Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 17, 2010

As St. Augustine pointed out, every government begins as a criminal gang. Some governments, however, distinguish themselves by the purity of their criminal malice. Such was the case in Bell, California, a poor suburb of Los Angeles.

Last September, Bell?s city manager, assistant city manager, and six others were arrested on corruption charges. Before his arrest, the city manager was pulling in nearly $800,000 a year in a town where the average annual per-capita income was about $25,000.

To feed this municipal beast, reports the Los Angeles Times, police ?extracted tens of thousands of dollars from plumbers, carpet cleaners, even people scavenging for bottles and cans, by seizing vehicles for alleged code violations and then pressuring the owners to pay arbitrary fines.? Victims were forced to sign bogus but official-looking documents as part of a ?civil compromise? ; those agreements were never reviewed by a judge.

The fundamental business of government is to provide institutionalized extortion with a façade of propriety.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.