9 ms·

A couple decades ago when the government wanted to get civil forfeiture powers, they said it was only going to be for the worst organized crime bosses and drug

by csense 10y ago

A couple decades ago when the government wanted to get civil forfeiture powers, they said it was only going to be for the worst organized crime bosses and drug lords. Then within the last few years, a black kid who takes his life savings -- $10,000 cash -- and moves across the country to start a new life is (apparently entirely legally) relieved of it by two police officers and has no means to get it back, despite never being arrested nor charged with any crime. History shows that it's impossible to trust the government's promise that they'll restrict any new capabilities to the worst bad guys.

TallGuyShort 10y ago
Non-constitutional exceptions to the constitution are just like Darth Vader: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."
Aelinsaar 10y ago
What is to be done, when dicking us over and harshly keeping us in line is profitable, and we keep electing them to do it?!
- Zikes 10y ago
  This presumes the election process is fair. Gerrymandering, fraud, bribery, voter suppression, it's a wonder we even call the US a democracy anymore.
  - sheepleherd 10y ago
    any creation of voting districts is a Gerrymander. What method do you favor, and how is yours better?
    - Zikes 10y ago
      Wikipedia's definition[1] is "In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries." It can be clearly recognized where it occurs, and there are plenty of examples in the Wikipedia article. I don't have the skills or knowledge to say exactly how it should be done, only that it shouldn't have extreme obvious political bias. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
      - sheepleherd 10y ago
        if you scour the discussion history of the wikipedia page you will find my comments many months ago disputing that the article implies that there is some "fair" way to draw districts without laying out what that way should be. I contend that the system we use, the gerrymandering system, is the most defensible, it's democratic. Don't like it, vote for somebody else.
        JadeNB 10y ago
        > Don't like it, vote for somebody else. The explicit goal of gerrymandering is to render this remedy ineffectual.
        sheepleherd 10y ago
        cute turn of phrase :) however, I feel you are so convinced you are right that you are not looking at the actual issue and you intellectually impoverish yourself as a result. Gerrymander is an accusation you hurl at opponents in the majority who don't do what you want (like calling them uncivil even if they have not been, eh!?). However, when your party is in you do the same thing... not because you are a hypocrite (like the hypocritical games played over Supreme Court nominations) but because there is no way to draw redistricting boundaries that is actually fair; many factions will be disadvantaged by aggregating votes in districts, there is no way to avoid it. Instead of downvoting me more, google a supposed gerrymander map and try it on a city you know, you'll see that you'll be making political choices that you favor. You might be "fair" in your mind because you consider yourself an independent so you will favor neither Democrats nor Republicans, but instead your gerrymander will favor some other metrics that you prefer. You might even go so far as try to create a very evenly divided legislature that will have difficulty passing any laws, and you'll look at me and say "see, I did it"... then immediately after that I'll have to listen to your unsophisticated drivel about how gridlock is destroying our country and if only everybody was "civil" like you, beautiful compromises would emerge.
    - slavik81 10y ago
      That's simply inaccurate. Gerrymandering is specifically the redrawing of electoral districts in a purposefully unfair manner. It's commonly prevented by setting up independent commissions to do the redrawing of districts, rather than allowing the incumbent politicians to draw the lines directly. It's named after the former Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, who redrew the districts to ensure his party would win the senate. Apparently, he had to draw the districts in rather unusual shapes to achieve this, and they kind of ended up looking like a salamander. Hence, Gerrymandering.
      - sheepleherd 10y ago
        You (and everybody else) don't understand what I mean because you haven't thought about it as much as I have. By what principle do you think districts should be drawn--they must be redrawn due to shifting population--so do you intend to draw exaggerated patterns to spread out minority opinions, or to clump them together? Or are you suggesting that you flip coins topologically? What if flipping coins results in a salamander of some sort, you want to use soap films to find the minimum enclosing surfaces? "Mathematically neutral" methods of drawing districts will result in some parts of the country randomly enhancing minority opinions while other parts of the country will randomly diffuse them, with results that will lead partisans to complain bitterly. My point is, there IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. There is only your preference.
        JadeNB 10y ago
        > You (and everybody else) don't understand what I mean because you haven't thought about it as much as I have. Even if true, this is surely the least civil way, and one of the least convincing ways, to state the fact. > My point is, there IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. There is only your preference. That seems to be a different claim to: > any creation of voting districts is a Gerrymander (which you said above). Two reasons why: 1. As slavik points out, a gerrymander is, by definition, intentionally (not incidentally, accidentally, or unavoidably) unfair. 2. More importantly, "all district-drawing schemes are unfair", while probably true, does not mean that they are all equally unfair, or that we should give up on seeking fairness. It seems rather like http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm .
- ktRolster 10y ago
  >What is to be done Pay more attention to the election and government processes. Inform people. Most people don't know about civil forfeiture (even the name is enough to bore many people), so they don't know cops are stealing from people. A people that doesn't pay attention to the government gets screwed by the government every time, no matter what rules are in place. That's why Lawrence Lessig is trying to change the rules to encourage people to take part.
