A long long time ago, I live in Del Rio Texas, they had parking meters, and you had to put in a dime for 15 minutes, the meters only went up to 45 minutes, and you would have occasionally leave the stores and check the meter. One time, I didn't get back in time, and the meter expired, and there was a ticket on my window. I thought my husband would kill me if he found out I got a ticket. I opened the ticket to learn the fine for an expired meter was 25 cents. That's right, it was unbelievable, and I thought all this time, I've been filling the meters, and I could have ignored them, and only had to pay twenty-five cents to park all day. However, next time, I couldn't just ignore the meter, it was the law, and so I stupidly obeyed the law, but I had mixed feelings about it. My point is that the penalty has to be high enough or some people will choose to ignore the law, the law is already in place, but the penalties for ignoring it aren't high enough. It seems like we would be stopping some of the pregnancies that are truly unplanned, and often result in very unadoptable dogs. |