Tag Archives: California

Toyota Financing, Repossession & Unethical Auction

Posted on January 19, 2010 | 1 Comment

An acquaintance had his car repossessed after losing his job and not being able to keep up with payments.  He kept hoping that things pick up and he could start making his payments again but then one day there was a pounding on his front door.  A man had already hooked up his car to a tow truck and was ready to cart it off but just wanted to give him his business card “just in case”.

He told my friend that the car would be at a certain location for at least a month in case he could catch up with his payments.  A last ditch effort phone call to Toyota’s financial department to stop the repossession was in vain. They refused to take the last bit of money on a credit card my friend had and off the car went.

Well not only did the car not remain at the location specified by Toyota’s tow truck driver (some 50 miles away from my friend’s present location), it was transported 200 additional miles away making it totally impossible for him to get it back.

Within a week and a half of the tow, Toyota sent him a letter informing him he would have to pay all the back payments, plus “cleaning” costs, more magical fees and then they sprung it on him that they moved the car to some city he had never heard of.  They didn’t take the car back to the dealer from whom he purchased it – 50 miles away, in a town where he used to live.  They didn’t keep the car at the location specified by the tower – in the county where he was now living.  They took it to never-never land!  So even if he could catch up on his payments, how on earth was he going to make the journey to the new location?  He couldn’t.

The reason I say Toyota Motors financing department sucks is the manner in which they went about auctioning off the car.  They deliberately sold it for less than half it’s fair market value and expected him to pay for their losses.  That’s insane!  The law usually understands the concept of fair market value but apparently not in the case of a repossessed auto and how car companies play the repo game.  At least not in California.  It’s unethical.  And the law should be changed to provide a measure of fairness to the poor chap who gets his car towed away.

I know you could argue that he was his own fault for not making his payments.  Well it wasn’t his fault that he lost his job because of the unethical actions of banks in creating this crapping economy! (KS, San Francisco)

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California and Dumb Auto Smog Checks

Posted on January 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

Listening to Gov. Schwarzenegger babble on about the state of California’s economy, I wanted to hit him over the head.  Here’s why.

An acquaintance who has been having severe financial problems for quite some time now had to renew his car registration and this year it required the bi-annual smog check.  He could barely scrape together the $50 on top of the $60 he had already paid to the state for the renewal sticker.  The car failed the test on 2 minor points, one wasn’t even related to emissions.  Because he had no money to get the repairs needed, he applied to the state for consumer aid which he got.

He took the car to a authorized repair station and after nearly a full day of hanging out in the waiting room, the car was set to go.  Now here’s the issue.  They replaced a faulty sensor that was making the “check engine light” come on all the time.  That cost about $90.  The “diagnosing” of the problem which they already knew about from the failed smog test report cost about $175 and then of course they needed to do a re-test.  Total cost about $368.

The owner was forced to pay $28 in additional fees and the state was on the hook for $340 to the repair station.  The sensor had nothing to do with emissions and the emission problem noted on idle during the first test never showed up during the second test.  That means the state just cost itself and the owner $368 for no reason.

Well, the real reason is that when it comes to bureaucracies and the idiotic ways our various governments do things, is that no one is held accountable.  There’s no one to talk to who can make a common sense decision based on the facts.  All you get are automated systems, and even if you were lucky enough to speak to a human during the absurd process, that person would not be a position to help.   In other words, this “smog problem” wasn’t even a problem with this particular car.

So babble on Governor, but please don’t think you’re fooling anyone.  Bureaucracies were designed to waste time and money and you’ve got yourself a doozy in California.  And this is just one very tiny example of inadequacy.  Now just multiply that by more cars or more agencies performing at the same stupid level.

Should I go on about the stupidity of jumping on one single car when you have fleets of school buses and trucks that spew tons of garbage into the air each day?  Why doesn’t the state do something about that?  (KS, in San Francisco)

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Some California Cops Shoot First

Posted on March 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

California’s police officers are at it again. This time they’re from Los Angeles and this time they killed a homeless woman after stopping her to find out if the shopping cart she was pushing was stolen. A high crime in a city where drive-by shootings are the order of the day.

So this homeless, mentally ill, 54 year old, 5-foot-1-inch tall woman weighing 102-pounds is walking along a street when two 20-something year old bicycle cops come along and stop her. Anyone knowing anything about homeless people would know that many are mentally ill and if that’s the case, they are usually highly mistrustful of anybody. The cops claim that Margaret Mitchell immediately became hostile and brandished a 13-screwdriver at them saying she would kill them. (Rumor on the streets is now that Los Angeles officials will seek to ban screwdrivers.)

Mitchell then ran; the cops pursued; she lunged at one of the cops, who in trying to avoid being injured, stumbled and fell to his knee. He then felt so threatened by this crazy little woman that he shoots her in the chest.

Margaret Mitchell’s son had been trying to get her help for years. A college-educated woman, she slipped deeper and deeper into a state of paranoid-schizophrenia, hearing voices and so forth. She was most comfortable on the streets. Her son contacted police in Los Angeles and Pasadena for help in getting her committed so that she could be medicated. He was told that the police could do nothing until his mother had either hurt herself or someone else.