  - update 10y ago
    > Most people don't know civil forfeiture Most people don't care about X (civil forfeiture, whistleblowers, Controversial invocations of the Patriot Act, etc.) > Pay more attention to the election and government processes. Yes but this completely ignores the fact that most Americans are apathetic to these issues. What I learned this year was that (as another poster put it) "Gerrymandering, fraud, bribery, voter suppression" were visible, they would also be tolerated. Also, if you're under investigation by the FBI for espionage, most Americans will STILL vote for you. And the other major half will vote for someone who is clearly racist and (imho) dumb as nails.
    - mmanfrin 10y ago
      if you're under investigation by the FBI for espionage Espionage? Jesus Cripes the rhetoric in this election just gets more and more out there.
      - update 10y ago
        > The judge in my case was clear about a number of issues. First, the very definition of “espionage” is incredibly broad. Espionage is the act of “providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it.” Period. My judge also said that there did not have to be mens rea, or criminal intent, for there to be guilt in an espionage case. And the concept of “harm to the national security” was irrelevant. --John Kiriakou (He was the first CIA officer to be convicted for passing classified information to a reporter) [1] Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. [1] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/all_whistleblowers_should_get_pass_if_hillary_clinton_does_20160606 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/all_whistleblowers_shoul...
tn13 10y ago
Government can not be trusted. Something that the founding fathers and understood and warned centuries ago despite their own inherent flaws. Individual liberty is something that we need to defend actively from the government and that can not happen unless we take a diametrically opposite stance and do not concede even and inch of ground. Example: People who supported civil forfeiture essentially thought that its okay to take things away from crime lords even if the charges are not proved. Now CF is coming after everyone. I think the right solution here is to starve the beast. Force the government to lower taxes and leave them with substantially less money for needless wars, enforcing idiotic laws and other welfare schemes.
- hx87 10y ago
  Taxes aren't the problem--it's the fees, law-enforcement-as-revenue-service, and other hacks to get around the lack of tax revenue that makes government nasty. I'd much rather pay taxes and zero out all government fees, civil forfeiture and non-criminal fines.
  - tn13 10y ago
    I lived in India for many years. India has idiotic laws but the government simply does not have enough money to enforce any laws. As a result we can simply ignore the laws and get about our business. (That also explains corruption and inability to scale a model). For example my house was not connected by road. When we tried to build our own private road we realized we had to take clearance from 8 departments which would have taken us 2 years and several $$$ in bribes. We paid money to a contractor who build the road without any clearance and no government person ever showed up because they had more important job to do. The problem is if you are going to have a higher number of cops per capita, they need to catch someone to justify their existence. The only reason we have "War against drugs" because there aren't any other wars that politicians are fighting with. Almost all problems are solved (compared to say India). If gov. shuts down war against drugs they will start war against sex. American women enjoy freedom and safety that Indian women can only dream of and yet our government is busy passing all sort of laws to "protect woman". This is because these are empty minds working as devils workshop.
oh_sigh 10y ago
If you're referring to the case I think you are, it is pretty clear that that "black kid" was actually a money runner for drug dealers. He claimed to have withdrawn the money from his bank, but could never provide any kind of evidence that he had done this.
- EdHominem 10y ago
  And what case proved that assertion? Because in non-corrupt situations it's not your responsibility to explain yourself to not be robbed by the police.
  - oh_sigh 10y ago
    Getting your money back would be very simple - just show you withdrew it from the bank and it was deposited normally. If you can't show you withdrew it from a bank, show it was earned from a job and show pay stubs. If you can't show it was earned from a job, get testimony from people who employed you. If you can't do any of that - you may be a drug dealer or drug/cash runner. I'm fine with you having some kind of moral outrage at asset forefiture, but while it is currently the law, there are ways of going about getting your money back. Again, feel free to argue that you shouldn't need to prove where it came from, but, while you do need to prove it, you have those options available to you in pretty much any circumstance where you can save up $11k.
    - prutschman 10y ago
      How much does it cost to hire a lawyer to (try to) get your $11k back?
      - oh_sigh 10y ago
        I'm sure there were people lining up to defend him pro bono because he was a national case...
        Sacho 10y ago
wonder_er 10y ago
Popehat [0] has an excellent list of questions to ask when giving a new power to the government: 1. Does the United States Constitution permit the government to do this? 2. What would this power look like if it were expanded dramatically in scope or in time? 3. What would this obligation look like if exercised indifferently by unaccountable people? 4. What would your worst enemy do with this power? The list goes on, but points 2, 3, and 4 should be sufficient to cause pause for even the most aggressive supporter of expanding government powers. [0] https://popehat.com/2016/06/02/libertarianism-as-ten-questions-rather-than-ten-answers/ https://popehat.com/2016/06/02/libertarianism-as-ten-questio...

by csense 10y ago

TallGuyShort 10y ago

Non-constitutional exceptions to the constitution are just like Darth Vader: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

Aelinsaar 10y ago

What is to be done, when dicking us over and harshly keeping us in line is profitable, and we keep electing them to do it?!

