Category: general freedom

Thieves Caught, Return Loot

Post author By CS Admin
Post date May 18, 2015
4 Comments on Thieves Caught, Return Loot

Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner, was robbed. The marauders took $107,000 of his honestly earned money.

We don’t need the police to find out who did it (and no, the police themselves are not the culprit, not this time). The IRS took the money, suspecting that he “structured” his bank deposits to avoid reporting requirements. McLellan’s niece, responsible for making deposits, had followed a teller’s (bad) advice to deposit the money in such a way as to avoid paperwork. The IRS noticed the “too small” deposits and looted the account despite having no indication that the funds were ill-gotten.

“It took me 13 years to save that much money,” McLellan says, “and it took fewer than 13 seconds for the government to take it away.”

This, even though the IRS had recently promised not to summarily nab account contents solely for alleged “structuring.”

At first, the government offered to settle with McLellan by returning one half the money, their standard (and outrageous) offer in such cases. But neither McLellan nor the Institute for Justice — the champions of property rights helping him with the case — accepted the government’s “deal.”

Last week, the IRS dropped the case and agreed to return their booty. But only the principal. No interest, no attorney fees (for McLellan’s first lawyer), none of the $19,000 McLellan paid an accountant to prove his innocence.

IJ will continue to litigate. We can hope that the IRS will continue to lose.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags IRS, tax, tax policy, theft

crime and punishment general freedom too much government

The Right to Ignore Leviathan

Post author By CS Admin
Post date May 15, 2015
6 Comments on The Right to Ignore Leviathan

Charles Murray, author of Losing Ground and other controversial books, has a suggestion. For business people. Pillars of the community. Fine, upstanding citizens.

Civil disobedience.

He’s suggesting, says John Stossel, that we ignore the parts of government that don’t make any sense, all the nonsense in the big books of the regulatory state.

Murray’s done this in his latest, intriguingly titled book, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission. Stossel discusses it on reason.com:

Murray says, correctly, that no ordinary human being — not even a team of lawyers — can ever be sure how to obey the 810 pages of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 1,024 pages of the Affordable Care Act or 2,300 pages of Dodd-Frank.

What if we all stopped trying? The government can’t put everyone in jail.

This is a provocative idea, even if not new.

Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail for not paying the poll tax, a tax that helped pay for the Mexican war he so despised (and was right to despise). Thoreau eloquently argued for civil disobedience in such cases; Herbert Spencer did something similar, in his 1851 Social Statics, with the chapter “The Right to Ignore the State.”

It is a risky tactic, of course. Thoreau was, after all, incarcerated for that night. You could wind up spending more time in the hoosegow.

Still, it could be worth it. Civil disobedience has good effects. Stossel cites “historian Thaddeus Russell [who] reminds us that many freedoms we take for granted exist not because the government graciously granted liberties to us but because of lawbreakers.”

It’s another path for citizen-initiated reform.

And it’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Charles Murray, civil disobedience, Dodd-Frank, law, laws, Losing Ground

crime and punishment general freedom government transparency judiciary national politics & policies

Court Vindicates Snowden

Sometimes if you postpone something long enough, someone else will do the job.

Last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program unlawful, I immediately saw it as a vindication of Edward Snowden and his “illegal” leaks.

It will be hard to charge the man with treason for uncovering programs that have been determined, in court, to be themselves treasonous — or at least unconstitutional.

But I was busy last week; didn’t have time to make the case.

Nicely, Noah Feldman made it for me, at Bloomberg View. “This is the most serious blow to date,” writes Feldman in his May 7 article, a blow against “the legacy of the USA Patriot Act and the surveillance overreach that followed 9/11.”

The linkage with Snowden is in no way an imposition on the story:

The first striking thing about the court’s opinion was how openly it relied on Snowden’s revelations of classified material. The court described how the program was known — by Snowden’s leaks. It also analyzed the NSA order to Verizon, leaked by Snowden, that proved the existence of the program and revealed indirectly the legal reasoning that the government relied on to authorize the metadata collection.

More importantly, Feldman recognizes that the decision rightly breaks “the bad precedent of secret law created by the NSA.”

A republic isn’t a republic if its laws are secret.

Now, of course, it’s time for Americans to cease their procrastination. If we don’t recognize that our government is out of control, no one else’s determination will matter.

