<i>Unfortunately, we the taxpayers of the US are funding D.C. in ever increasing amounts.</i>

Mindless trope. Federal funds make up less than a quarter of the DC local budget. And what makes you think DC residents don't pay any federal taxes? They do but they do so w/o any voting representation in Congress.

I'm not one to call someone a liar, but there is a difference between insisting there were absolutely no regulations posted and signs being hard to spot or difficult to interpret. It's really kind of hard to believe they continually tow cars that are totally legally parked. It's easy to understand they frequently tow cars parked illegally by people not seeing or checking out or properly interpreting signs.

Meanwhile I've never heard the explanation of why someone would park, put money in the meter, then leave for 10 minutes to get the car's license number when the license is right there on the car. But people do strange things, I guess.

Ditto what obx said. Our license plates don't say, "Taxation without representation'" for nothing.

Yeah, I thought the same thing, neopatrick! I've parked under confusing signage before and gotten tickets, but afterwards I could figure out what I did wrong. The places I've gotten tickets have always been places I was confused about to begin with. (Although I have put money in the wrong meter, and thought initially that's what they did. That's always embarrassing).

Well, as I said, I got a parking ticket in DC once that was not justified, and after taking pictures of the signage as proof, I went to traffic court, disputed it and won. The judge noted that the signage was so confusing, it confused the ticket issuer.

I see no reason to insinuate that the OP is a liar. That's unnecessarily ugly, IMO. He was either confused, or the victim of an error. Either way, the situation isn't unique to DC--it would have been handled the same way in any city in the world, which is what makes his rant ridiculous.

This also happened to us while visiting DC from out of state and using a parking meter. We had plenty of time left on our meter when we moved our car that did NOT have a ticket. Weeks later, we received a ticket in the mail stating we never paid our fine & now owe double the fine!! My husband who is a police officer called the DC police to alert them to the scam. They acknowledged they were aware of the situation but it is not under their control! Apparently ticket officers will write tickets for out of state cars but never give them out. From now on, only park in parking garages!