The shooting incident is now under investigation. Among some of the questions: why a gun and not a baton or pepper spray? I’d like to know what the second bicycle cop was doing. And I’d still like to know what the police department is going to do to train our “protectors” and when. They need social skills as much as practical shooting training because in the Riverside County case that has that community up in arms, four police officers there felt the need to direct 26 rounds at a woman who they eventually killed with 16. In that case, the woman was unconscious in a locked car with a pistol in her lap. The cops crashed the window startling the woman who then reached for the gun.

I keep thinking about the shopping cart. If we’re not going to solve the homeless situation one way or the other, then surely we can allow them free access to shopping carts for their varied belongings. These bicycle cops went out of their way to pursue a woman with a possibly misappropriated shopping cart and then killed her as a result of it. It would be funny if it weren’t so horribly tragic. (original post June 14, 1999)

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California View: When Cops Kill

Posted on March 3, 2009 | 1 Comment

One unconscious woman in a locked car. One gun on her lap. Four police officers called to help her. They break the window to get to her. Startled by the sound, she awakens and reaches for the gun. Twenty-six gunshots later, the black woman is dead. The black community rises up in massive protest. “Racism”, is declared. The police officers are investigated, then cleared of any wrong-doing. More protests – black and white. Al Sharpton, Dick Gregory, Martin Luther King III and the usual suspects join the fray – at least 1,000 in all. Now come the arrests – 46 in all. We are one step away from another riot, just like what happened after the Rodney King beating by L.A.’s finest.

I say forget racism. The greater problem is gross incompetence. Incompetence by the police department. Los Angeles and New York. Similar scenarios, same tragic results. In this case, four police officers, at close range couldn’t safely subdue one woman without blasting her to smithereens. That’s a disgrace.

Twelve bullets actually hit her. Think about it. She’s in the car – unconscious, no less. How much did they assess the situation and their options before blundering in by smashing the window and setting the ball rolling to this horrible ending? Can’t have been very much.

A police officer I spoke with said of the shots fired by his group, only 15% hit their target. And that’s the national average. This tells me that these guys need to go back to school and the practice range. They need to learn how to cope with different situations humanely and they need to learn how to use their weapons effectively. One wonders what kind of training they’re getting these days.

Right now we have inexperienced people performing a critical job without the proper psychological and practical training. They react out of fear most of the time in high adrenaline output situations. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. I’m sure there’s some racism involved. But if our police were better trained, practically and socially, we’d all be a lot safer and more confident that racism is not a factor in such shooting incidents.

The woman, Tyisha Miller, 19, was shot to death by Riverside County police officers on December 28, 1998 when they responded to a 911 call. The protests and arrests occurred Monday, May 11, 1999. (original post May 13, 1999)

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Immigration: California Style

Posted on March 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

If you want to keep rats out of the attic, you don’t put goodies out for them at the same time that you board up the house. But, that’s just how the U.S. government and California legislature handle illegal immigration here.

The Border Patrol at points south, San Diego and beyond, spends millions figuring new ways to keep out the illegals at the same time that the government up north dangles gold-plated carrots in the form of free public benefits.

The Border Patrol builds high walls and fences, installs high tech surveillance, risks their lives trying to maintain some sense of control over our borders. And when the infiltrators do manage to breach the containment field, the Border Patrol shoots, arrests, runs them down in high speed/low speed chases and then gets blamed when the van carrying 20 illegals tumbles out of control and crashes in some bushes off a major freeway somewhere. What are they supposed to do to stop them? Use harsh words? On the other hand, maybe they ought to get gold stars for the hundreds they save who have been dumped in the desert by the coyotes (runners of illegals) trying to escape with their own derrieres intact. Recently, there was a massive invasion of over 600 illegal aliens in one night. And they’re not coming here for the fine climate.

In 1994 about 60% of the state’s population voted on an initiative (Proposition 187) to ban the misguided generosity of free benefits – no mean feat considering Latinos are pretty nearly the majority ethnic group now. Then last year, misguided soul, U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer ruled that the Proposition was unconstitutional and that it was a good idea to give illegal immigrants nonemergency health care, public schooling and numerous other social services. Her reasoning was that only the federal government had the right to make immigration law. Zounds! I thought there WAS a law that said illegal immigration WAS illegal … and if they have no right being here then they sure as hell have no right receiving benefits. California has never recouped from the federal government the money it spent trying to cope with illegal immigration. So where was the federal government whose job it is to make immigration law? Maybe the White House interns know.

Back when he was still governor, Pete Wilson appealed the ruling. Now that he’s out and Gray Davis is in (he opposed the measure when it was originated), that appeal may very well fall by the wayside and the decision of 60% of the state’s population may just as easily be dashed. A democracy? For the people, of the people, by the people? Not in California. Not in the state of the premier suckers of the sublime United Suckers of America. No wonder France gave the U.S. the Statue of Liberty begging for all the world’s poor and downtrodden. No other country was stupid enough to take it.

Now, Davis, in order to play both sides of the fence, asked for a private mediation of Prop 187. Many say that’s illegal in itself as an abuse of the mediation process. I say it’s a huge cop-out. Illegal immigrants don’t belong in this country and they shouldn’t be rewarded for breaking the law. If the Federal government can’t or won’t handle the problem, then the state of California and other states in the line of fire, must stop the onslaught now. This Proposition is not unconstitutional. it is common sense. (original post 1999)

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