Why Pretend that Government is Anything Other than a Gang

by William Grigg
Sep. 11, 2012

Federal prosecutors in San Antonio claim that they have legal cause to seize two homes owned by Sindy Chapa, a professor at Texas State University. Although Chapa hasn’t been charged with a crime, prosecutors insist that the homes were purchased with the proceeds of criminal activity. The affidavits supporting the seizure have been sealed.

This is a logical extension of the abhorrent and criminal practice of civil asset forfeiture, in which law enforcement agencies confiscate – that is, steal – money and other property that is said to be connected in some way to criminal activity. As Scott Meiner of Americans for Forfeiture Reform observes, prosecutors seized Sindy Chapa’s homes while she was out of the country – and then locked away the purported evidence supposedly justifying the confiscation.

The Obama-Holder Justice Department recently expanded the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to confiscate property described as connected in some way to “substance abuses.” This means that a notoriously corrupt – and literally murderous – federal agency devoid of a hint of constitutional legitimacy has an even broader self-appointed mandate to steal.

In its origins, every government begins as an armed gang. The government ruling us has long since abandoned the pretense that it is anything else.