Toronto-area lawyer had to flee Canada after taking on the tow truck industry
ctvnews.ca
ctvnews.ca
I did not appreciate this strong arm sales tactic and told him he wasn't touching my vehicle. The cop insisted that I allow the tow. She apparently was required to stay at the scene until the disabled vehicles were removed and did not want to wait for a tow truck of my choosing. I held firm. After several minutes of back and forth, the cop begrudgingly allowed me to drive my heavily damaged vehicle a few hundred yards to an exit ramp and park it on a side street.
An accident report was never filed, so my insurance company wasn't able to collect damages from the other party's insurance on my behalf. Perhaps there was a clerical error or perhaps the cop wanted to punish my assertiveness.
1) Hopefully whoever "played" will learn a lesson not to again.
2) Hopefully the overall problem (whether it is bad customer service, strong arm tactics, etc.) will slowly be fixed.
I guess in your case, you already used up your quota of fighting-the-system when you had to argue with both the cop and the tow-man.
I think on net I do more than my fair share of tilting at windmills though. Ask me about self-storage companies sometime.
It seems that the US self-storage market can be roughly segmented into two groups: UHaul Self-Storage and everyone else. UHaul is up to double the cost of their budget competitors like Public Storage. I'm budget conscious, so I quickly ruled out UHaul.
The other companies all follow the same template. I didn't find any locally-owned self-storage companies, only franchises. It's impossible to call the local franchise office directly, even after you've rented a unit. The phone numbers listed in ads and on websites have local area codes but they are forwarded to national call centers.
My first attempt to rent a unit, I find the best rate online, drive to the facility, and ask to rent a unit at the advertised rate. The manager has me fill out the application. The lock I'll need is $10. Sure, that's reasonable, I guess. Then she explains that there is a $20 move-in fee. No problem! This fee was hidden in a footnote on the comparison shopping site, but I spotted it and was willing to pay the 50% markup on the first month's rent. It's still a third of the cost of UHaul. But the amount she wanted to charge my card still seemed high.
"Well," she explained, "it includes a $15 monthly insurance premium."
"I don't need insurance."
"Everyone's required to have insurance."
I was indignant and walked out on principle. It was false advertising, plain and simple, and I refuse to reward that behavior with my business.
I now resolved to get an actual-for-real-no-takebacks final price over the phone before driving anywhere else. So I sat in my car and called a local Public Storage franchise. Or tried to. This is when I learned about the call centers. I was frustrated at having just driven 20 minutes for nothing, and getting a call center agent after dialing a local area code phone number did nothing to improve my mood. The agent asked for my first name. Then she asked for my email address. I balked. I explained to the agent that I just wanted to get an actual-for-real-no-takebacks quote to rent a storage unit at my local Public Storage franchise. She couldn't tell me. I'd have to ask the local manager, she explained.
"OK, can you just give me the phone number?" I asked, exasperated.
"Once I get done with you" she responded impatiently.
I was incredulous. Some of the quotes in this story may not be word-for-word accurate. But that is a word-for-word quote: "Once I get done with you."
In what is not my proudest moment, I informed her that I was quite certain we would be altogether done very soon, but first I would like to express what a dumpster fire I have found the self-storage industry to be. My prophecy came to pass as she soon hung up on me.
At this point, I was becoming less price-sensitive. I didn't embark on this venture thinking quality customer service would be a high priority for me, but I didn't realize how low the baseline was in this industry.
There was a reasonably priced place near my home, so I decided to drive there. I figured there couldn't be much more that could be unexpected at this point. I filled out the application and listened patiently as she explained the move-in fee and required insurance. I wasn't completely resigned, however, and I asked if I could forego the insurance, perhaps by signing a waiver. She told me the insurance was required by state law. I wasn't going to argue with her--I really just needed to rent a unit already--but that seemed highly unlikely. I rented the unit.
But when I got home, I did some research, and it turns out, she wasn't as far off as you might think. Ohio does have a state law devoted to self-storage unit insurance[1], believe it or not. But rather than mandating insurance, the law sets out a number of regulations that self-storage providers must follow in order to sell insurance to their customers. Normally, an agent must pass a test to be certified to sell insurance, but this law, which was passed at the behest of the self-storage lobby, makes a special cut-out so that minimally trained self-storage company staff can sell company-mandated insurance to their customers as a hidden monthly fee they can tack on to advertised prices without getting in trouble for false advertising.
And hey, what do you know? The business did not comply with several points in the regulations. For example, the literature describing the insurance did not include various mandated disclosures. So I went ahead and wrote a complaint to the Ohio Department of Insurance outlining the violations.
I felt my blood pressure rising just reading that. But I do have to applaud your complaint to the Ohio Department of Insurance. What I've noticed is that companies like these tend not to be up on 100% of regulations. If you're willing to spend an hour or two doing some research, you're likely to find some obscure violation that your local gov't is more than happy to use to make an example out of them.
What happened after that? :)
This is a HUGE red flag, and you probably would be better off with uhaul. The "budget" guys will probably cost more once the hidden fees are paid.
Your explanation of the state law they referenced was interesting, they way it was brought up to imply that you were mandated to pay this fee, and that the law did not say anything of the sort, and they were not following what was in the law!
I'd be happy never having to deal with Public Storage again.
While they do earn revenue for selling insurance, they need you to have it to protect themselves. Arson, theft, and storm damage is very common and the last thing they want is to get hit with a bunch of costly lawsuits from people who refused to insure themselves. Basically the same concept as renters insurance.
You usually don't have to buy theirs though, you can buy more comprehensive policies online for less and just provide proof of insurance.
Then they should be the ones paying for the insurance, because they're the ones who need it. And given the small number of people who will file a lawsuit, versus the number who will make an insurance claim, that seems likely to be cheaper.
Fire, Hurricane, Tornado, Wind, Vandalism, Vermin, Lightning, Smoke, Earthquake, Hail, Burglary, Building Collapse, Explosion, Leaking Water
My insurance covers the same, including named storms.
For the one I used they let you check a box that said you have external insurance that provides sufficient coverage, at least for a while until maybe 6 or 7 years ago when they stopped allowing that. It is possible that others are making that kind of transition and are violating existing laws or possibly existing laws aren't covering this type of case sufficiently. Centurylink lost a lawsuit a few years ago for similarly outright lying about prices (to the point of saying "this is your final cost" with a tiny asterisk leading to a long page that described additional fees).
