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At first, I thought Mayor Daley was kidding about getting the city extra money by cracking down on parking ticket offenders. The rule used to be that you got the dreaded Boot after ten tickets, but then they lowered it to five, and then a couple weeks ago, they made the Boot threshold a mere three tickets.

I can get three parking tickets as fast as the Cubs can blow a three run lead. Sometimes I will stop at a stoplight and by the time the light is green, I will notice that I've acquired three parking tickets. See, in my neighborhood, most of the spots are metered, and because I am extremely lazy, I am sometimes as much as fourteen nanoseconds late to meter, which results in at least two parking tickets every time. But I wasn't worried, because I thought Mayor Daley was just joking around.

Hear me now and believe me later: Mayor Daley is not kidding about the parking tickets. I didn't think I was at risk for the boot, because I always pay my tickets. And I always include with my payment funny anecdotes about the irrationality of Chicago's parking system. Across the street from my apartment, for instance, there is the sweetest spot, which is illegal for no discernible reason aside from the fact that the city would never allow people to park in such an incredibly convenient space. But for some reason--well, technically for the reason that I was parked in that beautiful spot across from my apartment -- the city booted my car last week after I got three tickets in one afternoon. So I paid off the tickets, got debooted, and promptly sold my car.

Look, I didn't want to park my car illegally. It's just that all the best spots in my neighborhood happen to be illegal, and all the other spots happen to be taken, because for some reason Chicago has three million people and seventy eight million sport utility vehicles.

But it turns out that the boot was a blessing. I have since discovered the fine public transportation we have here in Chicago, and I'm surprised to find that I don't really miss the constant stress of city driving. These revelations got me to thinking about two facts:

Fact 1: Chicago does not have enough money.

Fact 2: Chicago has too many cars.

These two troubling facts point to a simple conclusion. The city of Chicago should replace its three-ticket booting policy with a zero-ticket towing policy. What I am suggesting is that instead of waiting until you get three tickets to boot your car, the city should go ahead and tow your car as soon as you get out of it, even if you are parked in a perfectly acceptable spot.

All the cars. In the whole city. And then we should sell them to cities that need cars, like Los Angeles. Our city government will have all the money it needs and we, the citizens of Chicago, will no longer have to fret about parking on account of how we will no longer have cars.
I know some of you skeptics out there probably think my proposal has some flaws. Some of you might argue that you can't just take someone's car for no reason. To which I would counter, other people might argue that because I never parked in a bus lane or in a handicapped spot or in front of a fire hydrant or in any place that might have put anyone in danger, maybe I shouldn't have had my car forcefully immobilized by the government. But clearly those arguments are silly. The city needs money, and our cars are worth a bundle.

So let's all urge Mayor Daley to finish what he has started and rid this great city of all its vehicles.