Every "speed trap" offers a specimen of political government in its purest form: Demanding ransom of innocent travelers under threat of lethal violence -- William N. Grigg
The Bandits of Bernice, Oklahoma: Speed Trap Gangsters Refuse to Refund Illegal Ticket Revenue
Posted on 18 May 2012 by William Grigg
Bernice, Oklahoma has a population of about 500 people. Unfortunately, some of them have given themselves the title of “government,” thereby claiming permission to steal from the others – and from anyone who happens to wander into their area of influence.
Bernice is bisected by Highway 85A. Although the town doesn’t have a stoplight, the speed limit suddenly drops from 55 to 45 miles per hour which means it has become one of the country’s most notorious speed traps.
Oklahoma State law limits speeding tickets to $50 – unless a municipality follows a detailed and confusing set of rules concerning the publication of traffic ordinances. Since 1977, Bernice’s municipal government has not published its ordinances as required by state law. It has also charged as much as $545 for an individual ticket.
An audit by the state government documented that over the past five years, it collected more than $300,000 in ticket revenue, kicking back about $5500 a month to deputies from nearby the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office who were contracted to write the citations.
Weaving a seamless web of persiflage in an official memo, David E. Jones, the bar-certified sophist retained as Bernice town attorney, insisted that even though the cabal that employs him “did not follow the strict technical requires for publication [of the traffic ordinance], the public clearly had constructive notice of the existence of the Bernice Penal Code….”
Stated in less opaque language, Jones is claiming that the town’s status as a notorious speed trap constituted legal “notice” of the practice. Buttressed with this spurious and self-serving assessment, the town’s trustees voted on May 14, not to grant refunds to victims of the illegal ticket scheme, thereby laying claim to more than $100,000 in illegally collected revenue. At least several thousand dollars of that illegally harvested ticket revenue wound up in the coffers of Mayor Bill Raven. The Mayor, who owns Bill’s Trucking, has sold several vehicles to the city. Furthermore, Bill’s Trucking has been mysteriously exempt from the city’s “occupation tax” for at least the past two tax years.
Bernice’s ruling political clique has ruled that local citizens have no right to participate in town council meetings. That policy has been modified to permit citizens a total of three minutes to address the council – as long as their comments are restricted “to agenda items only.” It’s highly doubtful that the council’s agenda would include discussion of official embezzlement and highway robbery.
Every political government begins as an undisguised criminal syndicate, and continues to behave as such after conferring “authority” on itself to do so in the name of the “law.” This process was described long ago by St. Augustine in The City of God:
- A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a
compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an
agreed convention. If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks
of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base,
captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself
the title of `kingdom,’ which is conferred on it in the eyes of the
world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of
impunity.
The very tem “tax” refers to a physical challenge to travelers in the form of a tap on the shield performed by the ruler’s revenue-gatherers: This was essentially an ultimatum to pay the demanded toll, or to engage in combat. Nibley notes that “failure to pay implies willingness to fight and vice versa…. [T]he word tax in its many contexts always retains the basic idea of a charge brought against an intruder; to be taxed always implies an element of trespass, and the paying of a tax always has the flavor of appeasement.” The tax is “a token of submission for the luxury of remaining in one’s possessions without a fight.”
“Taxes are viewed … as a personal insult and an affront to the sacredness of property,” Nibley summarizes. “That is exactly what they are, and what they were originally meant to be.”
Like political governments everywhere, the squalid junta in charge of Bernice, Oklahoma is simply living down to its loathsome pedigree.
Read more here.
http://www.republicmagazine.com/news/the-bandits-of-bernice-oklahoma-speed-trap-gangsters-refuse-to-refund-illegal-ticket-revenue.html --
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
