Readers Feel Just Fine About Fees -- Levied With Levity
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this last week, it’s that some of you can be moved to four-letter words when a certain three-letter word is put to you -- to wit, “tax.” And yet there’s another three-letter fiscal word you seem to warm up to -- “fee.”
I suppose it’s because “tax” smacks of tyranny and tea-overboard and taxation without representation (which happens nowadays because so few of you bestir yourselves to vote).
But “fee” -- that, you seem to like. A fee effects social engineering. It delivers the satisfaction of making the other guy pay for doing something you would not in a million years think of doing yourself. A fee can make the social miscreant do what society, meaning you, would like him to do -- or pay through the pierced nose to misbehave. (One reader suggested a 50-cent fee on every body piercing, expecting that it would wipe out the budget deficit in no time.) There are politicians, our present governor evidently among them, who would rather be caught naked, drunk and doing the backstroke at high noon in the Capitol reflecting pool than vote for a tax.
In California, a new tax requires a two-thirds vote to pass and a new fee only needs a majority to take effect, and no reflecting-pool penance.
So in the interest of keeping Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger from having to follow through on all those cuts -- not replacing burnt-out bulbs in traffic lights, selling Disney the right to redesign the state seal, having diabetic children play “paper, scissors, rock” to see who gets insulin that day -- I asked all of you for fee ideas of your own that I could send along to the governor.
My suggestions ran to a buck-a-pill fee on Viagra and its knockoffs, a “G String for the Governor” dollar-a-lap-dance fee and a $20 premium to the DMV for a driver’s license picture that doesn’t look like it belongs on the FBI wall at the post office. (People really went for this idea; Kathy in the Valley said she’d go as high as $50 if the DMV could deliver a decent photo.)
Because this is about behavior modification, conservatives had some suggestions. Bob from Duarte proposed a fee of $100 per person per year, “until this mess is paid off ... no deductions, no exemptions. And no whining about how this will negatively impact families. They are after all the ones who just happen to suck up the majority of the services.... “
Jim wants to charge a $100 fee for anyone registering as a Democrat. “Fees could go toward Band-Aids for all the bleeding-heart socialists.” He’d charge a thousand bucks for every four-wheel drive registered in an urban county, and $100 a year for every urban household using water brought from far away.
Steve would like to charge a $100 fee for every sign in a language other than English, and in answer to my dollar-a-bullet suggestion, proposed a $10 fee on every pen and pencil sold, inasmuch as “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and by extension the bullet. He also thought a sliding scale for lottery ticket prices “would encourage those who can’t afford lottery tickets not to buy them.”
(I’ve always wanted the lottery to operate like stock, and split when it prospers. Every time the jackpot hits, say, $5 million, the balance rolls over to create a second lottery jackpot for the same day. This creates more millionaires, which is better for the economy -- even a billionaire only needs one washer-dryer set, so the more millionaires we make, the more washer-dryers get bought -- you see where I’m going with this.)
The politicians who levy the fees should have to pay them, you said.
Greg in Rosemead was thinking more of fines than fees when he suggested the “bait-and-switch contribution,” 20 bucks for everything Schwarzenegger said he would do and hasn’t, and everything he said he wouldn’t do and has; and a “trash-and-crash the system” fine for everyone who signed the recall petition. In exchange, each would receive an autographed photo of the governor, bare-chested. How to say “writer’s cramp” in German?
Lee in Woodland Hills proposed a dollar fee on manicures and pedicures, the same for dog grooming -- $5 for poodles. And Lee got my vote with this: a million-dollar fee for every “me, me, vote for me” Oscar ad.
Jim would approve a 10-cent-a-day oxygen fee for every Californian not on a respirator, “because you’re using some good oxygen in California, now you need to pay for it.” (Jim lives in Minneapolis, and inhales for free.)
If Indian gambling interests are reluctant to renegotiate the state’s take, Doug suggests state toll booths outside Indian casino land -- $2 to get in, $50 to get out. (Same plan for Nevada.) And if readers’ “Emily Post” fees were put to a vote, you -- not I -- would be paying them tomorrow: the cost of violations of courtesy and taste such as obnoxious use of a cellphone ardently desired by so many of you, and Stephany’s fee for “plumber displays” of buttocks cleavage.
Elaine would like every car to be fitted with a cellphone blocker. A monthly fee of $50 would unblock the phone -- 911 calls being free. Fred supports a $100 fee levied on every boom-box stereo system installed in a car. (Fred for governor!)
David wishes to fine “women who pick their noses while driving.” And he asked, “Does this seem harsh and sexist? Good. Then that means I am qualified to be governor of California.”
The distinction between fee -- the cost of being permitted to do something -- and fine -- the penalty for doing something you shouldn’t -- was elusive to a lot of you, but I did like Natalie’s suggestion of a fine for every commercial building whose address is not clearly displayed.
Chellie of Los Angeles thinks a “fit or fat” fee could solve both the budget and the obesity crisis. Every Californian selects a preferred diet plan -- Atkins, Pritikin -- and receives a membership card to show with each grocery purchase. Buying anything not on the diet plan costs a 50-cent fee. Rigorous dieters get gym membership rebates, and people who choose no diet plan must pay a $100 yearly fee.
Donna of Culver City wants to photograph all those weekend ads for concerts and yard sales that flutter on lampposts for days, and send tickets to the offenders, so “maybe we can buy a few vaccinations for the children and fill a few prescriptions for the elderly and poor.” Dan suggests a $5,000 marry-for-money fee for marrying someone young enough to be your daughter, to be collected on the geezer’s death.
And Elaine of Burbank wants The Times to pay a penny per copy to the state general fund “whenever they run a Michael Ramirez cartoon
I know what you’re thinking, you don’t even have to bother hurrying to your computer to sign on to tell me -- some of you out there want The Times to have to pay the same fee to dispose of certain newspaper columns for the same reason ...
Patt Morrison’s column appears Mondays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is patt. morrison@latimes.com. Her previous columns can be read at www.latimes.com/morrison.
