Page 21 - Fruits from a Poisonous Tree

Mel Stamper 5

The attack on the individual’s rights has reached a point in our lives where
a citizen has no right to the use of his own land if the bureaucracy determines
it to be a wetland, no right to the money in his pocket or bank account if
an IRS agent determines he has taxes owed, and no right to his property if a
duck, flying south for the winter, lands in a puddle in his backyard. A man’s
home is his castle, except when a politician wants the land the house is built
on for a low cost housing project.
In America today, a citizen’s use of his own property is presumed illegal
until approved by multiple zoning and planning commissions. Since 1985,
federal, state, and local governments have seized the property of over two
hundred thousand Americans under asset forfeiture laws, often with no
more evidence of wrongdoing than an unsubstantiated assertion made by an
anonymous government informant.
Government officials now exert vast arbitrary power over citizens’ daily
lives, from Equal Employment Opportunity Commission bureaucrats that
can levy a $145,000 fine on a St. Louis small businessman because he did
not have 8.45 minorities on his payroll … to the Minnesota and Wisconsin
departments of natural resources, which regulate property so that you may
not use the lake or swamp contained on your land because an endangered
mouse species lives nearby.
Federal agricultural bureaucrats can prohibit Arizona farmers from selling
fifty-eight percent of their fresh lemons to other Americans.
Customs Service inspectors can destroy import shipments without
compensating the owners.
Federal bank regulators are officially empowered to seize the assets of any
citizen for allegedly violating written or unwritten banking regulations.
Federal regulations dictate what price milk must sell for, what size
California nectarines can be sold, what crops a person may grow on his own
land, what apparel items a woman may sew in her own home, and how old
a person must be to buy a beer, even though he is old enough to die for his
country.
The Internal Revenue Service is carrying out a massive campaign against
the self-employed that seeks to force over half of America’s independent
contractors to abandon their own businesses.
NAFTA and GATT agreements are forcing small industries into
bankruptcy because their customers have moved to Mexico or Indonesia.
Government agencies are more out of control than ever before, and the
Supreme Court, the supposed bastion and protector of the Bill of Rights, has
ratified the power of these federal employees.