhetoric here:

In the short term we can expect an outcry, and a boost to the [National Rally] party’s support. Why? Because what has happened fits so neatly into the RN narrative that the populist right is a victim of the “system”.

What an odd coincidence that it “fits so neatly” into the right’s “narrative” of victimhood. After all, it’s only a narrative, no more true or false than any other fairy tale. The fact that Le Pen actually has been persecuted and made a victim of the “system” – well, we needn’t pay much attention to that, because we know it was only done to save the stupid proles from themselves.

The BBC even admits, in the very next paragraph, that the charges against Le Pen were – if you’ll excuse the expression – trumped up [emphasis mine]:

No-one likely to vote for the RN seriously holds it against Marine Le Pen for illegally financing her party using EU parliament funds. They all know that practically every French political party has resorted to similar underhand methods in the past.

And yet here’s the next paragraph:

By the same token, her “draconian” punishment – being banned from standing for the presidency – will be interpreted as a badge of honour: proof that she alone is standing up to the powers-that-be.

Why is draconian in scare quotes? Is that just a “narrative” as well? Didn’t the article already make it clear that until today even Le Pen’s enemies thought such a ban would be draconian, too draconian to impose?

Make up your mind, BBC.

Will the same thing happen to Le Pen’s party as happened in the 2024 US election as a result of – among other things – backlash to the persecution/prosecution of Trump? Hard to say, because under a parliamentary system the party would need either over 50% of the seats or another party would have to ally itself with them, and that’s highly unlikely to happen. However, this verdict is nevertheless playing with fire, because it really does make the persecution “narrative” seem very very true. And Le Pen’s enemies need to understand that if her party ever does take power, with or without her, the same law can be used against those who persecuted her. We’ll see who’s screaming “Draconian!” then.

And there’s also this, because Le Pen’s prison sentence was put on hold pending appeal:

Marine Le Pen remains a member of the National Assembly, where she leads a bloc of 125 – the parliament’s biggest. Till now she had not used that sizeable bloc to attempt to bring down the government of the beleaguered prime minister Francois Bayrou, who struggles on despite having no majority.

Those days may be over.

If you’re going to sentence a political enemy and bar him or her from running for office, you better make certain that the person’s offense is serious and egregiously criminal, or you risk having that kangaroo-court prosecution come back to haunt you.