It seems like it can be hard to tell when this type of common unethical buisness practices crosses the line into the deadly form described in the posted article. It also depends on where you are and in some places it is not that unusual for large international corporations to kill union organizers, for example.
Your instincts are correct, it is a waste of time. If the matter is serious enough, hire a lawyer and get a judgement against the officer or department. For everything else, let it go.
I had my car stolen a while ago. The police found it abandoned midweek, and had it towed to an impound lot. Then they waited until 4:45pm on Friday to tell me. The impound lot was an hour away, so I had to wait until Monday to get my car back. I also had to pay the tow lot for towing and storage of my stolen car for all the extra days.
In the case of police misconduct, the only person learning a lesson is typically the person filing the complaint.
People only tend to act so brazenly when they know that there will be no consequences, and their department will have their back. At best, your complaints will be ignored, at worst, you may face further retaliation.
You just gotta chalk it up to bad luck.
* A pizza delivery was towed in the time it took to get the pizza from car to door and collect payment.
* My ex-girlfriends dad was towed while unloading the vehicle to move her into an apartment.
It is well known here in Toronto that tow trucks are scum of the earth.
Earlier this year [0] there were 10 charged, including one police in a corruption scandal in Toronto. They were so brazen that they stole from the police!
Then a month later, Toronto suspended 5 more police in the same tow truck scandal. [1]
All this to say, the corruption is a well known issue in Toronto. The provincial government has repeatedly claimed to go after "gangs", yet no solution has been put forth to end what is one of the biggest gangs in the province and the punishments that are doled out are pathetically light.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2...
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5649083
[2] https://correspondence.premier.gov.on.ca/EN/feedback/default...
Edit: After writing this, I realized it would be more productive to write to my premier, so I did. You can too. [2]
???
Conversely, one would ask why on earth the government would ever get into such a thing it has clearly no business doing?
You could make the same arguments about Taxis, Entertainment, Auto Manufacture, R&D, Convenience Stores - hey, let's 'socialize the entire economy' - think of how much more efficient it would be!
The government doesn't really have a good track record in most of those things, so we like to regulate and have interventions where needed i.e. single point of failure.
The government in Quebec and Ontario control Liquor and Beer distribution (beer in the latter) and the result is vastly overpriced goods. The liquor stores admittedly are 'really nice' but there are long line ups, and prices are out of this world. Even as wine sales are allowed in grocery stores in Quebec, the 'Gov. Liquor Monopoly' thuggishly enforced rules such that the quality of the wine out of their stores is so bad it's undrinkable. The only wine that made it out of their mafia control was what you'd get in the US for $4 a bottle, i.e. undrinkable.
So no, some transparency, good laws and regulation would be appropriate, we don't need a cabal forming within the government taking over that system.
Hey, I’ve drank many a bottle of 2 buck chuck. It’s not great, but it’s not exactly Night Train...
Edit - reference [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavored_fortified_wine
If towing is controlled by the political apparatus, then perhaps they don't send the tow trucks if a vehicle is blocking the bridge to make a political statement.
So, I'm not sure a "profit motive" is really the solution here. Yes, the bridge operator could make that contractual offer and add towing infrastructure out of the goodness of their heart, but there's no incentive to doing so. A decent local government does have that incentive (as they are responsible to the commuters as voters), so they offer that service. You could have regulation that forces the bridge operator to provide this service instead of the government, but is that really less government intervention?
You need to spell out exactly how you think that would work. Because the only "profit motive" I'm seeing is that the bridge operator would want to avoid losing money on refunding tolls, and would be incentivized to provide towing services. But isn't that bridge operator exactly the same government transportation authority that you are proposing doesn't need to be involved in providing towing services? Or are you proposing that the day to day maintenance and operations of a piece of critical infrastructure should be privatized, and then subject to provisions that ensure it's a risky/bad investment?
The point is that the bridge makes sure it has towing capabilities on standby for the fastest turnaround possible, since the operators of the bridge only care about the bridge. If a city government has a standing contract with some towing company, they probably use it for all sorts of things, so you wouldn't have that immediate standby capacity.
I don't like the work "privatized." Instead, this would be a bridge built by entrepreneurs and operated as a business.
Too bad. The meaning fits.
It's unrealistic to propose that a new bridge would be built by private money. There's plenty of private investment money floating around in the Bay Area, and it hasn't come close to happening yet. And you have completely failed to respond to the concern that your proposed toll-refunding mandate would make a privately-operated bridge an even less viable investment than the non-starter it evidently already is. You're just dogmatically asserting that the free market will always provide, when it looks pretty clear that the free market would just say "no thanks".
"Alternatively, the bridge operator could be legally mandated to offer a refund of the tolls if the transit of the bridge exceeds a contractually-guaranteed time."
I know it offends the libertarian sensibilities, but there's no reason for the operator to voluntarily do that.
On the other hand...
The Fort Lee lane closure thing. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/nyregion/george-washingto...)
As to your example I literally pointed out 'single points of access' (i.e. the GG bridge) as an cute concern wherein regulation, special interventions need to be made.
That there are some places wherein intervention needs to be made, doesn't in any way help the argument that the broader case holds - your example does not help support the notion that 'tow trucks' in general should be socialized.
(And FYI I think the 'market oriented solution' to bridge clearing probably won't work - but there may be other, smarter solutions such as 'more bridges' etc.)
The notion of 'tow truck socialization' - while interesting fodder for reddit-ish discussion (ideas are always good) - is in practice, completely ridiculous. It's probably one a good example of things that should be the furthest from socialization.
The 'pro socialization' knee-jerk responders chose a really ugly argument to die on, notably there's an absence of any reasonable arguments for how that would even make sense, other than in the OP 'if the government did it, it would be better!' - which is not an argument.
As a matter of pragmatism, you say of the GG-clearing 'it works well' - but does it really though?
Imagine the costs of such an operation: special vehicles, drivers, surveillance, alarms, having to 'move on a dime' means probably 95% 'downtime' where that special truck driver sits there idle, in wait, and likely a lot of special labour conditions because 'someone must be on duty' can't have everyone calling in sick.
