Neal's Workshop

Found over at Walter in Denver, a case where onerous government finally drove a man to take matters into his own hands:

So what pushed him so far? It started when Charles Thornton left town for three days. Owning his own construction business, he had 7 vehicles which he parked in the area around his home. He received no complaints about the vehicles in the past, but when he returned from his three day trip, he found 21 parking tickets (one on each vehicle for each day he was gone). He felt he was being targeted for no real reason. He'd caused no harm to anyone. If his vehicles caused a problem, couldn't they have simply mentioned it to him without hundreds of dollars worth of tickets? Well, the Kirkwood Police had found an easy target to bring in some revenue, and they took advantage of the situation. Following this, the Kirkwood police found reasons to give Thornton over 150 citations, which cost him thousands in fines.

Thornton apparently had been involved in other run-ins with the local government, one of which resulted in fines for $18K over code violations.

I think Walter makes an apt point:

it's a credit to the peaceful nature of the American public that these incidents are not as common as they might be.

I agree.

Government can only strip us of our freedoms for so long before we rise up and revolt. That is the lesson of the American Revolution and it is the lesson of Thornton.

Extra credit (Again, thanks to Walter) — Knapp writes:

Over the years, that attitude has become increasingly typical of local government:

We have shiny badges -- we won elections, or were appointed by those who won elections. We will tell you how to live. If you don't bow, scrape and conform (or, worse yet, if you fail to notice and genuflect before our !authorita!) we'll make you pay. If you complain, we'll make you pay more. If you protest, we'll have you arrested. If you resist, our boyos will gun you down like a dog and we'll call them heroes for it.