Showing posts with label asset forfeiture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asset forfeiture. Show all posts

September 25, 2017


Has asset forfeiture gone too far? Damn right Skippy!

from FoxNews: How the legalized theft of one man's truck brings the morality of civil asset forfeiture to light.
Police State America

Oklahoma is imprisoning so many people it can’t hire enough guards to keep up

from In These Times: “Prison guard unions often have a strong incentive to push back against reforms, because so much of what we spend on incarceration goes to correctional officers,” explains John Pfaff, a Fordham Law School professor.
Police State America

Scientists go after the media for highlighting a study showing IPCC climate models were wrong

from Watts Up With That!: Sadly, these scientists cannot rejoice that things are not as bad as they thought because the new finding threatens their funding.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

UC Berkeley’s ‘Free Speech Week’ officially canceled, appeared to be set-up from the start

from The Mercury News: Email suggests organizers didn’t intend for the event to happen
Indoctrination and Censorship

Sweden's 'man-free' music festival prompts response from transgender people

from Fox News: The ban on men, it turns out, only applies to what Knyckare described as “cisgender men”—which is a term for men whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth. That's not very PC.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Judge approves surveillance on Reno buses

from Mohave Valley Daily News: If you are in public, you are in government's space and will be monitored and recorded. That is what public means these days.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

September 14, 2017


📹  Our Amazing Debt (Cosmos Parody) 

from ReasonTV: The national debt just skipped past $20 trillion, which puts America's indebtedness at "unfathomably staggering." (And the chunk you owe personally at "a lot.") The math is so complex that Reason TV decided to lean on "Cosmos" to explain it.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

Maine is nullifying federal regulations that cripple local farmers 

from Mises Institute: This is one path for the future of freedom. State nullification is the remedy for federal overreach and tyrannical anti-liberty regs.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

Has the NYT Gone Collectively Mad? 

from Consortiumnews: "For those of us who have taught journalism or worked as editors, a sign that an article is the product of sloppy or dishonest journalism is that a key point will be declared as flat fact when it is unproven or a point in serious dispute – and it then becomes the foundation for other claims, building a story like a high-rise constructed on sand."
Media Bias on Parade

Calls to imprison "climate change deniers" grow in the wake of Hurricane Irma 

from Mises Institute: Environmental fanatics continue to grow more radical and intolerant. The movement seems to be dropping the guise of science, developing into a full-fledged religion.
Indoctrination and Censorship

In surprise vote, House passes amendment to restrict asset forfeiture 

from The Intercept: Could pass the Senate on anti-Sessions, anti-Trump sentiment, but if Trump is the tyrannical authoritarian some suspect, he will veto it.
Police State America

This new database is tracking how many cops are charged with crimes 

from Reason: A new database tries to answer one of the most vexing questions in the national debate over policing. The truly amazing thing is this hasn't been done before.
Police State America

September 4, 2017


The greening of Gore's bank account

from Forbes:  How crony capitalists used environmentalist propaganda to justify fattening their accounts with taxpayer dollars.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

How society grew cold

from The Daily Bell:  Compelling essay about how dependence on institutions is now out of control. A far more interesting piece than the title suggests.
The Government is Not Us

How Facebook, Twitter silence conservative voices online

from The Hill:  The intolerant left recognizes they cannot win the arena of ideas. Therefore, censorship.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Congress is finally working to defund civil asset forfeiture

from The Hill:  Jeff Sessions may be thwarted in this ratcheting of the police state.
Police State America

Feds Resume Program That Lets Cops Steal From You

by Bonnie Kristian.      Well, that didn’t last long. In December, the Justice Department (DOJ) announced it would halt a program which made it easy for law enforcement agencies to profit from civil asset forfeiture: The “equitable-sharing” program gives police the option of prosecuting asset forfeiture cases under federal instead of state law.     ... MORE

Civil Asset Forfeiture Allows For Abuse Of Police Power

by Allison Chavez.    People need to be aware of the practice of civil asset forfeiture and understand their rights when dealing with the police. The police doctrine known as civil asset forfeiture is barbaric and needs to be more strictly regulated. Civil asset forfeiture is essentially an excuse the police employ in order to steal civilians’ property and    ... MORE

