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GOVERNMENT PIRATES SET OUT TO STEAL A LIVELIHOOD

Family-Owned 'Budget' Motel Threatened With Civil Forfeiture for Crimes of Guests

TEWKSBURY, Mass.  -- Russ Caswell, 68, is bewildered: "What country are we in?" He and his wife Pat are ensnared in a Kafkaesque nightmare unfolding in Orwellian language.

This town's police department is conniving with the federal government to circumvent Massachusetts law -- which is less permissive than federal law -- in order to seize his livelihood and retirement asset.  In the lawsuit titled "United States of America vs.  434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts," the government is suing an inanimate object, the motel Caswell's father built in 1955.  The U.S.  Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury Police Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million.  The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime.  They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the "equitable sharing" of the fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is indistinguishable from robbery.

[Remainder snipped]