By 'it works' you mean to say 'the cars get moved quickly' - and yes, having been a daily Golden Gate commuter myself I'm witness to that, but it doesn't mean that it's in any way 'efficient'. It could be dreadfully expensive, to the point that alternatives should be explored (like more bridges). I don't know - but it could be.
Again the example of 'government liquor stores' is a good corollary. 'They work', superficially. The definitely do - you can buy beer and liquor. To an individual buyer without reference it all seems fine.
But absolutely nowhere outside of Ontario/Quebec/Sweden were alcohol distribution is socialized are people pushing for it - and there's considerably more diversity in choice and better price (and frankly this argument over 'corruption' is moot as I don't see a difference between public/private there).
If government controlled liquor distribution were dismantled in On/Qu/Sk within 10 years it would be absolutely impossible to re-enact because there simply are no benefits to it.
The only people who defend are those 'living within the system', like E. Germans believing they have 'great groceries' only to come to tears when the 'Wall Came Down' and they were exposed to the prodigious bounty of regular supermarkets in the West... and those naive, ideological 'chat board' warriors who support socialized systems even when the own experience speaks directly against it.
Nobody on HN who ca buy a decent bottle of wine for $10 is would support their local government 'taking over the system' so that they can literally have 1/4 the selection, and 2x the prices. Nobody. It's a really weird intellectual asymmetry that needs to be studied frankly.
You can buy better wine in a German supermarket, California kiosk than almost anywhere in Ontario. The French 'Walmart' (Carrefour) has literally 10x the selection of anywhere in Ontario, again, for 1/2 the cost.
A colleague of mine grew up in Poland said that before the fall of the regime, they only had '3 kinds of ice cream': Chocolate, Vanilla and 'Pink' because anything else was 'bourgeois'. That we still have people defending this thinking is pretty crazy. These system exist because of incumbency, the power of local guilds and the people most benefiting from scheme (i.e. execs, staff), just like mercantilist royal suitors acquiring market monopolies from a bygone era before Adam Smith.
A gang war between two truck companies is obviously very inefficient, but so too is the extreme day-to-day competition for tows. You're right that the government-run scenario would involve idle capacity, but the OP article describes a situation where there is already an especially wasteful and ridiculous form of over-capacity (multiple drivers racing to the scene of a crash, a waste of fuel and labor capacity). The "surveillance system" you mention is already in place in the private towing example, it's just a wildly inefficient version that lacks centralized dispatch.
Government-run liquor stores are also a perfect counter-example to your point--their whole purpose is to not provide the most convenient consumer-friendly option possible, and instead to reduce easy access to liquor and attempt to rein in some of the negative externalities that come with it. For the record, I'm not a fan of that approach, but in many cases it's an example of government succeeding in what it set out to do, not the reverse.
Are you seriously saying that '3 kinds of ice cream' represents 'choice' vis-a-vis the the literally hundreds of kinds of ice-cream that people would otherwise be able to choose? Of different flavours, textures, ingredients, sources?
You're taking a very obvious example of 'lack of choice' and trying to spin it as an example of choice?
The government says 'we can only have 1 type of SUV, 1 type of Truck and 1 type of Sedan' - and this would be 'choice'?
No, that's absurd, I can't really think you meant to actually write that.
As for 'towing' - you're mixing my metaphors here.
The 'Golden Gate' towing situation is an example of 'single point of failure' where there probably needs to be intervention, I was merely explaining how that 'special towing service' they have might very well be extremely inefficient. None of that example really folds over into the 'regular market' for towing'.
So yes - you have indicated that 'towing will be competitive' - but that's literally the artifact of the industry that keeps it efficient. When there is 'overcapacity' it adjusts, likewise 'underapacity' - it adjusts.
Those artifacts of the 'invisible hand of the market' are the literal functions that help us do price discovery and understand 'how much people are willing to pay' for stuff.
Any industry can be taken over by the mafia - more likely than not, it depends on the kinds of people involved in the work. You local drug R&D company is probably not going to be related to the Mafia. The 'Auto Shop' is full of the kinds of people who may 'know someone who knows someone' and since it's small business, local, it's more amenable to problems - but so are many industries.
Fighting the Mafia is no excuse to socialize.
At no point has the OP or yourself really given a good reason for why, systematically, towing should be socialized - again - the GG example is a very special case, not a general one.
Finally, yes, 'Government run liquor stores' were enabled in to help control the distribution of alcohol, so there is a historical social externalization there, but that's a very long gone artifact of history. It hasn't been relevant for 50 years.
In reality, there is no difference between distributional impact of social behaviour in Alberta / BC / California (open sales) or Quebec / Ontario / Sweden (Government sales). So it's not an argument, just a historical artefact.
The government is materially 'not succeeding' in 2020 to do anything with respect to social policy whereas the other social cost: expensive alcohol and lack of choice, is a material cost.
There's no reason for them to exist, they exist because of incumbency and the guild of people involve who benefit from it over others.
NHS, public libraries, Downton Abbey, the internet, neighborhood fire departments, public roads, national parks, trust busting, regulated utilities, Channel 4's Ali G, Social Security.
Government services are often excellent.
Edit: My Sound of Music parody wasn't appreciated, so I converted my post to prose.
The best was when the clone was put back in police service and the original kept by the cloners.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-police-tow-tr...
"What this illustrates is that the tow operator had a genuine TPS radio in his possession, while our officers were using a cloned version," Sinipoli said.
It’s like saying my car is too slow, let me add 500lbs of weight.
This comment just further supports that there should not be such a profit motive.
> Firefighting used to be a private for-profit industry. In the 1800’s, the early days of urbanization, in cities like New York and Baltimore, there were private “clubs” or “gangs” who were in charge of putting out fires. The infamous Boss Tweed started his illustrious political career at a volunteer fire company. The way it functioned was the first club at the scene got money from the insurance company. So, they had an incentive to get there fast. They also had an incentive to sabotage competition. They also often ended up getting in fights over territory and many times buildings would burn down before the issue was resolved. They were glorified looters. It was corrupt, bloated and expensive
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/firefighting-in-the-1800s_b_2...
