Category: crime and punishment

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Minimal Use of a Finger

Seattle, distracted driving, texting, overreach, government, freedom, eating, drinking, liberty

Drivers in Washington State have a new law to … swerve from?

“New distracted driving law starts Sunday, July 23,” the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) tweeted last week. “The law forbids,” Washingtonians were told,  “virtually all use of handheld gadgets such as phones, tablets, laptop computers and gaming devices while driving.”

The idea is to prevent accidents. Though distracted driving’s danger has been contested, texting while driving certainly seems a kind of crazy. 

Thankfully, it’s possible to talk “hands free.”

Which, it turns out, the new law does allow. Drivers may activate and de-​activate hands-​free devices (and apps) with the “minimal use of a finger.” 

Eating and drinking while driving are also disallowed, but those are “secondary offenses,” which police are not allowed to pull you over for.

At this point, another meaning of “minimal use of a finger” may occur to some readers. What starts out as secondary offenses have been known to be upgraded, legally and practically, to primary offense status.

Does a shiver runs down your back?

Yet another rule! More fines! 

More interactions with police. 

And if all this doesn’t feel “police state‑y” enough for you, there is argument in Seattle about whether pedestrians should be prohibited from “distracted walking.” 

Yes, some are actually considering that. 

I’m reminded of an argument against socialism: government-​run enterprises tend to be run “ruthlessly and with special attention to prosecution (and overburdening) of the poor.” Why would anyone want such techniques writ society-​wide, in every sector?

Meanwhile, we apparently must live and drive with more rules and more fines and more harassment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Big Libertarian Questions

Charlie Gard, Nigel Farage, National Health Service, government, control

“This raises some very big libertarian questions,” said Nigel Farage yesterday. 

About what?

The “rights of parents against the state.”

The outspoken Brexit supporter and former leader of the UK Independence Party was referring to Charlie Gard, the sick, dying 11-​month old British baby, whose parents sought to take to the United States for an experimental medical treatment. But the hospital and the British government pooh-​poohed any likelihood of success and said, “No.”

That’s when Charlie’s parents went to court, fighting for seven months for the right to simply try to save their child’s life. Now, after those months of delay, even that remote medical hope has faded away.

“Even today,” explained Farage, “the hospital and the state are saying to these poor parents, ‘Oh, no, no, Charlie can’t die at home. He’ll have to die in our hospital.’”

The judge in the case called it “absurd” to suggest that little Charlie was a “prisoner of the National Health Service.” But not free to leave the country or even the hospital, that’s precisely what this poor child has become.

“There was a case four years ago of a little kid, Ashya King, who had a brain cancer,” Farage noted. “His parents wanted him to go to Prague for a revolutionary new treatment that the doctors here said wouldn’t work. The boy went. It worked. He’s now cancer free.”

Those parents were briefly imprisoned … for saving their child’s life.

It appears that single-payer makes the government the single-decider.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Pardon Him, Mr. President

Samuel Girod, Kentucky, crime, Amish, FDA, drug,

Presidents tend to issue pardons as their tenures draw to a close. But many victims of our government should be pardoned right now. Until the culpable agencies can be dismantled and/​or sundry bad laws repealed, a steady flow of presidential pardons would provide the swiftest justice.

An Amish man in Kentucky, Samuel Girod, has been convicted of selling herbal remedies and such crimes as “failing to appear.” It doesn’t add up to one day in prison, let alone the six years of his sentence.

Girod created a salve from natural ingredients for treating skin disorders. After the state health department demanded that he stopped making certain claims for the product, he changed its name to Healing Chickweed. Told that the word “healing” was prohibited, he changed the name to Original Chickweed. The Food and Drug Administration also hounded him for selling various herbal remedies, which they called “drugs” because of his medical claims.

The man’s worst sin in all this seems to be failure to cooperate with the harassment. When FDA agents tried to examine his “manufacturing process,” he refused entry to his home. When Girod missed a hearing about his case, the government dubbed him a “fugitive.” The local sheriff can’t understand why the government is “victimizing such peaceful and law-​abiding citizens.”

Yes, it’s a puzzle. Many historical, political, institutional, ideological and psychological factors would help explain it. More than answers, though, Samuel Girod needs his freedom. 

How about it, Mr. President?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall

Left Wondering Why

Minneapolis, shooting, police, body camera, Justine Damond, Australian

In Minneapolis’s Fulton neighborhood a makeshift memorial has sprung up. Amidst flowers, a handwritten sign reads, “Why did you shoot and kill our neighbor?”

