Earnest moralists
lament Americans’ distrust of government. What really is regrettable is that
government does much to earn distrust, as Terry Dehko, 70, and his daughter
Sandy Thomas, 41, understand.
Terry, who came
to Michigan from Iraq in 1970, soon did what immigrants often do: He went into
business, buying Schott’s Supermarket in Fraser, Mich., where he still works
six days a week. The Internal Revenue Service, a tentacle of a government that spent $3.5 trillion in 2013,
tried to steal more than $35,000 from Terry and Sandy that year.
Sandy, a mother
of four, has a master’s degree in urban planning but has worked in the store
off and on since she was 12. She remembers, “They just walked into the store”
and announced that they had emptied the store’s bank account. The IRS agents
believed, or pretended to believe, that Terry and Sandy were or conceivably
could be — which is sufficient for the IRS — conducting a criminal enterprise
when not selling groceries…....The civil forfeiture law — if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law — is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.......To Read More…
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