I'm not sure if Rome of the time actually had the ability to field what we would think of as useful firefighters.
But then you mention: >> Then a month later, Toronto suspended 5 more police in the same tow truck scandal.
If you want to go after corruption that's fine. But it's probably not sufficient to just change an industry from private to government run.
The construction industry is very clearly siphoning billions of dollars of tax money into organized criminals' hands. Every few years a given street gets torn up with a new excuse. And it seems to be consensus that it's much worse these days than it used to be.. this year in particular I think something like one out of every five blocks downtown is closed off for "construction".
Cops saying "just don't look into it" regarding organized crime sounds about par for the course anywhere I've ever been though.
I'm curious about the logistics of this scam. Does this mean the concrete delivery would show up on the books of the concrete company as two orders, one for the 10%, and one (or more orders) for the remaining 90%? Or was the concrete company in on the scam for a kickback so nothing would show up on their books nor the contractors' books?
With so much being automated and tracked these days, is it squeezing out these scams?
My estimation is that if we had a similar level of effort into looking into other regions, we'd see similar or greater issues. The refusal to look into real-estate or casino based money laundering as well as substantially counterproductive financial secrecy laws make for lots of issues in Canada.
Is there grift in Montreal? You betcha. Is there grift in Toronto? You betcha, but it doesn't make the news.
This is a great shame.
He mostly does name licensing these days.
That area of NYC had been completely derelict and run down at the time. Midtown East was NYC's red light district up until the 1950s when it moved across town to Times Square. It still is the area to this day where most of the asian brothels in the city are.
Anyway, the Grand Hyatt project completely revitalized that neighborhood.
Then Trump put his (rejected) bid in for the Javits Center project and was the project's biggest salesman to the public. His proposal for which streets to develop nearly exactly became the Hudson Yards project 30 years later...
It is amazing how time and time again, his supporters entirely dismiss these things. Amazing that they are fine with a government with zero transparency and zero accountability, despite their platform clamouring for exactly that. Regardless of the party in power, I would be equally as disgusted. I wonder if people will wake up when they see the bleak financial situation that comes to light post-COVID.
I haven't even mentioned his other previous ethics violations but I'll spare you the details.
>The Post Millennial is a conservative Canadian online news magazine started in 2017. It publishes national and local news and has a large amount of opinion content. It has been criticized for releasing misinformation and articles written by fake personas, for past employment of an editor with ties to white supremacist-platforming and pro-Kremlin media outlets, and for opaque funding and political connections.
>The Post Millennial has been described by Buzzfeed News as an advocacy organization for the Conservative Party operating through opaque personal connections and undeclared social media ties.
>In July 2020, The Daily Beast exposed an online network pushing United Arab Emirates propaganda against Qatar, Turkey and Iran, using op-eds placed in news outlets using fictitious authors. The Post Millennial published some of these articles. After being contacted by the Beast, it took the articles down without comment.
If you don't trust Wikipedia on this, just have a look the topics and opinion pieces run by this "news" organization. Hardly a reputable source by any stretch.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-co...
> Given that much of what has been released on the WE contract has contradicted what the prime minister has told Canadians publicly, the opposition are well within their rights to probe it and other spending, including the sole-source $237-million contract for ventilators made by former Liberal MP Frank Baylis’s company Baylis Medical
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/macdougall-trudeau-embrace...
https://alkhaleejtoday.co/international/5157524/Contract-to-...
https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/companies-warn-tory-mo...
Did you read the first sentence of my comment? It starts with "I'm not saying your overall point is incorrect..."
Could be my interpretation. My apologies. No need to be snarky about it eh.
I only want the reader to be wary of claims (and the claimant) citing an obviously partisan source. A source that has been caught red-handed publishing disinformation provided by foreign state actors[1].
Although you sound well-intentioned, I'm just not interested in engaging when someone plays fast and loose with facts and sources. I'm just so incredibly tired of it.
[0] https://www.charityintelligence.ca/charity-details/82-we-cha... [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/right-wing-media-outlets-duped...
Actually your own cited source challenges this. You didn't dig far enough.[0,1] WE Charity transferred 7% of its revenue to Me to We, a for profit company that did the payouts to Trudeau's family. Charity Intelligence themselves found this very unusual. Unlike every other charity that they monitor, in fact. I guess it's okay for a not for profit to operate a for profit company to get around the rules then?
This isn't even a partisan thing, this is on WE Charity's wikipedia page.
[0]https://www.canadaland.com/we-charity-was-in-financial-troub... [1]https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-july-13-...
No, my link does not challenge this. WE is a registered charity (as designated by CRA). It's public information, you can look it up.
I initially chose not to bring this up precisely because it detracts from the fact that there is likely corruption (as you point out). I only brought it up when pressed for why I endorsed the gist of the parents comments, but not the stated details.
You know, it is possible for someone to believe that corruption occurred but also believe that getting the surrounding facts correct is important. That's all I was advocating for.
You've totally misinterpreted this entire thread.
It is, but then also it isn't really all that amazing if you sit down an examine the entire system. People being "fine with a government with zero transparency and zero accountability" isn't surprising, because these problem derive from the structure of the system itself, not any one individual politician operating in it. One could Google up plentiful examples from history of all politicians leveraging the opaqueness of the particular political system they operate in (all systems on Earth are flawed in this manner, to varying degrees) - but at the individual level (politicians and voters), they all realize that "these things are inevitable", and that even though technical wrongdoing has occurred, from the aggregate perspective, the ends justifies the means (which is a perfectly reasonable position to hold in my opinion, if we assume that the individuals in question are not aware that their perception of reality does not match objective reality, which is ~always the case).
I believe that to fix the problem, these systems must be completely redesigned to accommodate the obvious shortcomings. But then to do that, it would require buy-in from both politicians and the media, who both likely enjoy the amount of power in their possession and wouldn't be too keen on giving it up, so I wouldn't hold my breath on anything improving, ever.
I mean, it's pretty typically for a gov't official to lose track of $41,000 in expenses right? Happens every day.
I’d prefer it if they could just take kickbacks on financial shenanigans.
The library system in montreal (+BANQ) is one of the things i missed most when i left. It really was amazing.
I've lived there. Any canadian who has lived in all the big cities (toronto, vancouver, montreal, calgary) will tell you the same.
