Equal Justice

Lord Kadizzle has been the municipal judge for the city of Hazen for over twenty years, and also serves as judge for Hebron. Every year municipal judges must have a day of training. Yesterday was the big day. Most of the day was so boring the flies left the room. However, one speaker who happened to be a North Dakota Supreme court judge brought up something that has always amazed me, the inconsistency of justice in North Dakota. The speaker used the example of a street in Grand Forks. On the same street you could be arrested by two different entities for the same offense. If one police system stopped you the fine was fifty dollars higher than if the other local police system stopped you. The speaker went on to point out other examples in North Dakota where the same thing happened. Most of the problem was related to the home rule system in North Dakota that allows cities to set their own fines. In many cases the fine could be different by a factor of hundreds of dollars for doing the exact same thing, in the exact same spot. It all depends on who arrest you. The speaker asked the class if they knew of any other system in North Dakota that treated people so unequally or unfairly. I raised my hand and explained to him how we have a special class of people all over the state that have privileges no one else does. The privileged are the farmers. A farmer can drive a truck in the most despicable condition, over weight, over width, and lacking all sorts of safety devices, but he is not ticketed, because he is a farmer. Every conceivable loophole in taxes and privileges has been created for farmers in North Dakota. Our legislature is made up of farmers and lickspittles. None of our legislators has the guts to do what they should on a moral basis. If they raised the fines for speeding like they should they fear they would not be re-elected. Certainly they could not turn on their own and ask farmers who are already subsidized to pay the same taxes everyone else does.