Zikes 10y ago
This presumes the election process is fair. Gerrymandering, fraud, bribery, voter suppression, it's a wonder we even call the US a democracy anymore.
- sheepleherd 10y ago
  any creation of voting districts is a Gerrymander. What method do you favor, and how is yours better?
  - Zikes 10y ago
    Wikipedia's definition[1] is "In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries." It can be clearly recognized where it occurs, and there are plenty of examples in the Wikipedia article. I don't have the skills or knowledge to say exactly how it should be done, only that it shouldn't have extreme obvious political bias. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
    - sheepleherd 10y ago
      if you scour the discussion history of the wikipedia page you will find my comments many months ago disputing that the article implies that there is some "fair" way to draw districts without laying out what that way should be. I contend that the system we use, the gerrymandering system, is the most defensible, it's democratic. Don't like it, vote for somebody else.
      - JadeNB 10y ago
        > Don't like it, vote for somebody else. The explicit goal of gerrymandering is to render this remedy ineffectual.
        sheepleherd 10y ago
        cute turn of phrase :) however, I feel you are so convinced you are right that you are not looking at the actual issue and you intellectually impoverish yourself as a result. Gerrymander is an accusation you hurl at opponents in the majority who don't do what you want (like calling them uncivil even if they have not been, eh!?). However, when your party is in you do the same thing... not because you are a hypocrite (like the hypocritical games played over Supreme Court nominations) but because there is no way to draw redistricting boundaries that is actually fair; many factions will be disadvantaged by aggregating votes in districts, there is no way to avoid it. Instead of downvoting me more, google a supposed gerrymander map and try it on a city you know, you'll see that you'll be making political choices that you favor. You might be "fair" in your mind because you consider yourself an independent so you will favor neither Democrats nor Republicans, but instead your gerrymander will favor some other metrics that you prefer. You might even go so far as try to create a very evenly divided legislature that will have difficulty passing any laws, and you'll look at me and say "see, I did it"... then immediately after that I'll have to listen to your unsophisticated drivel about how gridlock is destroying our country and if only everybody was "civil" like you, beautiful compromises would emerge.
  - slavik81 10y ago
    That's simply inaccurate. Gerrymandering is specifically the redrawing of electoral districts in a purposefully unfair manner. It's commonly prevented by setting up independent commissions to do the redrawing of districts, rather than allowing the incumbent politicians to draw the lines directly. It's named after the former Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, who redrew the districts to ensure his party would win the senate. Apparently, he had to draw the districts in rather unusual shapes to achieve this, and they kind of ended up looking like a salamander. Hence, Gerrymandering.
    - sheepleherd 10y ago
      You (and everybody else) don't understand what I mean because you haven't thought about it as much as I have. By what principle do you think districts should be drawn--they must be redrawn due to shifting population--so do you intend to draw exaggerated patterns to spread out minority opinions, or to clump them together? Or are you suggesting that you flip coins topologically? What if flipping coins results in a salamander of some sort, you want to use soap films to find the minimum enclosing surfaces? "Mathematically neutral" methods of drawing districts will result in some parts of the country randomly enhancing minority opinions while other parts of the country will randomly diffuse them, with results that will lead partisans to complain bitterly. My point is, there IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. There is only your preference.
      - JadeNB 10y ago
        > You (and everybody else) don't understand what I mean because you haven't thought about it as much as I have. Even if true, this is surely the least civil way, and one of the least convincing ways, to state the fact. > My point is, there IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. There is only your preference. That seems to be a different claim to: > any creation of voting districts is a Gerrymander (which you said above). Two reasons why: 1. As slavik points out, a gerrymander is, by definition, intentionally (not incidentally, accidentally, or unavoidably) unfair. 2. More importantly, "all district-drawing schemes are unfair", while probably true, does not mean that they are all equally unfair, or that we should give up on seeking fairness. It seems rather like http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm .
ktRolster 10y ago
>What is to be done Pay more attention to the election and government processes. Inform people. Most people don't know about civil forfeiture (even the name is enough to bore many people), so they don't know cops are stealing from people. A people that doesn't pay attention to the government gets screwed by the government every time, no matter what rules are in place. That's why Lawrence Lessig is trying to change the rules to encourage people to take part.
- update 10y ago
  > Most people don't know civil forfeiture Most people don't care about X (civil forfeiture, whistleblowers, Controversial invocations of the Patriot Act, etc.) > Pay more attention to the election and government processes. Yes but this completely ignores the fact that most Americans are apathetic to these issues. What I learned this year was that (as another poster put it) "Gerrymandering, fraud, bribery, voter suppression" were visible, they would also be tolerated. Also, if you're under investigation by the FBI for espionage, most Americans will STILL vote for you. And the other major half will vote for someone who is clearly racist and (imho) dumb as nails.
  - mmanfrin 10y ago
    if you're under investigation by the FBI for espionage Espionage? Jesus Cripes the rhetoric in this election just gets more and more out there.
    - update 10y ago
      > The judge in my case was clear about a number of issues. First, the very definition of “espionage” is incredibly broad. Espionage is the act of “providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it.” Period. My judge also said that there did not have to be mens rea, or criminal intent, for there to be guilt in an espionage case. And the concept of “harm to the national security” was irrelevant. --John Kiriakou (He was the first CIA officer to be convicted for passing classified information to a reporter) [1] Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. [1] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/all_whistleblowers_should_get_pass_if_hillary_clinton_does_20160606 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/all_whistleblowers_shoul...