> I've lived there.
So have I
There is corruption, but it’s not clear how much worse it is than in other North American cities.
Also, fun fact, parties that seemed to be more engaged in this corruption were not the “socialist” ones, but the neoliberal ones.
But hey, don’t let that stop you, it’s a great strawman you built there.
The government here pays huge subsidies for electricity, a lot of social housing and a generous $6/day child care regime, which is far more than anywhere else in the US.
Montreal is measurably 'more corrupt' [1], there's no doubt about it, there was a massive investigation into it, and some of it was addressed by having more intelligent/trained buyers for public sector goods etc., but much remains.
"At the Charbonneau inquiry, an "ex-construction boss said that for years, three per cent of the value of all contracts he received from the city of Montreal went to the mayor's party, and another one per cent, known as "la taxe à Surprenant," went to a city official"
I don't think the level of corruption has that much to do with the ideology of government though.
Montreal is in the US?
I went back to visit right before leaving North America forever. I was shocked at how depressed the city was still. I assume it's these parasites stealing from the people.
A lot of new modern buildings have been erected downtown and the city is quite clean.
As for the corruption, it is very visible on the roads. They are constantly redoing the roads and yet there are still a lot of potholes. The weather is not an excuse, roads are much better in Ontario.
Also I don't know if it is still the case but you could read occasionally in the news some housing construction buildings being burnt.
Roads do get a beating because of snow. Montreal definitely get more than Toronto, and the road system is way over capacity, with the number of cars and trucks increasing 2% each year.
The costs estimates are interesting too, because the construction industry is/was colliding in order to hike prices. So now all projects are fixed-price, meaning that companies won't take risks and tripple their estimates.
Some say that these problems started in the 60s, but got worse during government downsizing attempts. Internal expertise was lost and they had to rely on (corrupt) private companies. Others say that the restructuring were required to get rid of inside corruption. Whenever two government entities get merged, it's pretty much always as an attempt to water down corruption.
All that said, these days the city is pretty lean. I know lots of folks working there. I also did my small part to help liberate the city from Oracle consultants (siphoning the city) and also ran for borough office some time ago.
Just don't get your car towed. They are as bad in Montreal as everywhere else. And the city needs more public transport.
The other factor is repairs were neglected for much of the 2010s, which compounded damage, so they're playing catch-up. So yes, there is a lot of construction, and undoubtedly some corruption and incompetence mixed in, but it's not as bad as some people who like to complain say.
It will be interesting to see if they can "catch up" some year, and it's very important for informed people to remain critical and engaged.
The topic was - how to deter, scare the criminals? How to make it less viable for them to be corrupt and criminals?
They often commit crimes of various nature including corruption in the hope that if not them their children, family would get to reap the benefits and they make financial arrangements so that even if they are indicted and properties seized, at least a decent part of the proceeds indeed goes to the family.
We reached an impasse with loosely discussing that vigilante justice is the only way. But then the family, wife, kids didn't really directly participate in the crime so how and when to punish them? For not denouncing the proceeds that was earned from the corrupt and criminal means? I mean there's a law against aiding and abetting in crime. So would that not work here?
Besides, even if we proceed with the vigilante justice, where to draw the line? Is everyone supposed to be picking up arms. That would be total revolution, anarchy in other words. Part of the discussion also included how criminals, politicians intimidate and harm weaker adversaries and if society collectively starts hitting back and hard at them where it hurts - their business, family members - it could deter them. How long can they provide security to them? How often? All it needs one successful target among many. Yes, they can keep the family in a steel cage. Good for them!
But we did reach an agreement that they should not be left untouched. How exactly? That remained the question.
In theory, children with rich parents will still have plenty of advantages, connections, know how, good education, etc. But they shouldn't inherit any assets or financials.
Now how would that be managed in practice, no idea, and I haven't fully thought through everything here, but I'm just surprised this isn't an idea I hear more about, as it seems to me this is a huge source of inequality remaining in our society.
If we forbid gifts, because they're an obvious transfer of wealth, what about financial transactions that favour one party? Should it be legal for a rich parent to sell their car to their offspring for below market value? How much below market value?
As you can see, none of this makes any sense to me. I believe people would get around whatever restrictions you put in place rather easily.
In fact, this is already illegal, but there's no enforcement. (Enforcement would be challenging in any realistic scenario; it always is when every party to a transaction benefits from it.)
According to the law, whenever you obtain anything from anyone (not just relatives) at a price below market value, you have to pay taxes on the difference.
You’d have to be fairly wealthy and incredibly generous to actually trigger conditions needed to pay taxes on gifts. Aside from being able to give $15K per person per year (or twice that for married couples) you also get a lifetime gift-giving exemption of nearly $12 million for any gift giving over the annual amounts.
You’re also allowed to sell your kid your car for $1. It’ll probably be counted as a gift of market value - $1. Your kid will probably be required to pay taxes on it as if he purchased it for market value. But it’s not illegal.
Sure. But when I say "this is already illegal", I'm implicitly including the kid not paying the taxes after this happens.
The tax would then be deduced from the estate.
The state will still probably require the recipient to pay taxes to transfer the title as if you paid full market value. I say probably because it isn't always market value that's required and there is some discretion involved.
The gift exemption is one way in which the wealthy already avoid existing estate taxes.
Nothing about this requires C and D to be married, of course, other than A and B’s willingness may be higher to give to a spouse than a boyfriend or girlfriend.
https://smartasset.com/retirement/lifetime-gift-tax-exemptio...
It's clear that finding mechanisms to implement this would be the next steps, but also not worth thinking about if people refute the premise itself. That said, I'm not going to accept refuting the premise based on the fact that we don't know how to implement it, that's circular to me.
If you want to tax large estates (as we do currently), I’m ok with that, but taxing any portion at 100% and taxing estates substantially lower than the current exemption at all I find an unseemly (and for small estates, unwieldy) picking the pocket of someone who worked hard and saved/invested diligently to give their family a better life.
Indeed, this is considered by a lot of people. Nobody in power has been interested in this, anywhere, ever. This alone, should raise concern.
https://www.gov.uk/inheritance-tax
It has caused the break up of many old estates in the last century.
