source:
http://jalopnik.com/cars/use-of-unn...town-enacts-lame-seizure-ordinance-264581.php
Beginning next month the city of Oak Forest, IL will assert its right to appropriate your vehicle. Those accused of a number of crimes, including vandalism, shoplifting and armed robbery, and on down to forgetting one's driver's license will have their cars seized until a $500 bond can be posted. If the city-extorted cash isn't produced within sixty days, the municipality sells the car and pockets the profit. If the accused is found not guilty, the city is supposed to return the cash.
This pushes our blood beyond simmer and onto full boil. Not only does it go against one of the pillars of American society -- that one is innocent until proven guilty -- but it's also an attack on personal property, as well as especially predatory upon the poor. Guy ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, has his car confiscated, can't get to work, loses his job and turns to crime to make ends meet. That's the liberal spin. The conservative spin? If he were a law-abiding, productive citizen, he'd have 500 bucks to spare, and he shouldn't have been wherever he was in the first place. Whichever side one takes, however, confiscation of one's vehicle for something unrelated to that vehicle being used in an unlawful fashion smacks both of totalitarianism and municipal greed. Oak Forest, you're not getting our tourist dollars. Much like Jake and Elwood, we hate Illinois Nazis.
