Barack Obama, ex-scofflaw

March 8, 2007

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings

The Boston Globe (tip: The Plank) is reporting today that the political demigod known to mortals as Barack Obama “received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991” while a student at Harvard Law. This according to the city’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department:

Of those tickets, he paid only two while he was a student and paid them late, said Susan Clippinger, the office’s director.

In January, about when the Globe began asking local officials about Obama’s time at Harvard, including any violations of local laws, someone representing the senator called the parking office to inquire about the decades-old tickets.

On Jan. 26, the remaining $375 in fines and fees were paid by credit card using the city’s website, Clippinger said. She said she didn’t know who paid them.

SCANDAL!

In related news, Obama is half-black, or something, may or may not be Muslim, may or may not belong to a pseudo-Christian cult that promotes racial segregation, has the suspicious middle name “Hussein,” and is only one consonent of separation away from Osama. Oh, and when he was younger he attended an Indonesian school that’s really a terrorist training camp, something called a “madrassa,” you know, highly dubious and foreign-sounding. And there were those shady real estate deals in Chicago. So, really, there’s no way he can be president. He’s totally unqualified and he’s probably a traitor. For God’s sake, he doesn’t even pay his parking tickets on time!

Oh… sorry. My brain was temporarily overrun by the right-wing smear machine.

How long before Fox News and its ilk picks up on this? Or have they already?

**********

Personal note: I attended Tufts Univ. from 1991-95. It’s just a few minutes away by car from Cambridge and I spent many, many hours, wasted hours, circling around Harvard Square trying to find parking, night after night. It’s like driving around Boston in concentrated microcosm. In other words: a nightmare. Sure, Obama should have paid his fines, but it’s hard for me to hold his parking violations against him.

Let’s move on, shall we?

17? That is it?

I think I still have about 83 unpaid parking related tickets incurred while at the home of the mighty Phartin’ Spartans, Case Western Reserve University.

  • Let’s move on, shall we?

    See how the liberals always want to cover up illegal activities whenever they’re committed by Democrats?

    SEE?

    I wonder how the Globe editor rationalizes this waste of newsprint?

  • Having once lived in Boston, I was under the impression that parking tickets there were conventionally thought of as a way of ‘demand pricing’ limited parking space, with the city providing a convenient billing option. He was there for years and only got 17? He must have superhuman parking powers. Imagine what he could do as President!

  • unbelievable.

    think about today’s middle class college student in law school at a cambridge university.

    imagine that same student falling behind on bills due to too much studying and social interaction.

    now….picture the boston parking meter authorities…with one of those big nasty car-boots, and attaching said boot to the car.

    now, the antagonist of this story are the student’s political enemies, who happen to have a well funded detective team at their bidding.

    this undercover squad takes a picture of the booted car and save it for later political use….

    yes, we have wonderful political discourse in today’s society.

    make sure you pay your parking tickets on time, or don’t expect to become president someday.

    it’s laughable. but it isn’t really funny. it’s just slimey.

  • Hey Bubba! I went to Weatherhead at Case Western! No parking tickets – they gave us a parking lot.

    Ohioan – I don’t know where in Cleveland you’ve been, but it IS difficult to find free parking – especially by the school. All the law students take the spots!

  • True Confessions from a criminal: When I lived in the Haight-Ashbury as a sometimes USF, sometimes SF State student and sometimes entertainer at the Drinking Gourd and the Copy Cat, my excuse for an apartment was visited by a woman who claimed she was from City Hall and handed me a “personal property assessment” form. I said I had no property worth mentioning and that I shared the space with three other guys. She said “Doesn’t matter. You got the paper and the minimum declaration is $25”. Then she stormed down the stairs before I could argue further.

    I thought nothing of it at the time and tossed the form in the garbage (actually, I probably used it to write out some music or solve an equation). About four years later, in grad school in Eugene OR, I got an envelope with a large “WARRANT” stamped on the outside, with a notice from SF’s revenue department saying that I owed something like $1.15 which had grown, by then, to the staggering sum of $1.23 and that I was subject to arrest.

    Not quite Alice’s Restaurant or the Crimes of Obama, but it seemed weird to me at the time and still does. I feel so much better having unloaded on you like this.

  • George W. Bush was an alcoholic cokehead who skipped out on the military! He drank until (he says) his 40th birthday! WTF! Is this not widely discussed because people already know it? Hell, there is at least one YouTube clip with a visibly drunk ADULT George W. Bush slurring to the camera.

    Media – get a grip would you?

  • “Tonight on the Factor – You won’t believe what Barrack Hussein Obama did while in liberal Massachusetts…”

  • I don’t think any of us could be president if unpaid parking tickets would stop us, especially during graduate school. I was never as poor in my life as I was then. I am sure the righties will keep trying; maybe they will find an overdue bill from twenty years ago, or maybe he got a detention in high school.

    I agree with Otto Man; this is the stuff that keeps good people from running for office.

  • The Sister–thanks for the defense! I can say that when I was there back in the early 80s, there was little to no parking available south of Euclid Avenue. We used to pack 8-10 of us in my old vega (I think 1971 or 1972 model) and the “car” then sat so low we could drive under the parking barrier at every lot.

