Dear Friend and Reader:
MY CAR GOT booted for unpaid parking tickets the other day, so naturally I went to Kingston City Hall to clear the matter up. Because the governments and the banks are in the process of stealing our money, I had some cash on hand (my accountant suggested this). The city government where I live doesn’t take checks or credit cards. I am pretty good at fighting parking tickets, but I didn’t have time this summer.
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When I showed up at the window in the city comptroller’s office, they already knew my name. “Are you Eric?” The personal treatment was disconcerting. I said hello and then politely added, “I just have a few questions.”
“Okay,” said the clerk.
“Do I have a right to plead not guilty?”
“No,” said the clerk.
“Do I have a right to an attorney?”
“No.”
“Do I have a right to a trial?”
“No.”
Then another (apparently senior) clerk added, “If it gets to this point where your car is booted, you’ve lost all your rights. Your tickets are past 45 days, notices have been sent out, you had a chance to do everything you just talked about doing, and you haven’t done it.”
The legal logic here is: We arrested you (or at least your car), so therefore you’re guilty. I proposed an alternate scenario, that I learned in school: innocent until proven guilty. Even if you rob a bank and go on the lam, you still have the right to a lawyer and a trial if you’re caught five years later. One lady laughed; the other reiterated that I used to have that right, but because I ignored the tickets for a while, I had lost it.
“There are a lot of dead patriots buried by the Old Dutch Church who gave their lives so we could have our rights,” I said. The women were silent for a somber moment. I paid cash under protest, took my paperwork, and walked away. I felt that I had got my money’s worth having been told by a city official, openly and notoriously, that I had no rights.
What is the truth, and does it matter? I say it does matter, if we value our freedom. I don’t mean to make a parking meter a bigger deal than it is, but most people don’t think that federal wiretaps or the “free-speech zones” that are set up to contain protesters are an especially big deal either.