The celebrated freedom and liberty of the US democracy can be summed up in two words: Asset Forfeiture. This article from the on-line Reason describes but one example of another vestige of medieval society where authorities are allowed to simply confiscate the property of people uninvolved in criminal activity. The historical figure Hans Kohlhase has been celebrated in fiction and motion pictures for his reaction to his own brush with forfeiture to state authorities, circa 1532 Saxony.
The Reason article points out that states that allow asset forfeiture also have mechanisms that permit the owners of the disputed property to retrieve it through the legal process. In the case of Melinda Harris, her efforts to recover her automobile could not begin until the state of Massachusetts had begun legal proceedings to acquire ownership, which they did not do for 68 months, a period of time during which she was not only unable to use the vehicle but also saw it greatly diminish in value as it sat in statutory purgatory.
While it might be so important that trans-sexual athletes be allowed to compete in scholastic sports that the Biden administration produced an executive order as one of the earliest in its existence, it still seems that the asset forfeiture scam, means that law enforcement in America, in 2014, stole $600,000,000 more from Americans than actual criminal burglars.
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