Tag: revenue generation

In Massachusetts, you need a license to be a fortune-teller

Around Halloween time, Salem, Massachusetts, is a popular tourist destination among New Englanders.

The city has capitalized on the notoriety of the Salem witch trials, which creates jobs for the community at about this time of the year. One of the attractions in Salem is a host of different fortune-tellers. However, not just anyone can become a fortune-teller.

To be a fortune-teller in Massachusetts , you must live in the community in which you want to be a fortune-teller for at least one year before applying for the license; you also must pay the town a $50 fee each year for the privilege of being a fortune-teller.

The purpose of the license isn’t safety; the fortune-teller doesn’t conduct brain surgery or do something potentially dangerous. The practice is both ungodly and unscientific, but it’s not a public safety threat. If a fortune-teller touches someone’s hands to see and feel their palms, both people can use hand sanitizer afterward.

If someone wants to move to town and become a fortune-teller, why not let them? Why restrict the opportunity of people to earn a living just because they haven’t lived in town for as long as other people? Perhaps this kind of restriction made sense hundreds of years ago to make sure that people weren’t skipping town and swindling people, but it’s already illegal for a fortune-teller in Massachusetts to use trickery to steal money.

And while the fortune-teller license is not the most burdensome license there is, it’s part of a much bigger problem.

Keep reading

Cops Forced to Create Crime in Quota Scheme of 4 Tickets Per Hour or Face Discipline

Most people reading this article know what it is like to have the blue and red lights pop up in your rear view mirror. The last thing going through your mind at this point is the feeling of ‘being protected.’ This feeling comes from the fact that the overwhelming majority of the time a driver sees police lights in their mirror is because they have been targeted for revenue collection—often the result of a quota system—and they are about to be given a ticket, or worse.

Police, we are told, are here to keep us safe and protect us from the bad guys. However, public safety all too often takes a back seat to revenue collection. Time and time again, the Free Thought Project has exposed quota schemes in which officers were punished for not writing enough tickets or making enough arrests.

The most recent ticket writing scheme to be exposed comes out of Hawaii and it implicates the Federal Government in the driving force behind it. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) holds “traffic safety” grants throughout the year, which essentially require departments to meet certain numbers or they get no grant.

Though quotas are illegal in many states, they are just fine in Hawaii and the department has no problem implementing them to receive their federal handout.

Keep reading