Tow Trucks And Section 8

Yesterday's post talked about the obama administration moving people from low-income housing to more affluent locations. Here's a bit of a follow-up.

You may recall this story from a few days ago concerning a tow truck driver who refused to tow a car with a Bernie bumper sticker.

Ken Shupe responded to a woman who was stranded on an interstate in North Carolina on Monday. Shupe is a tow truck driver; the woman had been involved in a wreck, according to reports.

But when Shupe arrived, he noticed something about the woman's car — specifically, he noticed that the woman was a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders...

"Every business dealing in recent history that I've had with a socialist-minded person, I haven't got paid," Shupe told the station.

He added: "Every time I've dealt with these people in recent history, I get 'Berned.'

So Shupe refused to tow her.

Fox Carolina reported: "When he saw 'a bunch of Bernie Sanders stuff' he said he told the woman, 'very politely,' " that he could not "tow her car because she was 'obviously a socialist' and advised her to 'call the government' for a tow."

Shupe told the ABC station that he'd had "some horrible experiences in the last six months with towing cars for this mindset individuals," in which, he said, he hasn't received payment for services.

"They want to argue about a $50 tow bill, and it turns into just a drama and a fuss," he said, according to WLOS. "And I said, you know, I'm not going to associate with them, and I'm not going to do any business with them."

Okay, fine. He's within his rights to refuse to tow a vehicle. It may not have been the most Christian thing to do, but again, he's within his rights to do so.

Of course, those same rights don't apply to bakers, as we've seen. Those same rights also don't always apply to property owners who don't want to rent to Section 8 housing voucher recipients, as yesterday's post pointed out.

But getting back to the tow truck driver: as Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story.

This is not the first time a statement of political support has seeped into a business deal this election.

In March, a Colorado landlord advertised a vacant apartment, but indicated in the listing that he wouldn't rent to Trump voters.

The Daily Sentinel reported that at least one caller left a voicemail for Holmes, saying that his policy violated anti-discriminatory federal housing regulations.

A spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development told the newspaper that wasn't the case.

"That has nothing to do with the Fair Housing Act," HUD spokesman Jerry Brown told the Daily Sentinel.

So the tow truck driver is catching all sorts of grief for his refusal to provide a good or service based on his (conservative) political beliefs, but a landlord who does the same thing based on his (liberal) political beliefs gets a free pass. On the other hand, landlords who don't want their property tied up in a government program with all sorts of drawbacks and disadvantages (including but not limited to no recourse for damages and mind-numbing bureaucratic hoops through which one must jump - sources here and here) often have no choice in the matter.

Like Jeff Foxworthy said, "We live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots."