🚀 go-pugleaf

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Fear, loathing, suspicion, unlimited police powers...welcome to America...

*   "Above the Law", by David Burnham, ISBN 0-684-80699-1, 1996
*   
*   As he had done many times before, African-American Willie Jones was about
*   to board an American airlines flight to Houston to buy flowers and shrubs.
*   He was a second-generation family florist and on February 27, 1991 he was
*   carrying $9600 in cash because the wholesalers prefer cash.
*   
*   This time, however, apparently because Jones fit a "profile" of what drug
*   dealers are supposed to look like, two police officers stopped him,
*   searched him and seized his $9600. The businessman was given a receipt
*   and told he was free to go.
*   
*   "No evidence of wrongdoing was ever produced. No charges were ever filed.
*   As far as anyone knows, Willie Jones neither uses drugs nor buys nor sells
*   them. He is a gardening contractor who bought an airplane ticket. Who lost
*   his hard-earned money to the cops." After a long legal battle and a lot of
*   publicity, Jones got his money back.
*   [snip]
*   
*   Paolo Alvarez: "I believe in God, but the government's seizure of all my
*   savings was really horrible. I felt trapped and I almost flipped out."
*   
*   Alvarez was a landscape contractor, cautious and frugal, who saved his
*   money. Several years ago, however, Alvarez began listening to the
*   speeches of Ross Perot, especially Perot's exaggerated [beat the drum
*   of fear] warnings that the nation's savings and loan institutions
*   were about to collapse. As a reult of mounting anxiety generated by
*   the Texas businessman, Alvarez decided to move the nest egg from his
*   savings and loan.
*   
*   He placed some of the money in a regular bank and hid the balance in
*   small caches around the house.
*   
*   When the sky did not fall, when Ross Perot's predictions did not come