Municipalities Grabbing and Holding Cars for Ransom

The infractions that can get your car impounded are becoming increasingly frivolous, presenting cash-strapped towns with new sources of revenue. In truth, impounding cars and then charging “fees” for their release is nothing but theft and extortion committed by city governments.

Welcome to a new era in Chicagoland policing, where municipalities are turning traffic stops into big money.

A Tribune investigation has found that more than 100 area communities have created laws to seize vehicles as punishment for a growing list of offenses, from drunken driving to loud radios to littering. Car owners must then pay “administrative” fees to get their vehicles back, even if the owners had nothing to do with the crime.

If the owners don’t pay — and can’t convince municipal officials that the tow was unfair — their vehicles are taken away for good.

Read more at the Chicago Tribune.

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Federally Sanctioned Insurers Profiting from Dead Soldiers

Any time a financial institution gives you an incentive to park a chunk of cash somewhere, you may take it to the bank, so to speak, that they are playing the spread between the rate at which they borrow money and the rate and which they pay it out.

Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son’s life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money — like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers — wasn’t actually sitting in a bank.

It was being held in Prudential’s general corporate account, earning investment income for the insurer. Prudential paid survivors like Lohman 1 percent interest in 2008 on their Alliance Accounts, while it earned a 4.8 percent return on its corporate funds, according to regulatory filings.

“I’m shocked,” says Lohman, breaking into tears as she learns how the Alliance Account works. “It’s a betrayal. It saddens me as an American that a company would stoop so low as to make a profit on the death of a soldier. Is there anything lower than that?”

Read more at Bloomberg.com.

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