Or, shifting the burden of proof...

A follow-on to the preceding post.

Y'know, if I were running a business that sails as close to the wind as a towing company - one in which basically every operation is a felony but for specific conditions being met - I'd make damn sure to keep detailed records to show that said conditions were met, every single time.

Because you just never know when generally-applicable laws will suddenly start applying to you.

For towing, you'd think a respectable company would, at minimum, have records of make, model, color, license, location, time, and reason for towing (red zone, no permit, or even "dispatched by AAA for burst upper radiator hose"), plus photos showing the vehicle and the appropriate context (the red curb, the expired meter, the spot on the car where the permit should have been).

And you might even think that the authorities that license such companies would require those records as a condition of the license.  Because, otherwise, it's pretty much a license to steal.

If enough angry voters got up on their hind legs and demanded that the authorities rein in the racketeers... maybe it would happen.  Maybe.

But they won't, because Martin Niemöller got it fundamentally wrong (I have an essay on that subject vaguely fermenting: in short, when they came for the X, I cheered, because I've always believed that X are somehow icky).  Tribalism trumps all, as we see in the current foofaraw.

See, what's got predatory towing in the headlines this week is not the predatory towing per se, but a video of a skinny blond celebutard abusing a hapless two-company employee.  Said video was apparently shopped around for some time by the tow company, and has been trimmed to avoid showing whatever provocation went before.  Also, I don't see the company providing the detailed records showing that the tow in question was legit.

So instead of calling attention to the problems of predatory towing and government-licensed racketeering, it gets reactions such as:

• Oh, a skinny blond celebutard abusing a working stiff?  She's a horrible person!
• A suspension isn't enough!  She should be fired, and no one should employ her again, ever!
• She deserved to have her car towed! [Assumes facts not in evidence.]  How dare she be mad at a mere accessory-before-and-after-the-fact?

Yup.  It happened to a skinny blond celebutard, therefore it didn't happen at all.  Just as Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were harmless children, or Eric Garner and Walter Scott were dangerous criminals who needed killin' (pick your tribal position).

We can't unite for the common good, because people we don't like might also benefit.  And besides, this time the bad thing happened to a member of that other tribe, and we don't want to prevent that, now do we?

You may gather from this that I'm not a member of the skinny-blond-celebutard tribe, and from other posts that I'm not a member of the rich-and-politically-connected tribe.  Doesn't mean I want 'em all rounded up and sent to the camps... just the ones who do stuff that would get us commoners locked up.

Comments

[Old AF Sarge]

Good stuff Eric. I've had a vehicle towed once, the circumstances were annoying as Hell. People were yelled at, teeth were gnashed, garments were torn...

But I still had to pay the towing fee. And 60 bucks for a cab to where my car was being held hostage. It was an adventure I'd rather not have had, but so it goes.

It would be interesting to see the whole video wouldn't it?