Except, perhaps, history’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Edward Snowden, law, treason, whistle-blower

Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom

Atrocious “Justice”

This week I traveled to South Dakota to release an 18-page report on Attorney General Marty Jackley’s prosecution of Dr. Annette Bosworth. In less than two weeks, Bosworth goes on trial facing 12 felony counts carrying a maximum penalty of 24 years in prison and $48,000 in fines.

From my research, that’s the most severe penalty any American has ever faced on a petition-related charge. Conversely, the transgressions alleged against Dr. Bosworth are arguably the least sinister ever prosecuted.

She had made available, at her office, petitions to place her name on last year’s GOP primary ballot … for patients and visitors to sign. During that time, the doctor traveled on a medical mission of mercy to typhoon-devastated Philippines. While she was gone, 37 people — including her sister — signed those nominating petitions.

When Dr. Bosworth returned and the petition period came to a close, she signed as the circulator of those six petitions. But the circulator statement reads that she witnessed each signature being affixed.

So Attorney General Jackley charged her with six felony counts of filing a false document and another six for perjury.

While I empathize with Bosworth’s situation, my report was focused on the impact such an over-the-top prosecution has on the people of “the other Sunshine State” — the woman considering a run for public office or the fellow thinking about gathering signatures.

Our election system should be open and welcoming. Not frightening.

Petition rules must be enforced. But consistently, in a non-partisan and reasonable way — not by coming down in a draconian, disproportionate fashion.

And not singling out someone the AG just happens to have been at odds with personally and professionally for years.

“AG” ought not stand for “Atrocity Generator.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Dr. Annette Bosworth, election laws, Judicial Watch, petition, petition process

general freedom nannyism too much government

Wealth Versus Disaster

Poverty kills.

In “The Tragedy of Nepal,” aerospace engineer Rand Simberg explains why industry-deniers striving to block economic progress in the name of blocking “climate change” do no favor to the poorest countries of the world.

Human beings cannot prevent disasters like the earthquake that recently struck Nepal. We can, though, mitigate their destructiveness … by being as economically free as possible and, therefore, as rich as possible.

And thus able to afford more durable — even antifragile — structures and infrastructure.

The same capital-intensive achievements that protect us when Mother Nature is quiescent also protect us when she’s at her worst. Buildings are more likely to withstand a quake when constructed of the best possible materials and designs. But the most robust safeguards can be the norm only when we are free and wealthy enough to engage in the industrial processes required to produce them.

This is a familiar point. But it bears repeating because it is not familiar enough to discourage foes of a vague threat called “climate change” — nothing new in earth’s history — from also ranging themselves against industrial production.

Industry-deniers assert that we can manipulate climate trends for the better if only we radically curb our carbon-emitting impact on the atmosphere. But attempts to enact this fantasy will only make it ever harder to grapple with vagaries of nature commonplace long before the rise of civilizations.

Human survival requires the opposite policy. It requires full freedom to build nature-transforming industries — and buildings, and all the other man-made bulwarks of our lives and future.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags antifragile, climate change, earthquake, industry, Nepal

Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom individual achievement responsibility

Resist Criminal Attacks

Are you ever too old to stop a mugger? Not if your mobility scooter is ready to go.

This conclusion is informed by the example of 92-year-old Eileen Mason, who was with her 75-year-old friend, Margaret Seabrook, when a mugger tried to make off with the contents of a scooter basket.

The two British great-grandmothers were returning from a lunch club in Wiltshire as the thief approached and targeted the older of the two.

When he grabbed Eileen Mason’s arm and reached for the bag, she shouted “Oh no you don’t” — at her maximum volume.

“I put my scooter into accelerate and turned really fast,” she told the UK Telegraph. “The next thing I know he was on the floor. I thought ‘my gosh.’ Something in me just told me to turn so I squeezed the accelerator and turned and he went flying. He was so evil looking.”

If you like this story, don’t miss the ones about the grandma who used a handbag to stop a jewel-store robbery, or the grandma who trapped a burglar in a shed.

Margaret Seabrook says they want their experience to teach people “not [to] leave things on display in their baskets.…”

That’s one lesson — don’t make yourself an unnecessarily tempting target. But the other thing is be prepared … to defend and evade.

If somebody is gearing up to rob you, be ready to stop him. At least, if you can do so without too much risk to life, limb, or liberty.

Thanks, ladies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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