Going down to particulars, strip individuals of rights to determine who gets their property and another group of people - through the elected or by mob action , should determine it. This creates more incentive to be part of the group that makes that determination than the group that actually creates wealth.
Secondly, the question of distribution comes up and the question of citizenry. If this is a high minded idea , not one based of millennial of social constructs of nationhood and citizenry , why not share the resources to everyone in the world, why only in a particular “country”.
Would you be happy if you have to make sacrifices to succeed , and I am very sure every success comes with a sacrifice just to give others who have not made such or similar sacrifices .
My assumption is that countries that have high inheritance tax create a disincentive to creators of wealth via aggregations / efficiency or disruption because such wealth would be stolen from them . You make enough just to be comfortable .
But overall, it would likely be a net positive.
I'm sure there are way more tricks for passing on your wealth and I'm sure it's much more complicated than this, but:
My first thought would to incorporate and have the corporation own all the wealth. You could hire family as employees and pay them in money and stock. Income taxes would have to be paid, but those are a lot lower than 100%. Any properties would be held by the corporation. Over time, you'd gift your shares to your children using the gift tax exemption. You'd secure contracts with your corporation for the exclusive use of your properties while you live, so even after you no longer have a controlling interest, you can't be removed from, say, your favorite mansion. These contracts would be expensive and payable on death, so when you died, your estate had to pay back the corporation. But the only thing you personally own is stock in the corporation. So the stock goes back to the corporation to pay your debts and the government gets nothing. So, rather than 100%, your effective tax rate would be some income taxes and whatever you couldn't manage to divest yourself of by the time you died.
Voila. Your children just inherited all your stuff legally.
I assume they had a good reason for it.
However, one of life's strongest drives is to protect/provide for your children. Not just a human drive, and not even just an animal drive-- trees preferentially support their offspring...
You justify your proposal from a moral basis ("root of inequality, promotes bad behavior"). While there is much to commend a morals-based approach, it is hard for me to accept that one of life's most fundamental drives is immoral.
My parents are now old. I want to encourage them to spend their money enjoying their last few years. But I also know that the thing which would bring the most joy to my father would be to gift money to my siblings and myself, especially at his passing-- if he were to spend it all, he would feel like he had been a poor steward.
I have a very hard time with a legal structure which penalizes people for deciding to provide for their children rather than for themselves.
This is before we look at all of the edge cases (surviving spouse, early deaths, ...) and also the observations made by others that the rich will avoid the law anyway, thus defeating the purpose of reducing inequality at the high end of the spectrum.
In Poland government introduced extended seizure so, mothers, sisters, wife's are under scrutiny for any possessions that were acquired by those people in relation to crimes with a lot of money involved. Such crimes are above $50k and are taking into account all possessions that are within last 5 years before court verdict.
That means just as in tax case all those people have to prove they legally acquired their possessions. They probably have to have invoices, contracts and prove they had such amount of money. To remind as well, for tax purposes you have to prove you are not guilty, because you have house/car/money which makes you guilty until proven otherwise.
Pretty sure being the recipient or beneficiary to stolen or embezzled funds makes them an accomplice.
Broken legs are still part of the warning phase.
They see this as "theirs" and who they hell are you to cause them to lose $x Million a year? Any business or person would sue the hell out of you and try to ruin your life if you caused them millions in loses.
The mafiosi are no different, with a slight twist, they skip the courts since they take too long ;).
This is a start but not near enough. In many states the tow company isn't required to take photos or produce any kind of proof that the car deserved to be towed. In my experience they just lie to the police about why they stole your car, and the police will vehemently argue that car theft is a civil matter and not a crime.
Any smart organized crime is going to realize that directly intimidating startup founders with violence on American soil is a great way to a) get an overwhelming amount of federal heat on them and b) turn whatever it is they're doing into a scandal immediately.
Nice drive-by zinger. Care to, I don't know—cite evidence to the contrary?
Despite being Canada, the facts of the original article support my point of view:
"Three separate police services – YRP, Toronto Police Service and Ontario Provincial Police – joined forces to launch Project Platinum to investigate the violence associated with the tow truck industry.
They carried out a series of raids this past spring, which netted dozens of high-powered weapons and led to the arrests of 35 people who face almost 500 charges, including the attempted murder of Carr."
I tried to read some books on auditing and financial accounting. Way over my head. I need the ELI5 layperson versions.
Am a recovering activist. So much (wasted) effort. I did learn two heuristics.
#1
Talk About Quality
"Fraud" is a convo full stop. Don't talk about fraud, theft, grift.
Mistakes are indistinguishable from fraud. And combatting both has the same remedies.
So only talk about quality, confidence, reducing errors, etc. Nice safe blame-free neutral 90/10 language that gets everyone on board and is less likely to trigger overt opposition. (Covert sabotage will continue, because the grifters won't be fooled by your Aw Schucks demeanor.)
#2
Follow The Money
Per quote from The Wire upthread. I learned from Bev Harris (Black Box Voting) that (mis)appropriations is a huge threat to election integrity. And in many places, that's the sheriff's office. They don't care about machines, voting, elections. For them it's just about the grift.
Twenty years later, I still don't have a clue how to mitigate this. One half-baked notion was to advocate for solutions that both more in line with the public interest and had more potential for grift. Another is, since scandal is evergreen topic, is feed info to opposition. That didn't work at all against Bob Moses (The Power Broker), so probably not a great plan.
Getting people to do something towards better governance requires they have some faith that such a thing is possible in the first place. Met a non-cynical Civics teacher lately?
I liked to read people the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these Truths to be Self Evident..." but many disagreed with those words and never heard the rest.
Tow truck tricks: Don't get scammed after an accident (CBC Marketplace)
Aren’t there big corporate law firms who would have more resources, and more protection/anonymity for their staff?
Maybe this one was visible and behind the scene the big firms are still at it? This lawyer was probably was working on some specific local cases but was also 'more accessible' by the criminals for intimidation?
The service itself would have some value because knowing you can call your insurance provider after an accident and having them deal with everything would really help to reduce the stress of the incident.
My hunch is the insurance companies are a bunch of babies that would rather whine than solve problems. My sister got in an accident in AB last year and it took her insurance company forever to have her vehicle re-towed from a small garage in a little town to Edmonton. IIRC it took more than 6 weeks for her to deal with insurance.
