Category: crime and punishment

Categories
crime and punishment too much government

The Panty Raid 

“We just thought it was something funny we could do,” Peregrine Honig says. “But it was so scary.”

Honig is part-​owner of Birdies, an “intimate apparel apothecary and swimwear boutique.” The funny thing? Offer shorts with the letters “KC” and the phrase “Take the Crown” printed on them, to cheer on the Kansas City Royals in Major League Baseball’s World Series. The scary thing? The visit by two men who identified themselves as Homeland Security agents … who confiscated the underwear.

“I asked one of them what size he needed and he showed me a badge and took me outside,” Honig told the Kansas City Star. “They told me they were from Homeland Security and we were violating copyright laws.” Although Honig had designed the shorts herself, not simply mimicking a KC logo, the feds said that the intersection of the K and the C in the design was enough to cross the line.

But hey, they were nice!

Apparently even somewhat abashed, like “kicking a puppy,” as Honig puts it; very nice as they took away the merchandise. Which I’m guessing — now stay with me here — was not a threat to national security.

What we have here is called overkill.

At worst this is a minor and inadvertent infraction of copyright law. What’s that worth? A phone call. A visit. Maybe a cease-​and-​desist letter.

So, do we file this under Silly? Or Ominous?

Or round-​file it as just one more little example of the governmental excesses we’re supposed to accept as normal?

Though they lost in the seventh game of a first-​one-​to-​four-​wins series, I was rooting for KC.

Oops, did I just commit a crime? I mean I was rooting for K … C.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment free trade & free markets media and media people

This Ain’t Laissez-Faire

Things are what they are, not their opposite. Can we accept that as a starting point?

Not if we’re scoring ideological points regardless of the cost to clarity.

Newsweek calls drug-​war violence in Long Island “a harrowing example of free-​market, laissez-​faire capitalism.” To this, Cato Institute’s David Boaz objects that “the competition between the local Crips and Bloods [is described] in terms not usually seen in articles about, say, Apple and Microsoft or Ford and Toyota.”

Under a truly free market, the rights of buyers and sellers to peaceably trade are legally protected from theft and violence, and their contracts defended from fraud. Black markets, on the other hand, are made up of illegal exchanges, actively prohibited trade.

Sure, black-​market trade has something in common with legal trade. As with legal exchanges, persons willingly participate in black-​market trades and expect to benefit.

But economic activity that can easily get you jailed is fundamentally different in just this respect from that conducted in a relatively laissez-​faire context.

The difference has consequences.

You can’t go to court if you have a grievance with a black-​market trading partner or competitor. And persons less scrupulous, more violent, more criminal than the norm tend to be disproportionately represented among sellers of illegal goods that have especially big markups precisely because they’re illegal.

So Boaz is right.

The legal capitalism at K‑Mart, J. C. Penny, or a post-​Prohibition-​Era liquor store isn’t fertile ground for the gang warfare invited by the War on Drugs. We can’t tell the difference, though, if we ignore the difference.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment media and media people property rights

John Oliver vs. Cops Who Rob

“Since 9/​11, under just one program police have taken two-​and-​a-​half billion dollars in the course of over 61,000 seizures of cash alone, from people who … were not charged with a crime. That is the sort of behavior we laugh at other countries for, along with their accents and silly hats.”

So says a prime-​time TV comedian who devotes more than 15 minutes of his monologue to exposing and critiquing the malignant practice of “civil forfeiture,” which lets cops grab and keep your cash just because it’s there.

You won’t find such an extended, mostly spot-​on critique of civil forfeiture — bolstered by Q&A with the likes of Ezekiel Edwards and Scott Bullock — delivered by a “Tonight Show” or “Late Night” host. The credit goes to John Oliver (HBO’s “Last Week Tonight”), who finds plenty to satirize in the contradictions and silliness of “law enforcers” who function as thieves.

Much of the work is done for him. Oliver doesn’t have to try too hard, for example, to poke fun at the Funk Night raid, caught on video. The police seized 48 cars, contending, “simply driving vehicles to the location of an unlawful sale of alcohol was sufficient to seize a car.” Says Oliver: “Which means you might as well seize any car being driven by any teen on prom night.”

