Land of the Fee?

Thank god for the Consumer Services Department of Miami-Dade County, FL, and its fearless employees. These unflappable crimebusters go undercover to solicit rides from strangers they approach in stores. If one kindly obliges, cops surround and arrest the mark perp, impound his vehicle, and slap him with a $2,000 fine — for "providing an illegal taxi service."

Good thing the public is being protected from Good Samaritans and/or small-time septuagenarian entrepreneurs, don't you think?

Comments

[Martin Owens]

Who the hell cares if I give somebody a ride home from the grocery store and she gives me a buck or two for the gas?

This is the inevitable result of endless expansion of police forces and police powers. Tyranny arises from the sheer bureaucratic need to justify budgets and bodies: they got to arrest somebody, for something.

In Stalin's Russia they had quotas- in fact they used to surround entire apartment buildings in "suspect" cities and ship off everyone in them for "anti-Soviet activity" or some other vague excuse.

Think it couldn't happen here? Take a look at the last batch of laws against "terrorist" activity and tell me that again...