Contrast that with SK where between the city police and SGI you don't have to do anything. They just deal with it and the rates we pay are probably the best in the country. It's ~1500 CAD per year for insurance and as long as you have a decent driving record you don't get penalized for getting in an accident. You can even cause an accident and pay $0 if you don't make a claim on your own vehicle. Plus they typically get everything dealt with very quickly.
If the police are calling corrupt tow truck companies that's it's own problem. That kind of corruption shouldn't be tolerated and if the police are calling a tow truck for you after an accident it should be a regulated process.
I think if I were in organized crime, a good one would be privatizing parking enforcement of city spaces and then being in charge of meter maids. But it can't be a single organization in charge of meter maids because then it's too obvious. You need it to look diffuse, through a network of companies.
Oh, I think body shops are a good one, but auto glass companies too. You could just stage some break-ins that just vandalize car glass. People will blame the guy whose glass was broken (why did you park there, was your car empty, blah blah). You're just a glass repair shop so everyone sees you as the good guy. And no one will see that your network of auto glass companies is actually controlled by you.
Yeah, auto glass companies in cities are a tremendous opportunity for mafiafication. If they aren't already.
I don't see how the towing industry is any different from healthcare in the U.S. Same scam of driving you to an "out of network" hospital. There was even a story about how the healthcare bill collectors all went through the same legal guy in New York who rubber stamped their judgments against debtors.
In Canada, get a CAA membership for your vehicles. It's cheap, trustworthy, and you can tell those roadside pirates to GTFO.
Once upon a time, something similar happened with an upholsterer in the SF Bay area. They had the contract to repair seats on the train system. Then someone figured out that more repairs meant more money, so they hired some people to go around slashing seats...
- South Korea [1]
- France [2]
- Kenya [3]
- Malaysia [4]
- South Africa [5]
- Mexico [6]
- Brazil [7]
- Indonesia [8]
- ...and I could go on.
[1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvyzn5/south-korea-uber-kaka...
[2]: https://www.stripes.com/travelers-caught-in-cross-fire-as-fr...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/23/uber-taxi-set-...
[4]: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2016/06/22...
[5]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/08/violence-erupt...
[6]: https://time.com/3915705/uber-mexico-dispute/
[7]: https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/01/the-fight-against-uber-is-...
[8]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/world/asia/indonesia-jaka...
(Disclosure: I am a former Uber employee.)
> Despite repeated rulings against it and an October law that explicitly outlaws UberPop, its drivers continue to ply French roads and the American ride-hailing company is actively recruiting drivers and passengers alike. Uber claims to have a total of 400,000 customers a month in France.
I think France has a long history of violently taking back what’s their’s.
I didn’t quite realize why Uber needed gazillions of dollars, but once a friend told me a significant of their expenses were legal/permit related expenses, that made sense. They had so much money, they could keep on paying fines and keep on growing.
I’m glad the Silicon Valley complex is able to churn out Ubers and AirBnBs every now and then. Although they create other second order problems, it’s good to see customers have more choice.
Regardless of your views on Prop 22, for instance, the power imbalance is daunting. When you consider the average voter, it's not clear whether an individual can make an informed judgement.
https://www.salon.com/2020/08/27/the-case-of-steven-donziger...
I don't know anything about corruption, but man being a construction worker in say, Belgium, seems dangerous.
[1]: sorry my references are in French, https://www.pressegauche.org/Pourquoi-tant-d-accidents-du-tr... (I would have preferred something with a domain less politically oriented, but the number seems safe), https://www.dhnet.be/actu/societe/136-accidents-du-travail-o...
That's where the corruption is.
I do autobody and have painted my own cars in the past. Total cost for basic materials for an entire car is less than $600, depending on type of paint, color and finish.
But earlier this year my truck tapped, quite literally TAPPED the back of an SUV when it rolled three feet forward from its parked position. The SUV owner and I had to look several times, and wipe off dirt and dust to see a 2 inch crack in the paint in the hatch.
Total repair bill? $1800 for that damn 2" crack! It's robbery and there's no way it should cost that, but that was a 'discount' rate. I could've painted his entire SUV three times for that price!
The autobody industry is out of control and insurance claims are often ridiculously inflated.
I have no opinion on how much car paint materials cost but your logic that the $1800 is unreasonable because you can do the work three times for three times the bill of materials (~$600) illustrates a substancial misunderstanding of the cost structure of a business.
This idea that the selling price of a good or service should be some minimal amount above the bill of materials shows up quite a bit on HN and it is just wrong.
Soul Red is 2 layers of colour/metallic flakes with clear on top. According to the shop where I got my car fixed you do 2 shots of each layer. For the new Renault red it’s 9 layers in total. http://www.roadster.blog/2015/02/mx-5-roadster-nd-colours.ht...
moreover, most (all?) insurance creates perverse incentives (see: healthcare) unless strictly and carefully defined (which is likely never, since the incentive is to rope in as many policyholders as possible).
It can, but it really depends on how the system is structured. The problem today is more the financialization of insurance that is creating the perverse incentives. Since financiers can again use insurance pool deposits to fund other activities the incentive is to aggregate as much cash as possible (as you noted), rather than providing stable, reliable insurance.
Your time is free?
This dynamic is the fault of the government for creating a captive market and secondarily the fault of insurance for divorcing many consumers from the costs of that captive market.
In rural areas where there's not much money to be made towing the tow operators don't do bad business to make a buck. They use their capital investment to haul things other than cars to make their gravy money.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/snow-removal-montrea...
I had a sick feeling in my stomach because of those unpaid tickets. Certainly a much larger dollar amount than the value of my 15 year old Honda. Told my wife and friends that the best case was that they'd keep the car but that they may still come after us for the balance. But information flowed more slowly in 1991, and the tow lot had no knowledge yet of those unpaid tickets when I arrived to get my car, and I only had to pay $75 to get it back. If I'd waited, they perhaps would have accessed the ticket database.
Some time months later, we finally got our parking permit sticker. And somewhere in a file in the Toronto traffic department there's probably a couple hundred tickets with my license plate.