    The car eventually died in the lot next to the old adelbert gym.

  • Ooh! If there’s this much dirt already, imagine the whoppers that will surface in October 2008!

    Come to think of it, why are we being buried in mud so early??

  • There’s an even worse rumor circulating that a certain female candidate did in fact make cookies once — flip flopper! And Edwards once drank milk right out of the carton!

  • I honestly thought the right-wing smear machine would be able to ratchet up the “scandals” as time went on, but they seem to be regressing.

    Maybe they’re saving the juicy stuff in case he gets the nomination … like the time he only tipped 14% instead of the customary 15%.

  • It’s just a few minutes away by car from Cambridge and I spent many, many hours, wasted hours, circling around Harvard Square trying to find parking, night after night.

    One day, in 1982, in my first circuit round the Square, I saw an empty, legal space, right in front of the Dini’s Corner newsstand. Not even a parallel-park job — nose-in.

    I didn’t take it.

    I knew I’d be using up my whole life’s allotment of luck in one fell swoop, at the age of 26.

    I once parked my Dodge Colt Vistawagon over near Museum street, straddling the Somerville-Cambridge town line overnight, and found in the morning a Cambridge ticket under the wiper on the tailgate, and a Somerville ticket unde the wiper on the winshield.

    You could look it up.

  • You hear about this not paying of parking tickets, but I’m curious — how is that done? I mean, I’m afraid to not show up for jury duty. How can you get a ticket and not pay for it? Should I stop paying for my tickets, seeing as there seem to be no repercussions?

    I’ve heard of this before with politicians, but I’m curious just how common not paying tickets is, and why it’s common, if it is.

    This isn’t a slam about Obama, but this kind of thing always takes me by surprise. Does it take a lot of arrogance? Why should you think it’s okay not to pay? Is it so common, that mostly people who don’t, do it because their parents or friends don’t? It’s never occurred to me not to pay for a ticket, so I just don’t get this and would like more info.

  • Is it so common, that mostly people who don’t, do it because their parents or friends don’t?

    Parking in bigger, older cities, isn’t like parking in the rest of the country. Biggerbox’s comment hits the nail on the head.

  • Bubba and the Sister:

    I’m from Solon, went to UC Irvine however.

    The number of Clevelander Carpetbaggers around here is pretty surprising… 🙂

  • Catherine: How can you get a ticket and not pay for it?

    If everybody paid their parking tickets like they’re supposed to, the bounty hunter industry would collapse!

    But seriously, good question.

  • I am right now in a cubicle off Causeway St. in downtown Boston (across the street from The Garden), and can testify to the veracity of the claim that parking in downtown areas, and in particular the Harvard Square area of Cambridge is nothing short of impossible. Try it on a sunday (you would think there would be less…..but ooh no!), when everyone is parked everywhere for church, all the parking rules get thrown out the window on sunday. In the south end on sundays people literally park there cars in the center of the street, dividing the traffic line with cars…..I have never seen anything like it…….Oh, and they should throw the book at Obama! (just kidding)

  • I wonder if he pinched paper clips for personal use when he worked in that city council office…

  • “Should I stop paying for my tickets, seeing as there seem to be no repercussions?”

    I guess it depends upon a few things. As a comment or two above indicate, when one is a relatively young and relatively poor student, and the choice is food/beer or paying parking tickets, the choice is, well, I will let you figure that one out. If the agency giving the tickets is a city or municipality, there very well may be repercussions that extend not only from booting or towing/impounding of your car but to withholding of drivers licenses, etc. However, if the agency giving the tickets is the university itself, and its system is not tied into the general law enforcement network, well, there may not be any real repercussions, other than the ability of the university to tow and impound your car. If one’s car is worth only $175 this may not be much of a stick to stop illegal parking or force payment of tickets. If one’s car is worth much more than that, and/or if the person has a family that is dependent upon him or her and that car, the repercussions might be a bit more significant. In addition, it may or may not be a valid view, but some folks think that if they are paying out of their pocket a huge amount of money as tuition to attend a university, then that university should provide a reasonable amount of free parking to the student body to use, instead of trying to scalp additional sums of money from them via parking fees.

  • Unpaid parking tickets. That I should live to see it. All I can say is, is makes me long for the days when affairs were run by the likes of Tommy “The Hammer” DeLay and Ken “Kenny Boy” Lay. Instead, the future of America appears mortgaged to crooks like Barack Obama.

  • Parking tickets are the OSHA fines of the urban poor, or the urban-sworn-to-poverty, like grad students and Cistericans — just part of the cost of doing business.

  • “And yet the media refuses to cover Shrubs arrest. Liberal media bias hunh?”

    Boy George II pales in comparison to his ex-boyfriend killing wife Laura.

  • You can always tell whether a person is qualified to be President by the number of unpaid parking tickets from college he or she has.

    I would have drawn the line at 12. But 15? Definitely not Presidential material.

  • My minor was in Creative Parking.

    Tell us next about his overdue library books. Does he get a little gassy when he eats spicy foods? How about his feet — betcha they stink at the end of the day. This just in: Obama tore one of those labels off a pillow!

    These “scandals” are actually making me more fond of the guy.

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