TEWKSBURY, Mass. — Russ Caswell, 68, is bewildered: “What country are we in?” He and his wife Pat are ensnared in a Kafkaesque nightmare unfolding in Orwellian language.
This town’s police department is conniving with the federal government to circumvent Massachusetts law — which is less permissive than federal law — in order to seize his livelihood and retirement asset. In the lawsuit titled “United States of America vs. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts” the government is suing an inanimate object, the motel Caswell’s father built in 1955. The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury Police Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million. The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the “equitable sharing” of the fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is indistinguishable from robbery. George Will
“Former slave Frederick Douglass advised: ‘Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. … The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.’” –economist Walter E. Williams
If the people stand for this, all is lost. The vaunted Texas militia let them bulldoze the babies at Waco. Is there no red blooded American in the house? I hope they try to take Ted’s Gibson live on stage. If they survive that, I give up.
It’ll only get worse. They’re still indoctrinating the children and no one cares. What makes you think the people will ever do anything?