Jun 8, 2011

Stunned

It is absolutely stunning in the literal sense of the term.

Tam ferrets out a SWAT raid on the erstwhile home of a woman who hasn't repaid her student loan.

The jack-booted perp of the 6 a.m. raid? The United States Department of Education.  Its agents  manhandled and imprisoned the man of the house in a patrol car for six hours even though he wasn't who they were looking for. It was his estranged wife. His three kids were also tossed into the hot car.

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I have always tried to squelch hot-headed cries to water the tree of liberty, post haste. The Stockton travesty makes such advice decidedly questionable.

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UPDATE, thanks to our friend DirtCrashr: A DOE flack says the raid was not related to a defaulted student loan, but to some unspecified criminal investigation. This doesn't change much. It remains a botched,  violent home invasion where a father and his three kids were terrorized because some entirely different person was suspected of some unspecified crime, almost certainly a nonviolent one.

4 comments:

Matt said...

two words.... "Police State"

NotClauswitz said...

Suzi Orman warned us, things have changed a lot since my college days. Student Loans have been taken-over by the .Gov as the sole lender and no longer are "default-able" - and they can hire the meanest collection agency ever.

Anonymous said...

For the past 25-30 years student loans have not been dischargable in bankruptcy, but I never knew default had risen to a swat-level crime. And, what the hell is the DOE doing with a swat team? JAGSC

Jim said...

Tam has been keeping track of these clowns better than I have, and in her post I cited, she links back to her earlier report that DOE decided the taxpayers needed to buy it a bunch of Swatguns, 14-inch Remington 870s.

Apparently it has become fashionable for agencies to set up their own paramilitary hit squads to intimidate citizens who fail to hoe their regulatory row.

When the movement expands to include the National Endowment for the Arts, I may have to rethink my my interior decor. Anyone can look through my window and see a picture of an armed 1830's fur trapper, and I'm sure that constitutes probable cause to bust me for something criminally antisocial.