• Tag Archives theft

  • Highway Robbery Gets Presidential Seal of Approval

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment

    Highway Robbery Gets Presidential Seal of Approval

    Donald Trump is going after one of the few issues proven to be a unifier across party lines: civil asset forfeiture.


    This legal tool allows law enforcement to seize money and physical property from those merely suspected of criminal behavior. Unfortunately, there is no conviction requirement, meaning confiscation can occur before suspects have been given the opportunity to defend themselves in court.

    After 2016 saw several state victories reining in the practice, the Obama Administration reinstated the program on the federal level. The federal Equitable Sharing Program, which had briefly been paused due to budget constraints, provided local law enforcement with a loophole, which allowed them to continue the practice so long as they shared their spoils with the feds.

    President Trump made some egregious comments on the matter while addressing a room full of Texas police officers on Tuesday, effectively destroying any hope that his administration will be better on this issue than President Obama. In fact, the situation may very well become worse.

    The nomination of Jeff Sessions to the office of Attorney General has made many criminal justice advocates nervous, as he has a long history of justifying the practice of policing for profit. On Tuesday, Trump confirmed these fears when he threw his support behind the controversial practice, saying that he saw  “no reason” to restrict law enforcement’s use of civil asset forfeiture.

    Ignoring the substantive concerns over the practices’ disregard for due process, Trump even threatened to “destroy the career” of libertarian-leaning Texas legislator Konni Burton for her outspoken opposition to the practice, a comment met with approving laughter from the law enforcement officials in attendance.

    Unfortunately, the issue is not as clear-cut as Trump would like to believe. Civil asset forfeiture has arguably done more to destroy the lives of innocent people than it has to help catch those actually guilty of criminal acts.

    A Systematic Problem

    Since there are few restrictions to the practice, it has frequently been used against those who were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time and were not, in fact, engaging in criminal behavior.

    In 2013, for example, a Peruvian pastor had $14,000 seized during a routine traffic stop. Traveling to a church event, Pastor Marco Silva, a citizen of Peru but legally present in the United States, was pulled over for “failure to signal a lane change.” The money, which was supposed to be donated to a Peruvian orphanage, was seized by law enforcement.

    While Trump claims that any politician opposed to this practice would “get beat up really badly by the voters,” he clearly doesn’t understand the impact civil asset forfeiture has had on everyday people.

    Without first having to prove guilt, asset forfeiture is ripe for abuse. Worse still, law enforcement is incentivized to continue this practice since they are allowed to keep a portion of the confiscated cash or property.

    One family, who had their entire house ransacked after falsely being accused of breaking drug laws, not only had their belongings destroyed, but important legal documents, including adoption papers, were also confiscated and subsequently lost in the process.

    This is because with civil asset forfeiture, it is technically the property, and not the individual that is being prosecuted. This makes it extremely difficult for individuals to regain control over their belongings. Those who are able to afford the extravagant legal fees are often forced to settle for only a portion of their property returned, while some are forced to forfeit their property forever.

    The Road Ahead

    The abuse of civil asset forfeiture has become so widespread, it has created unlikely alliances in Congress between Republicans and Democrats.

    In an era when the country finds itself more divided than ever, Trump would be wise to cease his support of an issue that has negatively impacted so many Americans.

    Instead, Trump has fallen victim to the same fear mongering used to convince people that a repeal of asset forfeiture would result in terrorist attacks or a cartel takeover.

    While Trump was discussing the issue with Texas law enforcement earlier this week, Rockwall County Sheriff, Harold Eavenson, called out another Texas lawmaker who, like Burton, is committed to passing legislation restricting the process. “I told him the cartel would build a monument to him in Mexico if he could get that legislation passed,” Eavenson told Trump. President Trump distastefully responded, by saying, “you want to give us his name? We’ll destroy his career.”

    As the room once again erupted in laughter, it became painstakingly clear that under the Trump Administration, the road to criminal justice reform will be an uphill battle.


    Brittany Hunter

    Brittany Hunter is an associate editor at FEE.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • Police Union Head Wonders Why Everybody Suddenly Wants Them to Stop Stealing People’s Stuff

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    If you want to get a sense of how poorly police unions grasp why the citizenry have grown more and more upset with them, check out this absolutely awful commentary by Chuck Canterbury, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, over at The Daily Caller.

    Canterbury’s here to defend civil asset forfeiture, the process by which police seize and keep the money and assets of citizens who are suspected of crimes. This type of forfeiture is facing bipartisan calls for reform because the police are seizing property on the basis of just suspicion, not conviction. The consequence has been the creation of massive “civil” bureaucratic process designed to grab and keep the property of people who are ultimately never even charged with criminal behavior. It is legalized theft.

    Canterbury declares the push for reform to be a “fake issue” and is opposing any effort to eliminate the federal Equitable Sharing program (the Department of Justice program that allows municipal police to partner with the feds for seizures and for police to keep up to 80 percent of what they grab) just because somebody writes “a sympathetic piece describing a case in which the system may not have functioned as intended.”

    …

    The anecdotal accounts of police misuse of forfeiture are making the news because there’s a bipartisan realization that civil forfeiture violates the citizenry’s property rights. Canterbury deliberately and purposefully suggests that the program is only used against “criminals” when that’s absolutely not the case. That’s why it’s called a “civil” asset forfeiture. Authorities go after the property itself in a civil, not criminal, court, accusing the property of being involved in a crime. This means that the property owners are deliberately not provided the same due process as somebody accused of criminal behavior. The threshold for taking property away through a civil administrative system is deliberately lower than convicting somebody, and Canterbury knows it.

