A state trooper arrests a man in a promotional video for the department of safety, top photo, in a state where extortion is policy under color of law, a scam challenged by investigative reporter David Tulis of Eagle Radio in Chattanooga. Supporters and purveyors of the status quo in fraud are, from left, Boyd Patterson of Hamilton County criminal court; tax chief David Gerregano, safety boss Jeff Long, and revenue chief hearing officer Brad Buchanan, whose 62-page order upholds what my litigation terms the “Eye of Sauron” program. (Photos state of Tennessee)

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Feb. 22, 2025 – The order by administrative hearing officer Brad Buchanan admits that the department of revenue policy I am fighting is an attack on the poor – but wholly justified in the interest of public safety and equity.

He enunciates the claim that the general assembly and the law forbid poor people from using the roads.

“If someone is unable to meet the financial burden of proving financial responsibility,” he says in his 62-page order upholding revocation of my 2000 Honda Odyssey minivan tag, “their ability to pay for damages they may cause in the operation of their vehicle is necessarily also in question. It is the intent of the General Assembly in enacting the TFRL to bar such motorists from operating on the highways of this state.”

This policy enforced by revenue, the department of safety and all law enforcement departments statewide is nowhere in the law I am defending in court, that being the Tennessee financial responsibility law of 1977, which is entirely constitutional and proper.

D. Tulis – Initial Order Granting Summary Judgment to Department of Revenue — see p. 31

But the general assembly is full of senators and representatives who agree with the policy – pols such as Rep. William Landreth, a Republican who fought to get the Atwood amendment passed in 2016. His EIVS surveillance system went into operation Jan. 1, 2017, with plaudits among most all legislators who want “mandatory insurance” for alleged public safety, health and welfare grounds.

Perfectionist theory with evil result

The policy represents a kind of statist dreamworld in which bureaucratic action and statute law solve the problem of poor people’s using the public road and being unable to pay for damage that they may cause an accident. The pols see the problem, and they think they fix it with the 2002 amendment of the law with section 139 and with the Atwood amendment, passed in 2015 and developed all through 2016.

Quick take ———————————–

— The poor have just as much right to use the public roads as the rich

— Fraud, extortion result when perfectionism and statism are melded into an oppression

The problem of poor people using the roads and getting involved in crashes cannot be “solved.” Forbidding their use of the road is unjust and wicked. It doesn’t stand constitutional muster. To say you are poor and have to stay home is not legal, it’s pernicious and should be condemned by everyone who understands what I’m fighting for.

Why cannot it be solved? Because the poor we always have with us. Rep. Lamberth could execute them, or exile them to Kentucky or Georgia. But that would simply replace one evil with another. Poor people can’t be ordered to stay home.

Americans have created an automobile-centric world culture. Automobiles are indispensable. 

Just because a poor person, whether he is operating a motor vehicle under a commercial license, or whether he is traveling privately, cannot be excluded in the use and enjoyment of his freedoms just because he doesn’t have money or means. 

Why not order the rich to stay home, since they are vulnerable to be hurt by uninsured poor people in a roadway collision?

So, the poor can stay home?

U.S. district court Judge Aleta Trauger sketches how movement by car is an essential part of life in Tennessee, and explores the damage to poor people when they are put under a travel ban.

A far different calculus prevails, however, when the privilege lost is the ability to operate a car on the state’s roadways. Unlike the power to vote, the ability to drive is crucial to the debtor’s ability to actually establish the economic self-sufficiency that is necessary to be able to pay the relevant obligations. Robinson and Sprague have previewed substantial evidence demonstrating the necessity of driving to the ability to earn a living in Tennessee (see Docket No. 19–1 to –10), but one needs only to observe the details of ordinary life to understand that an individual who cannot drive is at an extraordinary disadvantage in both earning and maintaining material resources. Suspending a driver’s license is therefore not merely out of proportion to the underlying purpose of ensuring payment, but affirmatively destructive of that end. In the parlance of Johnson, taking an individual’s driver’s license away to try to make her more likely to pay a fine is not using a shotgun to do the job of a rifle: it is using a shotgun to treat a broken arm. There is no rational basis for that.

Robinson v. Purkey, No. 3:17-CV-1263, 2017 WL 4418134, at *9 (M.D. Tenn. Oct. 5, 2017)

David runs a personal nonprofit fighting and mercy ministry. He thanks you for checks sent directly to c/o 10520 Brickhill Lane, Soddy-Daisy, TN 37379. Also at GiveSendGo.

The fighting and mercy reporter at GiveSendGo

I am reporter with Eagle Radio Network — marvelously playing rock hits in Chattanooga, and online at https://www.eagleradionetwork.com/