tn13 10y ago

Government can not be trusted. Something that the founding fathers and understood and warned centuries ago despite their own inherent flaws. Individual liberty is something that we need to defend actively from the government and that can not happen unless we take a diametrically opposite stance and do not concede even and inch of ground. Example: People who supported civil forfeiture essentially thought that its okay to take things away from crime lords even if the charges are not proved. Now CF is coming after everyone. I think the right solution here is to starve the beast. Force the government to lower taxes and leave them with substantially less money for needless wars, enforcing idiotic laws and other welfare schemes.

hx87 10y ago
Taxes aren't the problem--it's the fees, law-enforcement-as-revenue-service, and other hacks to get around the lack of tax revenue that makes government nasty. I'd much rather pay taxes and zero out all government fees, civil forfeiture and non-criminal fines.
- tn13 10y ago
  I lived in India for many years. India has idiotic laws but the government simply does not have enough money to enforce any laws. As a result we can simply ignore the laws and get about our business. (That also explains corruption and inability to scale a model). For example my house was not connected by road. When we tried to build our own private road we realized we had to take clearance from 8 departments which would have taken us 2 years and several $$$ in bribes. We paid money to a contractor who build the road without any clearance and no government person ever showed up because they had more important job to do. The problem is if you are going to have a higher number of cops per capita, they need to catch someone to justify their existence. The only reason we have "War against drugs" because there aren't any other wars that politicians are fighting with. Almost all problems are solved (compared to say India). If gov. shuts down war against drugs they will start war against sex. American women enjoy freedom and safety that Indian women can only dream of and yet our government is busy passing all sort of laws to "protect woman". This is because these are empty minds working as devils workshop.

oh_sigh 10y ago

If you're referring to the case I think you are, it is pretty clear that that "black kid" was actually a money runner for drug dealers. He claimed to have withdrawn the money from his bank, but could never provide any kind of evidence that he had done this.

EdHominem 10y ago
And what case proved that assertion? Because in non-corrupt situations it's not your responsibility to explain yourself to not be robbed by the police.
- oh_sigh 10y ago
  Getting your money back would be very simple - just show you withdrew it from the bank and it was deposited normally. If you can't show you withdrew it from a bank, show it was earned from a job and show pay stubs. If you can't show it was earned from a job, get testimony from people who employed you. If you can't do any of that - you may be a drug dealer or drug/cash runner. I'm fine with you having some kind of moral outrage at asset forefiture, but while it is currently the law, there are ways of going about getting your money back. Again, feel free to argue that you shouldn't need to prove where it came from, but, while you do need to prove it, you have those options available to you in pretty much any circumstance where you can save up $11k.
  - prutschman 10y ago
    How much does it cost to hire a lawyer to (try to) get your $11k back?
    - oh_sigh 10y ago
      I'm sure there were people lining up to defend him pro bono because he was a national case...
      - Sacho 10y ago

wonder_er 10y ago

Popehat [0] has an excellent list of questions to ask when giving a new power to the government: 1. Does the United States Constitution permit the government to do this? 2. What would this power look like if it were expanded dramatically in scope or in time? 3. What would this obligation look like if exercised indifferently by unaccountable people? 4. What would your worst enemy do with this power? The list goes on, but points 2, 3, and 4 should be sufficient to cause pause for even the most aggressive supporter of expanding government powers. [0] https://popehat.com/2016/06/02/libertarianism-as-ten-questions-rather-than-ten-answers/ https://popehat.com/2016/06/02/libertarianism-as-ten-questio...