Category: property rights

Equitable Stealing?

civil asset forfeiture, asset, forfeiture, police, abuse, stealing, theft, property, Common Sense

Is freedom a simple matter of drafting a lofty document about respecting the rights of citizens?

Alas, no.

Our Constitution does that, as does Turkey’s and, for that matter, so did the now-defunct Soviet Constitution. Obviously, vigilance is also required. Keeping powerful government agencies respectful of the law — our liberties — and, when not, fully accountable for transgressions, is crucial.

That necessary vigilance is lacking here in America, today.

Your local police — the guys and gals who might respond if, heaven forbid, your home were broken into, or come upon your spouse broken down on a dark, rainy highway — are being encouraged to take people’s stuff … for “profit.”

It’s called civil asset forfeiture. This “legal” ability to stop people and snatch their money (or car or what-have-you) without ever charging anyone with a crime forces victims to hire a lawyer to sue the government to prove their stuff is innocent.

Last Friday, I heralded a new Institute for Justice report on the growth of this dangerous practice of official police thievery. At Townhall on Sunday, I pointed out that even when reforms are enacted at the state and local level, federal law enforcement still facilitates civil forfeiture. The Feds encourage locals to continue taking stuff through a federal program known as “equitable stealing.”

No, my bad, it’s actually called “equitable sharing.”

But it’s the same thing, just with the Feds and locals splitting the loot.

We need new laws at the federal, state and local level that abolish forfeiture without a criminal conviction. If our “leaders” won’t act, we can petition at the local level to end this pernicious policy, forbidding any involvement with the Feds.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, crime, feds, police, property, property rights

Accountability crime and punishment general freedom judiciary moral hazard national politics & policies property rights

Our Innocent Stuff

civil forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, crime, theft, police, abuse, property rights, Common Sense

The Institute for Justice’s new report, Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture, details a “big and growing problem” that “threatens basic rights to property and due process.”

Through both criminal and civil forfeiture laws, governments can seize property used in — or the proceeds of — a crime. Criminal forfeiture requires that a person be charged and convicted of a crime to transfer title to government. Civil forfeiture, on the other hand, allows governments to take people’s stuff without being convicted — or even charged — with a crime.

No surprise that 87 percent of asset forfeiture is now civil, only 13 percent criminal. And governments are grabbing more and more. The federal financial take has grown ten-fold since 2001.

“Every year,” IJ’s researchers document, “police and prosecutors across the United States take hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, cars, homes and other property — regardless of the owners’ guilt or innocence.” Then, the innocent victim must sue the government to have his or her stuff returned.

Incentive to steal? “In most places, cash and property taken boost the budgets of the very police agencies and prosecutor’s offices that took it,” an accompanying IJ video explains.

IJ’s report concludes that, “Short of ending civil forfeiture altogether, at least five reforms can increase protections for property owners and improve transparency.” Those five reforms are improvements, sure, but let’s end civil forfeiture completely.

It’s the principle!

Two principles, actually.

Civil forfeiture laws pretend law enforcement is taking action against our property, and that our property has no rights. But what about our property rights!

We’re innocent until proven guilty, too … and so is our stuff.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags abuse, asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, crime, feds, police, police abuse, property rights, theft

folly nannyism property rights too much government

Fishy Schemes Against Human Beings

Post author By CS Admin
Post date April 22, 2015
2 Comments on Fishy Schemes Against Human Beings

Arbitrary governmental pricing of water — as opposed to free-market pricing — provides one major reason why it’s so hard for Californians and others to deal with drought.

I’ve talked about it before. And, as before — indeed, as is so often the case when government constricts our freedom to “solve” problems — the do-badders are pursuing more than one line of attack.

Under-pricing plus edicts about how we may use water are bad enough, sure. But that kind of central planning is just one method of making it harder to quench thirst and water lawns and crops. Another method? Diverting massive amounts of water from the service of human needs in order to “help” a few expendable fish.

In his Reason article “California Drought a Shortage of Water or Common Sense?,” Steven Greenhut laments fishy schemes to lower reservoir levels and drain a lake near the Sierra foothills “to help coax a handful of steelhead trout to swim to the ocean.” Handful? Maybe not quite. Nine fish. A mere nine.

The Lake Tulloch Alliance estimated that up to $2 million in water value would have to be expended to save each individual fish.

Thanks to coverage like Greenhut’s and Stephen Moore’s, and the resultant public outcry — plus the eventual resistance of local water district officials to the environmental demands of state and federal agencies — this particular attempt by radical environmentalists to elevate fish life above human life has been deflected. At least for now.

