SOMERVILLE, Mass. Tony Arigliano has been Assistant Parking Clerk in this liberal-leaning suburb of Boston for the past 8 years and says he’s never seen two Republicans together at the same time. “They pay by mail, and they don’t appeal,” he says as he nods with approval. “Makes me almost wanna like ‘em.”
Obama lived here. I mean, not on the steps–inside.
But all that changed this morning as representatives of several super-PACs descended on Town Hall to make photocopies of a document that could turn out to be devastating to President Obama’s re-election chances; an unpaid parking citation that escaped his notice when he removed his name from Arigliano’s “scofflaw” list in 2007 by paying $375 in overdue fines and penalties.
“Hmm–should I move out of that bus stop? Nah–I’ll be president someday.”
“When I was younger, I flouted our nation’s parking laws out of principle, just as an earlier generation refused induction into the service to protest an unjust war,” Obama said at the time in a nationally-televised speech designed to put the issue behind him. “Is it ‘flouted’ or ‘flaunted’–I always get the two mixed up.”
Rove: “Double chin? That’s a lie–I don’t have any chin at all.”
But the unpaid fine is evidence of Obama’s secret plan to undermine the American way of life and turn the nation into a socialist satellite of Cuba, according to critics who intend to use it to energize undecided voters who pay their tickets in a timely fashion. “Look at Mitt Romney’s record,” said Clyde Lempu of Americans Concerned About Parking. “He not only pays on time, he adds a 10% tip on top as a Mormon tithe.”
“Hey you–that space is reserved for Former Governors!”
Both Obama and Romney attended graduate professional schools at Harvard, which is located in a densely-populated area where parking is tight. “I wish people knew some of the stories of private parking generosity I could tell about my husband,” said Ann Romney. “He’d see cars with parking tickets under their windshield wipers and take them off to pay them himself. Then he’d bundle them into a securitized debt instrument, sell it at a discount and make a huge profit.”
Provo, Utah: No trouble finding a parking space.
Mormons have a model record of parking compliance, a fact that strains finances in Utah towns, which are unable to depend on parking fines to finance municipal operations as a result. “Mormons are a God-fearing, parking-sign reading group,” notes Edward Hellstand, a professor of sociology at the University of Arkansas-Hoxie. ”They drive around looking for laws to obey.”
