NEW YORK (PNN) - June 12, 2014 - Married couple Dan Keys, Jr., 66, and Symone Palermo, 53, were recently investigated by a New York City government agency because Dan was under suspicion of running an illegal cab service.
The agency had no good reason to assume that Dan was running a cab service, but because he, a black man, was seen on multiple occasions driving around with his wife, a biracial woman who appeared white, the agency felt that it would be appropriate to open up an investigation and illegally follow Dan throughout his day-to-day activities.
If this violation of privacy is not bad enough, their Lincoln Town Car was seized and held in the impound for over 8 days. The couple immediately attempted to get their car out of the impound lot and explain the misunderstanding, but when they did they both received a summons to appear in court.
Now the couple is filing a racial discrimination lawsuit, which states that minorities are specifically targeted in a citywide program to crack down on cab services that haven’t paid to join the local government protection racket.
The government agency in question is the fascist Taxi & Limousine Commission, a regulatory agency that helps to monopolize the cab industry and stomp out competition for dominant corporations. This is a perfect example of “regulatory capture”, the process by which government mandated regulatory agencies eventually come to be dominated by the very industries they were charged with regulating.
Regulatory capture happens when a regulatory agency, supposedly formed to act in the public’s interest, eventually acts in ways that benefit the industry it is supposed to be regulating, rather than the public. This is one of the many ways that fascist outlaw governments and corporations have been working together to stifle market competition and maintain monopolies since the guild systems that existed in the age of mercantilism.