But there are more battles to come.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags California, conservation, drought, pricing, water

folly property rights too much government

Rare Earth Reserve

There are many places on this planet I would hardly dare visit, much less seek to live near.

One of those places is remote Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, a boom region where much of our planet’s rare earth industry is located.

It becomes obvious as you read Tim Maughan’s BBC report on the region, “The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust,” that the reason China now “monopolizes” this industry is that un-democratic, illiberal China does not have a Not-In-My-Back-Yard “problem.”

NIMBY is for freer societies.

The devastation to the landscape, Maughan writes, is astounding in scope and horror. “Dozens of pipes line the shore, churning out a torrent of thick, black, chemical waste from the refineries that surround the lake,” he explains. “The smell of sulfur and the roar of the pipes invades my senses. It feels like hell on Earth.”

But NIMBYnomics aside, Maughan’s parting shot is interesting. “[O]nce we made watches with minerals mined from the Earth and treated them like precious heirlooms; now we use even rarer minerals and we’ll want to update them yearly. Technology companies continually urge us to upgrade; to buy the newest tablet or phone. But I cannot forget that it all begins in a place like Bautou, and a terrible toxic lake that stretches to the horizon.”

I hazard that Apple and its competitors will discover ways around rare earth reliance, in the future — if consumers raise a stink.

It is amazing how responsive free markets can be.

And as for outrageous pollution? Socialist command economies were notorious for their horrifying pollution standards back in the day. Corporatist, one-party (fascist) China carries on that tradition.

The cure for pollution is obvious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags central planning, China, NIMBY, pollution, property, socialism

general freedom nannyism property rights responsibility too much government

Why the Tiny Domicile

The “tiny house” movement has gained momentum. More and more people — especially young people and childless people — see the virtue of very small houses. They are cheaper, can be made energy-efficient, have an almost necessarily smaller “environmental footprint,” and are mobile.

And I can see the attraction. For one thing, a tiny house would be easier to clean than what I have. For another? Snug. Many of the efforts are very cleverly designed and built. And certainly for young singles, they make a great deal of sense.

But, wouldn’t you know it, there is a problem here. Government.

Urban housing authorities, zoning boards, and the like, have not exactly been accommodating to this new development.

Which is, in its way, typical, and typically frustrating. After all, many of the reasons folks are looking to tiny houses result from government regulation in the first place. City, metro and county governments have been so poorly accommodating to diversity in housing demands that costs have risen horribly.

This is all explained over at Reason, which draws the bureaucratic environment of the nation’s capital in relation to tiny homes: “they’re illegal, in violation of several codes in Washington D.C.‘s Zoning Ordinance. Among the many requirements in the 34 chapters and 600 pages of code are mandates defining minimum lot size, room sizes, alleyway widths, and ‘accessory dwelling units’ that prevent tiny houses from being anything more than a part-time residence.”

This leaves Reason’s featured tiny home owner in yet another bad-government-induced limbo: “allowed to build the home of his dreams — he just can’t live there.”

We need tiny government. Or at least tiny-accommodating government. Really… both.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tags housing, law, nanny state, nannyism, regulation, rules, unintended consequences

property rights too much government

Philadelphia Freedom?

It’s fun to watch intrusive, abusive, and exclusive government operations fail. It’s instructive to see how they react.

Years ago, internationally renowned artist James Dupree purchased a large building in Philadelphia’s depressed Mantua neighborhood to renovate it not only into his studio, but into a place other artists could practice their crafts.

Sadly, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA) thought it should be taken from him and then transferred to a supermarket.

Dupree fought back. He got the Institute for Justice on his side and, after years of litigation, the PRA finally gave up, returning the title it had taken it had taken from him.

But with some final remarks from Brian Abernathy, PRA’s executive director, who thought it his mission to bring “healthy food” to the community:

Unfortunately, the legal costs associated with Mr. Dupree’s appeals make it impossible to continue. Despite all the work to date, PRA will end condemnation proceedings enabling Mr. Dupree to keep his studio. While we have explored the potential of building around Mr. Dupree’s property, a viable project under these conditions is not possible. In short, the inability to acquire Mr. Dupree’s property puts the prospect of bringing fresh food to this community at serious risk.

Nonsense. A successful artists’ complex is an asset to the health of a community, its economic health. And citizens, had they kept their community clean, and had the core city government helped keep it peaceful, would have eventually encouraged private expansion to serve local grocery needs.

Meanwhile, the PRA had not even lined up a business to put in the studio’s place. It was all speculation.

A “successful” PRA would probably have wound up with an empty lot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.