As noted here at CR, the totally evil city of Santa Monica, California hammered me with an absurd ticket for "blocking the intersection."

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I do not want to hear any more about what a "Progessive" place Santa Monica is.  How do you suppose a person on a "living wage" pays a $500 ticket for getting stuck in the gridlock that the City of Santa Monica causes?

It may not be quite so severe in my case, although since the EVIL CITY OF SANTA MONICA is giving out so many EVIL GRIDLOCK TICKETS, LA County can't properly process them.  So, they are supposed to send a courtesy payment envelope AND ALSO, one is able to pay the ticket online (BUT SOMETIMES NOT POSTED UNTIL 21 DAYS PRIOR TO THE HEARING DATE).

Yeah, right.  Except, however, not in my case.  My hearing is TOMORROW and still no courtesy envelope and LA County Superior Court's traffic website has no record of my ticket.  And, I work in San Diego.

That means I have to take a day off work, drive 240 miles or so roundtrip to Santa Monica (global warming anyone?) create more "gridlock" in Santa Monica by actually showing up in that horrid little city, incur considerable expenses and lose considerable earnings.  So, ultimately the collateral damage is worse than the damage from the evil (and in my case, wrongful) ticket.

Not only that, what are they going to do when I show up and they STILL have no record of my ticket?  'Cause if it is not online and I didn't get "courtesy" payment envelope, odds are that the cub scout city police officer probably lost his ticket book or something.

In which case, the truly evil city of Santa Monica will probably make me come back AGAIN!  Will this nightmare never end?

Santa Monica has terrible traffic gridlock.   This is my contribution to its effort to end gridlock.  DON'T EVER GO TO SANTA MONICA!!!  You can go to Venice Beach.  You can go to Newport Beach, or any of the fine beaches in Orange County.  You can head on down to Oceanside or Carlsbad and the nice San Diego County beaches.  But please, Santa Monica does not want you to cause gridlock in its touristy areas, so PLEASE, DO NOT GO TO SANTA MONICA.  For anything.

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"Investors are seeing the Senate's version of health care reform as a massive public subsidy for insurance companies -- and as a result, are sending the sector's stock prices shooting up, up, up ..."  Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com.

(Quote may be from Greenwald, or may be from Reuters, I was unclear on Greenwald's punctuation ...)

In 2008, Congress passed a law requiring the US President to maintain the qualitative military edge  of Israel and to report same to Congress periodically regarding same.  The Jewish Daily Forward