Pay Our Pensions Or We'll Throw You in Jail: the Legalization of Looting
Charles Hugh Smith
Rather than deal forthrightly with the reality that unrealistic promises made to their employees cannot be honored, local government has pursued a strategy of legalizing looting.
The gradual erosion of civil liberties, legal rights and government ethics are connected: our rights don't just vanish into thin air, they are expropriated by government: Federal, state and local. Though much is written about the loss of civil liberties at the Federal level, many of the most blatantly illegal power grabs are occurring in local government.
This expropriation is under the radar of the average citizen because the process slowly chips away the fundamentals of legality and justice: bit by bit, due process and the rights of the individual have been eroded by state and local governments until the fundamental Constitutional protections simply cease to exist.
When local government looting is legalized, the entire system is illegal. Here are three recent examples of blatantly illegal looting by local governments.
First up: privatizing the collection of traffic fines and probation to create a modernized debtor's prison. We turn to The Nation for the story:
The Town That Turned Poverty Into a Prison Sentence Most states shut down their debtors’ prisons more than 100 years ago; in 2005, Harpersville, Alabama, opened one back up.
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