Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia tweeted Friday that StreetsLA would be fining Universal Studios $250 for trimming trees without a city permit. He also said that “outdated laws limit fine amounts and aren’t equitable across offenders, especially big corporations” and that he will recommend these laws be reevaluated.
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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The law is working as designed. As in, it doesn't punish the big offenders at all.
$250? Maybe if it was a family in the poor part of Los Angeles that had committed the offense. NBC Universal makes $250 in less than a minute I think.
NBC is owned by Comcast who made $5,370,000,000 in net income last year. That'd be $14,700,000 every day, $610,000 every hour. So just over $10,000 per minute. They made $170 every second.
And they can't afford to pay them more?
They can, but “outdated laws limit fine amounts and aren’t equitable across offenders, especially big corporations”
Well then they wouldn't make $170 a second.
They could have done at least $250 per tree.
Cancel your Peacock subscription until the strike is over. Those dickholes hate unions and trees.
You have a Peacock subscription?
It's worth noting that non of the unions are asking consumers to cancel subscriptions or not go see movies yet. That's intentional that they aren't asking that. It might change in the future but right now, they intentionally are not calling for a boycot of the streamers.
Mainly this is so that if they do, they can coordinate and make a big show of it and do some actual damage.
That's neat and definitely worth noting. I like collective actions (like boycotts) to demonstrate political power.
That said, fuck NBC Universal for being a bunch of ruptured hemorrhoids and engaging in this kind of bullshit. Cancel Peacock.
Honestly? Good example of whats wrong with LA.
All the things going down, human shit littering the sidewalks, criminals swarming local stores like locusts causing them to die and shut down, and the city is wasting time issuing $250 fines for unlicensed arboriculture.
At the very least it calls attention to the strike and what the studios are doing.
I'm no expert but i see a lot of people yelling about this $250 fine. Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't it make sense if the fine was just the cost of the permit they were supposed to have. If they are criminally liable they'll probably end up in court over it. But i doubt the city has the authority to hand out the massive fines the studio probably deserves.
Fine should be more than the cost of the permit, otherwise there's no reason to get a permit. Just do it anyway and if caught pay the fine.
Considering what those trees look like now, they should be also charged with property damage and sued for the cost of replacing most of those trees.
LA does have some stupid fucking tree laws, though.
I can't speak for this stretch, but in much of the city the private property owners are responsible for maintaining the canopy along their street, not the city. Which is just idiotic beyond all reason and contributes hugely to their urban heat island effect in poor neighborhoods that cannot afford to maintain real trees.
Im sorry do I smell some.. TREE LAW?
It's actually pretty common in LA for those trees to be trimmed like that. I have no idea how "healthy" it is for them, but they don't die, at least. And the canopies regrow just fine. I wouldn't be surprised if it was causing some harm, but in this case, it's a pretty standard trim.
And they’ve learned their lesson!