America should be pretty proud of the City of Brotherly Love. Mayor Michael Nutter signed a bill Wednesday, mandating a fine of up to $2,000 and other penalties for employers who do not provide clean non-bathroom space for a woman to pump breast milk. Philadelphia is fastidious in its concern for its most vulnerable citizens unless they own property. Between 2002 and 2012, Philadelphia stole 1,172 real estate properties through a government run racket called civil forfeiture.
Go pump your breasts out in the street, sister, we want your house.
Civil forfeitures is a national problem but Philadelphia takes the abuse of property rights to a new level notwithstanding the constitutional prohibition of depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property, without due process. Philly sues the property; not the property owner. And where do the proceeds go? The almost $6 million the city extracts from the proletariat each year goes to pay the cops and prosecutors who seize the property. The Institute of Justice, which has filed a class action lawsuit against the city where no mother should have to pump her breast in a dirty restroom, explains the process in the video below.
Moving from the hypothetical to a real life example, homeowner, Chris Sourovelis has never had any trouble with the law or been accused of any crime. But that hasn't stopped the City of Philadelphia from trying to take his home. His son was caught selling $40 worth of drugs outside of the home. With no previous arrests or a prior record, a court ordered him to attend rehab and the cops went after Sourovelis' home. In another instance a woman faces civil forfeiture of her home, which has been in her family for 17 years, because her estranged husband, unbeknownst to her, was dealing small amounts of marijuana. On the brighter side she is assured of a clean place to pump her breasts or the full might of Nutter's goon squad will crush her offending employer.
Civil Forfeiture was promoted with overwhelming bipartisan support. If anything, the Republicans have lead the charge on promoting theft. This has flown under the radar for decades. In the 80's they were seizing people's cars for fishing without a license (In Tennessee, perhaps elsewhere as well.) This is not a subject that interests the mainstream media.
ReplyDeleteRight. Civil forfeiture and no knock warrants are the unwanted step children of the war on drugs which was waged by Nixon and fought by Reagan. Now we still have the drug problem but have surrendered much freedom for nothing.
ReplyDeleteThey confiscate cash too. I remember reading about some guy who'd pay cash for his nursery trees. He had to take a plane to get to the supplier and because he had so much cash, he had to "forfeit" it because of "suspicion" of what he was going to do with it. Ten thousand bucks. Poof.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe it. I found the article from 1991. I believe it was originally in the WSJ. They guy's name was Willie Jones.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fear.org/guilty1.html
That was a good read!
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