Foreclosures mean less property tax collected.  Reduced consumer spending means less sales tax.  Unemployment means less income tax, more unemployment payments.  All of this equals less income to states, which means less money to pay for police, in an environment that lends itself to higher crime.  I get why the police are now on a ticketing blitz, seems like a necessary evil.  But its still an evil.  Talk about kicking a person when they are down and profiling.  Sit in any municipcal court and you will see scores of middle class people paying fines that in the case of New Jersey have tripled.  Why not take your case to the people?  I for one would have gladly given $100 to my local police had they reached out.  Instead I took off a day from work and paid a ludacrious fine for not having my driver's license on me, even though the officer was able to bring up my immaculate record in his car.  What I'm angry about is the subjective nature of violations. Had this same scenario happened a year ago, I would have received an admonishment.  Instead we now have the police pulling drivers over for the slightest thing in the hopes of garnering more fines.

Like everyone else, I've had to tighten my budget this year, and like many had to prioritize bills.  I only had a total of 2,000 in credit card debt, but had to pay late to pay cash for my kids tuitions.  I pulled them out of the better schools they were in, and put them in community colleges because there are no student loans or grant available.  I wound up paying off close to 4,000 in debt because as soon as you make one late credit card payment, ALL your cards can go up to as high as 29.4% interest rate.  I dare say that had I borrowed the money from a loan shark, the payments would have been the same and at least I could call a shark a shark