Re: Trigger warning! Government attorney files privileged internal work document

On Apr 25, 2025 at 1:28:44 PM PDT, ""Adam H. Kerman"" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

LeagleEagle's Devin Stone's video starts with a trigger warning for
practicing attorney, that this is a nightmare scenario in which an
attorney made a massive fuck up. He filed an internal document, a work
product protected by attorney-client privilege, which was a memo
analyzing that the government doesn't have much of a case arguing
against the implimentation of congestion pricing in New York city.

Which government? If it's the federal government, the only way I can see them
having any jurisdiction is via the Commerce Clause because NYC's congestion
pricing directly affects commerce with New Jersey.

(Now I'll wait while you pick yourself off the floor and wave the vapors away
as you recover from the shock of me actually arguing in *favor* of the use of
federal power via the Commerce Clause.)

If it's the state or local governments, I don't see why they wouldn't have a
case, since regulating traffic and vehicles is directly a matter of state and
local jurisdiction.

One question I can never seem to find the answer to regarding NYC's congestion
tolls is how they deal with out-of-state drivers. They must have some way of
tolling the New Jersey drivers since that's about 50% of the cars entering
Manhattan every day and any tolling scheme that doesn't account for them would
be a failure from its inception. But does the system have the ability to
access *every* state's DMV and toll their drivers? If I'm on a driving
vacation and end up in NYC, can the system access the California DMV and hit
me up, too? Not all of these tolling systems can do that, so the answer isn't
as clear as you might think. For example, I drive to Texas every Christmas to
spend the holidays with my family and I drive on the toll roads around Austin,
which allow you to pay by mail if you don't have a transponder. Five years and
counting and I have yet to get anything in the mail back in California from
the Texas Toll Roads asking me to pay a toll. So I'm very curious the extent
and reach of NYC's toll system.

Here in CA, they announced they're moving forward with the next phase of the
road tax scheme, which will charge you for every mile you drive. They're still
billing it as a replacement for the gas tax but you can slap my ass and call
me Shirley the day the state of California gives up a tax. I'm 100% certain it
will be in *addition* to the gas tax, not in place of it.

Anyway, much like NYC's system, none of the media reports or research I've
done indicate how this system plans to treat miles driven outside of
California. As it stands with the gas tax, you only pay it when you fill up
your tank in California. Obviously, when you drive outside the state you pay
the tax on gas for whatever state you're in (which is in every case several
dollars cheaper per gallon than California's tax). Since the state isn't
entitled to tax miles driven in other states, I'm very curious how they plan
to address it, because for people like me, that above-mentioned yearly drive
to Texas and back can easily form the bulk of the miles I drive in a given
year and there's no way I'm letting Gavin Newsom reach into my pocket and tax
me on miles I'm driving in New Mexico or Texas or Florida.

So I called up that wretched hive of scum and villainy in Sacramento and was
bounced from one office to another until I got to the enabling bill's sponsor,
and then to the legislative aide who was authoring the damn thing and asked
him how this would all work and he said that right now, it's set up so drivers
have a choice. You can either pay the tax based on a simple reading of your
odometer (this year's reading minus last year's reading = taxable miles
driven) which would tax all your miles equally or you can choose to have a GPS
monitor installed on your vehicle which will note the location of every mile
and exempt those driven outside the state. So basically, if you rarely or
never drive outside of the state, you can just have them read your odometer
when you get your smog certification and report it to the state or you can do
the GPS thing if you're someone who maybe lives near the border or takes long
out-of-state trips on a regular basis.

The rest of us can simply be amused but thinking in the back of our
minds, Gosh, if I ever need to hire an attorney, I hope he doesn't
inadvertently commit malpractice against me.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsnr9yNEh7c