As for the Accord. I had purchased used in Pittsburgh for $5000. Got married. Drove to Toronto where I lived for 2 years during graduate school. Drove it to MA where I worked for 5 years. Had a baby. Bought a 2nd car (also an Accord). Drove it to CT where I did consulting for a year. Then drove it back to Pittsburgh where I sold it for $500. Haven't thought of that story for many years.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/montreal-tow-truck-i...
Given this situation though, it seems like the tow trucks might just violently threaten someone until they agree to let them tow their car while they wait for an authorized company to arrive. But perhaps that is easier for the police to deal with than organised crime.
I don’t think Uber would have ever been a thing if they played Fair. The taxi industry is full of mafias. They had to get at their level. Uber is a classic example of “grow at all costs” Silicon Valley culture. I don’t endorse it, but I acknowledge why it is the way it is.
Ive seen and dealt with a lot of tow companies, and a plurality are pretty shady but the worst are the police-centric ones. Lock-in deals with police departments for example are astroturfed as "the official tow company of $city police" without so much as an audit. Bidding almost never takes place for this service model, its just a cop whos wifes brother owns a tow company. These are generally the worst, as they rarely respond to anything but a parking enforcement dispatcher. The tow lot is derelect dirt property, and the only thing in the office is a credit card machine and a television. They exist to collect a fee and send a cut to the city, and rarely employ anyone who understands how to hook up a car safely, just quickly.
If you hire a tow driver: look for the words "recovery" or an endorsement from your insurance company. Avoid AAA towing as shady companies habitually stencil that logo on everything. If there is a heavy recovery truck with a crane in their lot, you're in professional hands.
If you're being towed: do not argue shout at or threaten the driver/operator, they're just paying their bills and if its an "official city" tow company it can get you a quick night in jail. instead document everything you can, take pictures and tak your time if you think you're being wrongly towed (it happens.) keep track of your vehicle after this. call and check up on it, as some of the shadiesst tow companies will actually send you a letter warning you of an intent to auction your property after a set date if you dont pay. Somethines this is just a scare tactic, other times its real (im told in Los Angeles they can do this.) Fighting a parking violation tow should be straight forward at your local courthouse unless the citys come to depend on tow revenue.
If you're booted: call the city and confirm it! ask them to confirm the device by its serial number or markings and that information about your vehicles violation EXISTS With them. If you call the number on the boot to pay your fine, ask the person on the other end when the car was booted, who booted it, and at what time (all of which should be documented by the tow company.)
The industry checks out, the tactics check out, the fraudulent revenue stream sounds right...
I agree that there are problems, but at least be more precise in what you are complaining about.
“The police said we believe the risk is low. As long as you don't go back to work, as long as you don't restart the firm,” she says.
I would also argue that in the long term this should pay off. Protect the lawyer, stop crime organizations, save much money later because less security needed. Don't protect the layer == more crime == more future expenses.
If anything what should be happening here is the insurance company who is paying her should be helping protect her. Otherwise why wouldn't she just drop the client? If it is unsafe for her she may as well just cave in and drop that high risk client. I don't see how her career had to end because she couldn't drop a single client.
The insurance companies also could have put pressure on the prosecutors to go after these criminals. What I find interesting is that in the story we heard nothing from the insurance companies despite them being the main one going head-to-head against these guys.
In my city in Ontario our police department is already underfunded and has less officers per 100 000 people than most other departments in Ontario. And because of the BLM movement one of their proposed budgets would end up forcing them to cut 216 officers. Unfortunately people want to ask for things like these 24/7 protections but then they are unwilling to properly fund the police and instead look to defund them. A lot of police services in Ontario are understaffed and can barely keep up with 911 calls for service, how do you expect them to protect someone 24/7 for who knows how long when they can barely keep up with normal 911 calls?
So yes your best option for not getting robbed/mugged is not to walk in the dark alleys unless you really need to. There is not going to be a policeman in every dark alley.
Parent poster omitted important part, so before jumping to conclusions, read article first: "They carried out a series of raids this past spring, which netted dozens of high-powered weapons and led to the arrests of 35 people who face almost 500 charges, including the attempted murder of Carr."
One of the suspects probably told the police "As long as OP doesn't come after us legally again, we'll stay away from them".
This is blackmail using the police as a messenger.
But why shouldn't they protect her 24/7? It is sending organized crime a strong message that they can threaten anyone (perhaps with the exception of high politicians) to do anything. The chilling effect this must have on potential witnesses, whistle-blowers, and resistance must be worth something to the public. Now, no other attorney or insurance adjuster would dare raise a concern that might negatively influence the income stream for organized crime. The criminals will get richer and more powerful and more brazen.
EDIT: Imagine if we did that with politicians and judges too; not provide them with security when they need it [1]. What kind of world would we be living in? Organized crime could dictate every law and decide every case they want. I am sure that no cop would tell a supreme court judge, "Your honour, as long as you don't continue ruling against the mob, your life will not be in danger. But if you continue doing what you were previously doing, we cannot guarantee your safety." In the current climate, I guess we don't have to worry about this specific scenario. With no attorneys willing to take cases against the mob, it would never land on a judge's desk.
[1] I understand for Americans the when qualifier may sound weird. But here in Canada, we don't lock up high ranking officials 24/7 for the rest of their lives. A supreme court justice went missing for a short while last year and that triggered a police search.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/clement-gascon-mental-healt...
This is a common misunderstanding in both Canada and the USA.
Police are not there to protect individuals whatsoever.
The best illustration is that in the US, dangerous police car chases are allowed even in downtown areas, and citizens get run over with impunity. Because the police are there to enforce laws, not "serve and protect."
The second-most frequent trope is that when you're in a foreign country, the US embassy will get you out of jail. That almost never happens, with them instead arranging phone calls and a local lawyer, if you can afford it.
(There's a small army of foreigners in Bali getting used to eating rice 3 times per day because of that misconception.)
That hasn't been true for awhile now. It's commonplace enough to have the moniker "slow speed chase".
They should, but if you're just a regular person, the SOP for police is to not.
"They carried out a series of raids this past spring, which netted dozens of high-powered weapons and led to the arrests of 35 people who face almost 500 charges, including the attempted murder of Carr."
They did what they could, you cannot keep someone safe for the rest of their life.