    The forfeiture program has indeed been “remarkably successful” in separating citizens from their property. The grotesque abuses of the program were what earned it so much negative attention. And property-defending attorneys with the Institute for Justice have been taking on cases and going to the press with them to help the public understand what is actually going on here.

    And when the public does understand how civil asset forfeiture works, they don’t like it. They really, really don’t like it. Polls show that majority opposition to civil asset forfeiture cuts across all demographics. It is truly bipartisan distaste for the process of taking property from people without convicting them of crimes.

    Source: Police Union Head Wonders Why Everybody Suddenly Wants Them to Stop Stealing People’s Stuff – Hit & Run : Reason.com


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  • Classic Christmas Movies Declare Taxation Is Theft

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Classic Christmas Movies Declare Taxation Is Theft

    “And it came to pass that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And all went to be taxed, everyone to his own city, for to disobey the Roman emperor meant certain death.”

    The message in the opening lines of The Little Drummer Boy (1968) is as rich and pleasing to the ear as Greer Garson’s euphonious narration.

    That there was “no room at the inn” was not a natural occurrence. It was caused by the government, like virtually all human misery.First, that Bethlehem was so crowded and that there was “no room at the inn” for Joseph and Mary was not at all a natural occurrence. It was caused by the government, like virtually all human misery. Second, that all taxation occurs under the threat of violence, for to refuse to pay would result in “certain death.”

    This is all within the first 30 seconds of the film. A libertarian couldn’t ask for a better start.

    Taxation is repeatedly denounced throughout the story. Garson continues by noting that “there were good people who could ill afford the cruel tax.” Even the film’s chief villain, Ben Haramad (voice by José Ferrer), who kidnaps Aaron in order to compel him to perform in his traveling show, addresses his audience as “fellow taxpayers,” indicating that as bad as he might be, he is one with his audience in suffering under a much more cruel and malicious oppressor.

    I couldn’t have been happier that my seven-year-old daughter was exposed to all of this, along with a very age-appropriate introduction to the gospel stories. With the central lesson of Thanksgiving – that communism is lethal and private property essential to human survival – effectively erased from popular consciousness, it was refreshing to see these foundational libertarian ideas surviving in a classic Christmas special.

    Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town

    Next, we queued up another oldie from the same DVD compilation: Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (1970). This one didn’t disappoint either. Again, the general misery within the aptly named “Sombertown” has the same source: government. One cannot help but see the parallels between Burgermeister Meisterburger’s idiotic law against toys and the US government’s War on Drugs. All of the familiar characteristics are there.

    First, the law is completely ineffective in stopping the children of Sombertown from playing with toys, aided by a young, energetic Kris Kringle. When the government confiscates the toys, Kringle brings more. When the government starts searching houses, Kringle hides the toys in stockings hanging by the fire.

    Of course, each government’s failure to prevent human beings from engaging in activity that is harmless to others results in ever more oppressive measures. As they do in the “land of the free” today, the government finally resorts to “no-knock raids,” with armed men breaking down the doors of innocent and guilty alike. Parents and children huddle together in fear.

    Meisterberger demonstrates government hypocrisy when he breaks his own law by playing with a yo-yo given to him by Kringle. What an effective analogy for the government’s own involvement in drug trafficking, both by street cops “gone bad” and by the CIA in its vast covert operations.

    “By and by, the good people realized how silly those laws were, and forgot all about them.” If only the good people of the US would attain similar wisdom.Meisterburger further emulates the US government with ridiculous overreach in enforcing his unjust law, arresting not only Kris Kringle but his whole family, his future wife Jessica, and even the reformed Winter Warlock. All are charged with “conspiracy,” a tactic utilized by the government to circumvent the rules of evidence in court and put over 2 million people in prison.

    The story also features a useful idiot in Jessica, who at first blindly supports the law, until Kringle gives her a china doll. Realizing how harmless to others her own enjoyment of the doll is, she finally begins to question the wisdom of prohibition.

    Kringle escapes the dungeon with the help of the Winter Warlock’s flying reindeer and remains an outlaw for many years afterward. However, the story ends happily as the libertarians outlast the oppressive Meisterbergers, who eventually “died off and fell out of power.” As narrator Fred Astaire relates,

    “By and by, the good people realized how silly the Meisterberger laws were. Well, everybody had a wonderful laugh and then forgot all about them.”

    If only the good people of the United States would attain similar wisdom.

    Within this pleasant little Christmas story, youngsters couldn’t be taught a more radical libertarian lesson. The government is evil. Its edicts are often unjust and result in needless misery. The hero of the story is an outlaw who practices civil disobedience to bring a little happiness to his fellow man. Regardless of your feelings on drug prohibition, there are a thousand other parallels to real-world government oppression.

    Conservatives often complain that modern Christmas specials have scrubbed Jesus Christ out of the holiday, turning it into a secular celebration of gift-giving and merrymaking. That’s not hard to understand coming out of “progressive” modern Hollywood, whose animosity towards Christianity rivals its animosity towards free enterprise. It also explains why these wonderfully libertarian themes have disappeared from today’s politically correct holiday fluff.

    Whatever your religious beliefs, even if you have none at all, you can’t go wrong watching these classic Christmas specials with your children. Not only will they learn the true meaning of Christmas, but they will be exposed at a young age to the founding American principle that government is evil.

    God bless us, everyone.

    This first appeared at the author’s website.


    Tom Mullen

    Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? and A Return to Common  Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America. For more information and more of Tom’s writing, visit www.tommullen.net.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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