(2003-11-12) Small World Not A Taz

It's tempting to think you can take the SmallWorld approach to Route Around BigWorld. But reality tends to intrude upon your TAZ. Peruchi was never arrested. He was never even charged. But his money was gone, under the absurd premise that property can be guilty of a crime, even if its owner isn't. The police department deposited Peruchi's money into its own operations budget, as it was permitted to do under Arkansas' drug forfeiture laws. Peruchi was told that if he tried to fight the county, his case would be turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Try fighting the feds," he was told. Even if Peruchi had won in court, his legal costs would likely have amounted to more than the $19,000 he was fighting for, and it's improbable that he would have been reimbursed for his legal fees. Peruchi is but one of many similarly outrageous stories told the new book Mugged By The State, by Randall Fitzgerald... Fitzgerald's ax grinds against power in general. It isn't partisan. His examples come from programs and policies embraced by both Republicans and Democrats. He documents outrageous abuses carried out in the name of the War On Drugs, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the EEOC, the EPA, and cases were city and state governments have seized land from ordinary people under Eminent Domain, only to hand it over to politically potent corporations and influential businessmen.