How desperately Bad Things Are (Time for a Top to Bottom Revolution, wouldn't you say?)

A "controversial" area of law known as civil asset forfeiture empowers the IRS to confiscate "significant sums" of money from run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation and without ever filing a criminal complaint, leaving the owners to prove they are innocent, the New York Times reports (posted in truthdig this date).  Law enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited.  This "incentive" [Critics say] has led to the creation of a "law enforcement dragnet," with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing through bank reports looking for accounts to seize.  The median amount seized by the I.R.S. was $34,000, according to the Institute for Justice analysis, while legal costs [of protest and appeal] can easily mount to $20,000 or more.  I am reminded of the Mughal system of taxation, during the good old, bad old days of wicked but perfectly fascinating emperors, which they, naughty ones, but not afraid to face facts, called frankly "eating," as in "consumption by vampires."