Showing posts with label property rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label property rights. Show all posts

Katie Kieffer: Lower The Minimum Wage To $0

Or, how to energize a floundering economy. If you love In-N-Out burgers and care about the workers who flip your burgers, then you should support a minimum wage of $0. Deep down, I know you’re tired of seeing actors jump up and down for TV cameras while waving professional signs that read: “McGreedy! McStingy! McPoverty!” or “McShame.     ... MORE

The Asset Forfeiture Issue Is Not Going Away

by Peter Dujardin and Ashley K. Speed. It doesn't appear that the asset forfeiture issue is going away any time soon. Civil asset forfeiture — the confiscation of people's money and assets by police without a criminal conviction — has recently been a matter of a U.S. Judiciary Committee hearing. And it seems likely to come up in the forthcoming    ... MORE

The Fancy Way Of Saying State-Sanctioned Theft

by Matt Vespa.      Welcome to the upside down world of civil asset forfeiture. On Monday, FreedomWorks and the Center for American Progress (CAP) joined forces to invite bloggers, writers, and some think-tank analysts for a daylong conference on justice reform. One of the aspects I liked about the conference is that it shows on some     ... MORE

Federal Court Strikes Down 'No-Speech Zone' That Let Deputies Confiscate Political Signs On Private Property

by Nick Sibilla.      A small business owner who had his political signs confiscated by the government won a First Amendment lawsuit last month in federal court. John Russell owns an auto body shop in Cold Spring, Ky., not far from Cincinnati. He allowed the candidates he supported—both Democrats and Republicans—to put up political signs on his    ... MORE

DEA To Traveler: Thanks, I'll Take That Cash

by Joline Gutierrez Krueger.  Public servants with a license to steal. Maybe he should have taken traveler’s checks. But it’s too late for that now. All the money – $16,000 in cash – that Joseph Rivers said he had saved and relatives had given him to launch his dream in Hollywood is gone, seized during his trip out West not by thieves but by drug  ... MORE

Farmers Unable to Repair Tractors Because Of Copyright

by Rick Falkvinge.  Stories are starting to appear about farmers unable to repair tractors and car aficionados unable to tinker with cars because of copyright legislation. That's not a side effect. It was the whole idea of the law. This week, there have been stories about farmers who can’t legally repair their John Deere tractors, as copyright monopoly   ... MORE

Radley Balko: If The Government Decides To Destroy Your Property To Fight The Drug War, You're Just Out Of Luck

The drug war means never having to say you’re sorry.      A Houston-based federal judge ruled that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration does not owe the owner of a small Texas trucking company anything, not even the cost of repairing the bullet holes to a tractor-trailer truck that the agency used without his permission for a wild    ... MORE

Lynch’s Confirmation A Step Backward For Asset Forfeiture

by Mitchell Colbert.     Another proponent of government theft at the helm. After nearly three months of debate the Republican-controlled Senate has allowed Loretta Lynch to become the nation’s next Attorney General, replacing Eric Holder. Barack Obama has now appointed both the nation’s first black man and first black woman to serve as    ... MORE

Above the Law: New Report Finds Extensive Civil Asset Forfeiture Abuses by California Law Enforcement Agencies

Momentum for reform accelerates. Civil asset forfeiture laws allow the government to seize and keep cash, cars, real estate, and any other property – even from citizens never charged with or convicted of a crime. Because these assets often go straight into the coffers of the enforcement agency, these laws have led to a perversion of police priorities,  ... MORE

VIDEO: Regulating Our Property Rights Out Of Existence

Damon Root: Property Rights Vs. USDA Crop Seizures

Gov't takes without paying just compensation. According to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the government must pay just compensation when it takes private property for a public use. Three years ago, in the case of Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed that command, declaring that    ... MORE

Environmentalists Spoil The Planet For Human Beings

by Michael J. Hurd.      From the HuffingtonPost.com 4/6/15: Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina on Monday blamed environmentalists for what she called a “man-made” drought in California, which has led to the state’s first water restrictions. “With different policies over the last 20 years, all of this could be avoided,” Fiorina, a likely 2016     ... MORE

Daniel J. Mitchell: Liberty, Morality, and Discrimination

Decent people should not obey immoral laws. When describing their view of government and public policy, libertarians and constitutional conservatives sometimes use a variation of this phrase: “Not everything that’s illegal is immoral, and not everything that’s immoral should be illegal.” To put this in tangible terms, consider the fact that    ... MORE

Josh Fatzick: Study Shows Global Poverty Is At Its Lowest Rate In History, And It Is All Thanks To Capitalism

The recipe for prosperity is freedom.    Capitalism gets a bad rap these days, often conjuring up images of greedy oil barons, sweatshop factories and polluted oceans, but a recent study shows exactly how much capitalism has helped the poorest of the world. The study, conducted by Max Roser of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford   ... MORE

Legislation To Curb Civil Forfeiture Advances In States

by Jacob Gershman.  Georgia lawmakers are set to vote on legislation intended to rein in the state’s civil forfeiture procedures, part of a national push for more scrutiny and limits on asset-seizure programs that law enforcement officials say help curb drug crimes but critics say are prone to abuse. The Republican-led Senate in Georgia could    ... MORE

New Mexico Passes Bill To Abolish Civil Asset Forfeiture

by Casey Harper.        The New Mexico state legislature passed a groundbreaking bill Saturday to abolish civil asset forfeiture. Now Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, who will likely get attention as a potential 2016 vice presidential candidate, will have the bill on her desk. Civil asset forfeiture is a practice where police can take and      ... MORE