I’ve been more or less indifferent to the fate of John Oliver’s new HBO show; but now I say, ardently, “Live long and prosper!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment

But for a Video

I’ve argued that police be required to wear cameras on the job — for the sake of both the wrongly used and the wrongly accused.

But ensuring that video is recorded and then, if necessary, used in tandem with other relevant evidence to secure justice doesn’t happen automatically. It requires a culture dedicated to upholding ethical standards of professional conduct.

This culture seems in short supply in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

There, explains the Washington Post, “it is now clear that the police, without provocation, can beat an unarmed young student senseless — with impunity. They can blatantly lie about it — with impunity. They can stonewall and cover it up for months — with impunity. They can express no remorse and offer no apology — with impunity.”

Beverly Woodward, the circuit court judge in the case the Post outlines, should have recused herself because of a conflict of interest. She did not. Then, without explanation, she tossed the case’s one modest conviction — which had been obtained only with great difficulty. The matter would not have stretched even that far had a video of the incident not eventually surfaced, exposing the lies of the officers who pummeled the innocent student.

Suspicious circumstances in the case abound. Radley Balko gives the laundry list.

When corruption is this pervasive in a locale, state or federal government must intervene to reform and prosecute. It should be a lot easier at all levels to prosecute and punish those public officials who commit clear wrongdoing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment too much government

Red Light Robots

Since we constantly battle against bad government — it being necessary to pare government down to its essential kernel, where it protects rather than tramples our rights — we sometimes lose sight of the fact that good government is both possible and necessary.

Now, many folks will raise an eyebrow, here. “‘Good government’ isn’t just about protecting our rights,” they might say. “It’s about providing key services. Like roads. Traffic lights. That sort of thing.”

Sure, we need roads. And safety measures. Nevertheless, good government is not about overkill.

Take automated intersection policing. That is, the infamous “red-​light cameras.”

The New York Post reports that one camera — one intersection robot (better term, eh?) — snapped 1551 infractions on July 7. That was $77,550 for one camera for one day. No wonder that one city councilman likes it. And says it makes roadways safer.

But over at Reason, Zenon Evans marshals some skepticism. “A British study on speed cameras last year determined that ‘the number of collisions appears to have risen enough to make the cameras worthy of investigation in case they have contributed to the increases.’” These dangerous effects don’t appear to be limited to the other side of the pond, either: “[M]any reports,” Evans concludes, “have indicated that red light cameras in the U.S. increase accidents.”

More policing isn’t necessarily better policing. The old rule about traffic safety is that the rules should be set to what most people would drive without the rules.

Let’s remember: rewarding ineffective, counter-​productive policing with lots of money is a bad way to govern the governors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment free trade & free markets too much government

Giddy, Nope

The National Labor Relations Board has ordered CNN to rehire 100 workers and pay off 200 others.

NLRB rebukes CNN for “failure to bargain” with a union. The dispute apparently involves no breach of contract with employees — only a breach with a union’s demand that CNN deal with it.

Blogger Daily Pundit is giddy: “I can’t imagine a happier outcome than seeing CNN, the hack propaganda mouthpiece for the ‘respectable’ American left, being forced into bankruptcy” by a “rogue bureaucracy.”

But wait. Would the tyrannical destruction of CNN be — ideological schadenfreude aside — a happy outcome?

No.

However poetic the justice, or injustice, being inflicted on its owners and officers, their right to make economic decisions —  the right to control our own lives and property —  does not hinge on the content of their notions. The only way we can all have rights, share the same standing  in the world, is to ground our rights in our shared humanity … and not anything more specific, narrow, or particular. Only those who forcibly violate the rights of others properly forfeit some of the protections to which peaceful persons are normally entitled.

Even if Pundit’s point is only to relish CNN’s comeuppance, not to root for governmental harassment of lefty prattlers, it’s misguided. Each new assault on our freedom —  to hire, to fire, to speak, to write —  serves as precedent for comparable and worse assaults. If we hope to defend our own freedom, we should defend that of all peaceful individuals. And prefer that they be left alone.

We must defend even those with some pretty noxious ideas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.