Police have yet to offer public comment on the police shooting of Justine Damond, the Australian woman killed in the alley behind her home last Saturday night.

“Sadly, her family and I have been provided with almost no additional information from law enforcement,” Justine’s fiancé, Don Damond,* told reporters, “regarding what happened after police arrived.”

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has launched an investigation, but not yet interviewed the two officers at the scene, the only known witnesses. The officers had been responding to Justine’s 911 call reporting what sounded like a sexual assault. 

No gun was found on Justine; a woman in her pajamas otherwise doesn’t seem very threatening.

Local media identified Mohammed Noor, a Somali-​American, as the police officer who fired the bullet that killed Damond. Noor has been on the force since March 2015 and has two previous complaints pending.

Most frustrating, the Washington Post reports that “the officers’ body cameras were not turned on” and … “It’s not clear why …”

Cameras do not work when turned off; public anger and angst are not ameliorated when we cannot see the body cam footage. 

That’s why, back in April, we worked to pass a ballot initiative in Ferguson, Missouri: (a) mandating that police must actually turn on the body cameras they were “using” (after similar incidents, wherein Ferguson police claimed their cameras hadn’t been activated) and (b) setting rules for public access to the video.

The people of Minneapolis, likewise, deserve a more professional police force. Making that happen means taking the initiative: citizens reforming criminal justice policies at the ballot box.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Justine had already taken her fiancé’s last name, even though they were set to marry next month. Her legal name remains Justine Ruszczyk.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Police State Is in Sessions

Jeff Sessions, AG, Attorney General, asset forfeiture, civil, Trump

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatens to make himself one of the biggest threats to your liberty.*

President Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General just promised to encourage police departments to seize the personal property (cars, houses, cash) of criminal suspects.

The practice is called asset forfeiture. It comes in two forms, criminal and civil. Compelling objections have been raised against civil forfeiture, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of all forfeitures. Abuse is rampant in cities, counties and states around the country, routinely used against people who have not even been charged, much less prosecuted and convicted. (Often not really even suspected of criminality.)

“No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” he told conference attendees in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Monday.** But how can our top federal law enforcement officer ignore the profound difference between a suspect and a criminal?

No one is a criminal, before the law, until proved in court. Taking away property to make it harder for suspects to defend themselves — which is what RICO laws and other Drug War reforms intended to do — is obviously contrary to the letter of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as well as the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Sessions announced he’ll soon offer a “new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers.” Unless he clearly indicates that it will only be used against the property of persons legally convicted of crimes, Sessions will be merely making charges of an “American Police State” stick. 

America’s top lawman argues completely contrary to American principles of justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Bigger than Eric Holder was. Bigger than Loretta Lynch.

** Sessions also went on to say that “sharing with our partners” — local police departments around the nation — is a good thing. This is, systemically, the most dangerous aspect of it all, for it encourages police departments to take things for their own benefit.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets local leaders nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Messed Up State

Marijuana, sand, Nevada, crisis, emergency

After lamenting Illinois’s fiscal decline into America’s “most messed up” state yesterday, lo and behold, today we find the State of Nevada messed up, too.

On marijuana.*

Question 2, passed by voters last November, legalized recreational use of what we used to call “weed” by those 21 years of age and older. The measure also stipulated that — for the first 18 months only — alcohol distributers are solely permitted to carry marijuana from wholesalers to the new retail dispensaries.

Why provide a monopoly to alcohol distributors? 

“[T]he state’s powerful alcohol lobby worried that legalized weed would cut into liquor store sales,” explained the Los Angeles Times. Proponents added that provision as “a concession.”

But still not a single alcohol distributor has been approved to distribute marijuana. 

So, with pot now flying off the shelves of Nevada’s 47 marijuana dispensaries, there is no lawful way to replenish those shelves. Nevada’s DOT (which requested from the governor an official declaration of a state of emergency) warns: “this nascent industry could grind to a halt.”

That’s not just a bummer for pot smokers; it has the governor and the DOT in a state, too. “A 10% tax on sales of recreational pot — along with a 15% tax on growers — is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for schools and the state’s general fund reserves,” notes the Times.

Legalize marijuana, sure. And realize that the politics of it can be more toxic than the drug itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*Is that why the slogan “A World Within, A State Apart” is now featured on the state’s website?

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