Chris Abele Parking Tickets

UPDATE, March 17, 2011: Chris Abele: OWI
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Chris Abele is very, very, very rich.

He's so rich that he can afford to completely ignore life's little inconveniences. Abele doesn't fret about something like parking tickets.

Rather than obey the rules and be bothered with feeding meters, Abele just parks his car and goes about his business.

Expired parking meters don't exist in Abele's world.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Chris Abele, the millionaire philanthropist running for county exec, doesn't pay any state or federal income taxes.

That's been well-documented.

But the guy apparently doesn't mind dipping into his wallet to help the city's meter readers meet their monthly quotas.

Records show Abele has racked up 92 parking tickets since Jan. 1, 2007. Of those tickets - which run $22 each - he paid a $5 late fee on 26 and a $15 late fee once.

Total cost: $2,169.

To most people, that's real money, but it's just a drop in the bucket for the scion of wealthy Boston businessman John Abele.

WOW!

What a colossal waste!

I don't get that mentality. No matter how rich one is there still should be a sense of responsibility that would prevent one from throwing away money.

It's sloppy. It's lazy. It's irresponsible.

Instead of blowing thousands of dollars on tickets, Abele could have donated that money to a worthy cause. Granted, Abele would have supported a Lefty cause, but at least the money wouldn't have been blown on fines.

That sort of wastefulness is so different from the approach Scott Walker brought to Milwaukee County government when he was the executive for the past eight years.

Check out this excuse from Abele's spokesman:

"Chris is on the go a lot," explained Brandon Lorenz, Abele's campaign spokesman.

Yeah, so?

Chris is on the go. How lame!

That's no explanation for Abele's wastefulness.

Fines mean nothing to Abele. Fines and fees are worries for the unwashed, the working stiffs, the taxpayers - not for people like Abele, a NO taxpayer.

A parking meter is of no concern to Abele.

...But unlike others, he's not feeding the meters when he's parking his 2009 Audi, which bears the striking vanity plate "PRFR0CK," according to city and state databases.

Lorenz confirmed that this is an allusion to T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," long a favorite among English majors, something Abele was as a student at Lawrence University in Appleton.

In the campaign, he has pledged to crack down on the number of taxpayer-paid luxury cars provided to county bureaucrats and politicians. He has said he would use his own vehicle, not a county one, if elected.

Oh, no! Not "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"!

You can't make this stuff up!

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

Abele has a "PRFR0CK" vanity plate and racks up thousands of dollars in parking tickets.

Obviously, he is not a brown bag kind of guy.

...Lorenz emphasized that his boss doesn't like getting tickets but has no outstanding citations. City records show that Abele received many of his tickets for parking near the headquarters of the Argosy Foundation, the family nonprofit overseen by Abele. It is located in Cathedral Place, 555 E. Wells St.

"He has frequent meetings there at the foundation and elsewhere," Lorenz said. "He'll sometimes park on the street when he's there."

Yet as the heir to millions, he can ignore plugging the meter.

Abele's parking recklessness is revealing. It's a character flaw. He hasn't learned to be responsible. He's a spoiled rich kid, not a conscientious adult.

He doesn't abide by the rules. Why should he? Daddy has enough money to make them go away.

If Abele isn't responsible enough to park his car, why trust the guy to manage Milwaukee County?