Uncle Sam
© Eric Peters Auto
One of the truly scary things about living in The Homeland, as it is officially styled nowadays, is that you are subject to punishment prior to conviction. Merely to be accused is sufficient to deprive you of liberty and property.

And even when - after much expense (yours) and time forever lost - you are eventually able to prove your innocence (as opposed to them having to prove your guilt) those who abused you are never themselves punished for what they did to an innocent person - and good luck getting them to make you whole for what they did to your innocent person.

The WarrnTrr - and The War on Some Drugs - account for much of this, but the rot goes deeper. The Homeland's armed goons - and the Homeland's robed goons - can summarily seize your person, your property and dispose of them as they wish for almost any reason.

Even a trumped-up traffic ticket.

This happened to Melanie Pence in my part of the Homeland, Roanoke Virginia.

Pence was involved in a minor fender-bender and one of the Homeland's armed goons showed up to make the problem worse.

Usually, the armed goons of the Homeland will simply hand out extortion notes demanding that sums of money be given over to the higher-up goons, as punishment for various transgressions of statute - usually having nothing to do with any harm caused.

Usually, you are not forced to hand over money (or other property or your liberty) until after the asserted transgression has been adjudicated and a robed goon has decreed you to be guilty.
Armed Robbery
© Eric Peters Auto
This courtesy was not extended to Pence (news story here).

US Police
© Eric Peters Auto
The Homeland goon, using his Infallible Computer, determined that Pence was driving on a suspended license. In fact, she was driving on a restricted license - a difference that makes all the difference.

But not to the Homeland's goon, nor the subsequent robed goons.

Despite a call at the scene to the clerk of the Salem General District Court - to confirm to the Homeland's goon that, indeed, Pence was lawfully driving on a restricted rather than suspended license, the goon seized Pence's vehicle and had it towed to an impound lot.

Where, less than a week later, the company that towed the vehicle sent Pence a letter advising her that it would be sold forthwith if she did not cough up $1,890 in "towing, administrative and impound fees."

This works out to about $300 a day, a tidy racket for these guys.

Pence attempted to get her car back, according to a subsequent lawsuit - and even attempted to pay the outrageous ransom demanded by G&J Towing of northwest Roanoke - but they would not release the car without a court order.

And when Pence did not pay the larcenous sum demanded, they sold off her car - a 2012 Hyundai Sonata - for "approximately $1,000."

Keep in mind that Pence had not committed any offense against the Homeland - much less been adjudicated guilty of any offense. She had merely been accused. This is sufficient - as in many other cases - to simply dispose of her (and by implication, anyone else's) property.

That is, to steal it.

How else to describe it?

Homeland Security
© Eric Peters Auto
The word is brutal, but precisely appropriate. The Homeland's goons took Pence's vehicle from her, then - having control over it - gave it over to a towing company that acts as its enforcement arm and had it taken away to a car prison, then sold out from under Pence before the specious charges against her could even have been heard in court. It takes weeks - usually, in Virginia, a couple of months - before a traffic ticket court date arrives.

Pence's car was sold out from under before one week had gone by. During which time the mafiosi tow company levied "towing, administrative and impound fees" that would embarrass a New Jersey loan shark.

All perfectly legal, too.

The law in the Homeland - Virginia gau - is that an impounded car may be sold off at auction - to settle the "towing, administrative and impound fees" - in as little as 10 days, provided the retail value of the car is deemed to be less than $12,500. In which case, it may be sold off for as little as $1,000 - in order to recompense the towing company for "towing, administrative and impound fees."

It is amazing there isn't violence.

But probably, it is coming.

Because this is not unusual. And because it is "lawful."

Armed Robbery
© Eric Peters Auto
The bogus charges against Pence were eventually dismissed. But Pence's car is gone. Only the government - and the mafia - can steal people's things with impunity.

And the mafia doesn't do it under color of law.

Not just cars, either.

The government - its goons, buzzcut and robed - have decreed they have the lawful authority to steal cash merely by dint of your possessing what they decree to be "excessive" amounts of it. Then it's on you to prove said cash was not obtained "illegally" ... at your expense and on your nickel.

It has become a gangster organization far worse than the actual mafia - which is generally a local or regional problem and one you can attempt to avoid/defend yourself against without that being characterized as "criminal."

Another recent case that's even more appalling than the Pence case - if such is possible - is that of Katelyln Ebner of Georgia. She was pulled over by Homeland goon Tracy Carroll and subjected to a roadside sobriety check. Which she passed, She had not been drinking. So Carroll asserted that Ebner was "high." Without any evidence beyond his say-so as a "drug recognition expert," Ebner was arrested and caged by Carroll.

Ebner asked Carrol to administer an objective test to prove she was not "high" - but Carroll refused. "You're going to jail, ma'am," he exults.

A subsequent blood test established that, in fact, Ebner was not "high" and that Carroll was wrong. All charges were dropped. But as Bill Murray's character in the movie, Meatballs once said - it just doesn't matter.

Ebner - who worked as a waitress - lost her job over the bogus bust because she had been accused of driving under the influence. She spent months and thousands of dollars proving her innocence - the goons of the Homeland, buzzcut and robed alike no longer being under any obligation to establish guilt.

Carroll goes on his merry way, accusing people of being "high" and using his Magic Powers of Intuition to place them in manacles and cart them off to jail, depriving them of their liberty and their property . . .

It is all entirely legal.

Sentence first! Verdict afterward! So said Lewis Carroll's Red Queen. The literary fantasy of the 1870s has become a very ugly reality.