Shining A Light On Police Seizures, Civil Forfeitures

by Nick Sibilla and Lauren Krisai.    How a town of 7,000 can build a $4.1 million dollar police station.  Mississippi has some of the strongest protections in the country for private property rights. But those protections are shockingly lax when it comes to a little-known police practice called “civil forfeiture.” Unlike criminal forfeiture,     ... MORE

Asset Forfeiture Steals Due Process Rights

A Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial. On a dark desert highway, a sleek, Navy-blue Ford Explorer forces a car to the side of the road. Armed men emerge from the SUV and demand that the occupants of the car open their trunk. Inside, they find $250,000 in cash. The men take the money, leaving the car's passengers on the roadside. They   ... MORE

Goodbye To 2015, A Year Of Absurdity And Overreach

by George Will.  E.B. White reportedly said "the most beautiful sound in America" is "the tinkle of ice at twilight." In 2015's twilight, fortify yourself with something 90 proof as you remember this year in which: We learned that a dismal threshold has been passed. The value of property that police departments seized through civil asset forfeiture — usually      ... MORE

Force Awakens As Asset-Forfeiture Plunder Is Threatened

by Orange County Register editorial.    The Justice Department gave civil liberties advocates an early Christmas present last week when it announced that it would be suspending indefinitely its “equitable sharing” asset forfeiture program, which notoriously allowed state and local police agencies to bypass restrictions on forfeiture by partnering with  ... MORE

DOJ Suspends Asset Forfeiture Equitable Sharing

by Mikayla Hellwich.    Police currently take more of citizens’ assets than thieves do. The Department of Justice released a memorandum addressed to local, state, and tribal law enforcement agencies Monday to announce that the equitable sharing program for asset forfeiture funds has been temporarily suspended due to financial considerations.    ... MORE

DOJ Suspends Abusive Asset Forfeiture Program – For Now

by Ilya Somin.     On Monday, the Justice Department suspended its abusive “equitable sharing” asset forfeiture program, which incentivizes state and local governments to seize the property of criminal suspects – including many who have never even been charged with any crime, much less convicted. The program enables state law enforcement     ... MORE

Drug Czar Wants More $ To Spend On Taking Your Stuff

by Nick Gillespie.       The Washington Post reports that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) wants more money "to identify assets, prosecute cases and 'manage the massive paper flow associated with forfeiture.'"   Asset-forfeiture, in which law enforcement seizes property, cash, and goods that it says is connected to drug      ... MORE

Charles P. Pierce: That Whole "License To Steal" Thing

Civil forfeiture is a civil shitshow.       There was a very interesting statistic that popped earlier this month as regards criminals and criminal justice in the United States. According to economist Martin Armstrong, in 2014, the police seized through civil forfeiture more of the property of their fellow citizens than was stolen by all the burglars in the    ... MORE

Civil Forfeiture Laws: It’s Mine, Until The Police Take It

by Paul Samakow.        Civil forfeiture laws allow police in just about every state to take citizens’ property, including cash, cars, electronics, even houses, without due process, simply by stating they believe the taken property was somehow involved in a criminal activity. Property can be legally taken without any charges being placed, without an    ... MORE

John Kerr: Take Profit And Self-Interest Out Of Policing

All theft should be illegal.  Law enforcement officials have plenty of words to categorize property heists, including robbery, theft, burglary, embezzlement and larceny. Perhaps it’s time to add another term to the lexicon: civil forfeiture. Many Americans may not realize that civil forfeiture laws—which proliferated in the 1980s as the drug war   ... MORE

Jason Snead: Why Police In Many States Can Seize Your Property Without Proving You’re Guilty Of A Crime

Politicians use cops to legally hold up citizens.      Civil asset forfeiture is a growing problem throughout the nation, driven by a profit incentive that encourages property seizures by law enforcement authorities even under dubious circumstances. That is the inescapable conclusion of the second iteration of Policing for Profit:        ... MORE

The Cops Now Steal More Property Than The Burglars

The incentives of civil asset forfeiture.   For decades now, federal government and their cohorts in law enforcement have been carrying out theft of the citizenry on a massive scale. We’re not talking about taxes, but an insidious power known as Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF). The 1980’s-era laws were designed to drain resources from powerful     ... MORE

Supreme Court Considers Boundaries For Legalized Theft

by Doug Mataconis.    How much of your stuff can government without conviction of a crime? Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Luis v. United States, a case that deals with the issue of whether, and when, the government can seize assets prior to conviction when those assets are being used to pay for a Defendant’s criminal defense:   ... MORE