Category: property rights

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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
crime and punishment property rights

Property as Persons

Think “corporate personhood” is bad? Well, there’s a far stranger notion in American law: civil forfeiture. That’s where corporeal property is said to have personhood, and thus can be sued — rather than its owner. This goofy doctrine allows governments — state and local, as well as, of course, federal — to take property from people without establishing that the owner had done anything wrong by strict standards of evidence and rules of culpability.

The property is just nabbed, really.

It’s a horrible atavism, an old idea from the bad old days before a rule of law was established. And it encourages governments to be kleptocratic. Whole law enforcement agencies fund their luxuries and perks by this method.

A typical example? “In 2003 a Nebraska state trooper stopped Emiliano Gonzolez for speeding on Interstate 80,” writes Jacob Sullum at Reason, “and found $124,700 inside a cooler on the back seat of the rented Ford Taurus he was driving. Gonzolez said the money was intended to buy a refrigerated truck for a produce business, but the cops figured all that cash must have something to do with illegal drugs.” So the government took the money.

This sort of takings — confiscation — helps drive the drug war, of course.

But it often takes from the innocent as well as the criminal.

Since “suing the property” conforms to neither normal civil nor criminal law, it’s all rigged in the government’s favor. It’s scandalous that courts have ruled it constitutional. Something has to be done to curb its use in America.

Rand Paul wants to reform civil forfeiture. Seems like an awfully small step. How much better to abolish it!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies property rights Tenth Amendment federalism

Land Un-​Grab?

When I took up the Cliven Bundy story, just before Bundy spewed his racist farragoes, I concentrated not on him, but on the broader issue: too much federal government ownership of real property in “the tiny state of Nevada” and elsewhere.

Since then an expert has weighed in on my side: Terry Anderson of the Property and Environment Research Center.

Sorta.Barbed Wire Fences in Grazing Lands - a technological way to establish private property on the range

I supported privatization of grazing lands. But I mentioned that forest land should “at least be ‘state-​ized,’” that is, transferred to the states. And that, it turns out, is what the current crop of Sagebrush rebels want for grazing land.

But there’s a downside to such a transfer. Grazing fees would likely go up.

Anderson titles his piece “Careful What You Ask For.”

And that cuts both ways. The environmentalists who want to centralize even more control in Washington, D.C., think that booting out privately owned ungulates would accrue benefits to the ecosystems. They are wrong, Anderson explains:

But “no moo” may mean fewer tweets, clucks, and bugles from wildlife. As private ranchers demonstrate, good land management can control noxious weeds, improve water quality, sequester more carbon, and generate more wildlife habitat.

Yes, “cattle grazing has improved the ecosystem.”

Anderson prefers privatization.

But that remains politically unlikely. The Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole suggests a compromise: fiduciary trusts, where the feds retain land title. Centuries of common law bolster the idea, says O’Toole, who assures us, under this form of oversight, “trustees preserve and protect the value of the resources they manage, keep them productive, and disclose the full costs and benefits of their management.”

Both of these alternates are better than current government mismanagement and overkill.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies property rights too much government

The Tiny State of Nevada

Nevada isn’t really that big of a state. Oh, sure, it appears large on the map.

But 81 percent of that land mass isn’t Nevada. It’s federal government property, run by various branches of the nation’s central government in Washington, D.C.

Much of the controversy surrounding the Cliven Bundy ranch, and the rustled cattle, and the standoff with the federales, has to do with federal government land.

From my reading of the Bundy family ranch affair, it appears that the legal question is not one of taxes, but of usage fees; not of endangered tortoises, but cattle. But mostly about land. My sympathies are with the Bundies. They seem to have a very old adverse possession case against the government.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that federal judges didn’t look very kindly to the Bundies’ customary rights. Federal judges prefer legislated law to common law. We’re a long way from our roots, folks.

But the issue lurking behind all other issues is the over-​dominance of the federal government in twelve western states. Five of them have over half of their land titled to and run by the federal government: Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Utah and Nevada. This imbalance gives just too much power and purview to federal agencies, who are then tempted to run roughshod over locals. That is, state citizens.

Cliven Bundy may be dead wrong legally, but politically, he has a point.

The federal government should privatize all or most of its grazing lands and desert lands. Its forest lands should at least be “state-​ized” — given back to the states.

This is a federal republic, right? Not an empire?

The states are not supposed to be mere conquered provinces.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom media and media people property rights too much government

Naked Truth Up North

In the U.S., broadcasters and savvy consumers worry about the behavior of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the electromagnetic spectrum not by defending property rights, but by licensing segments of the spectrum within locales. The FCC even regulates content to some extent, by threat of withdrawing licensure.

But it could be worse. We could be in Canada.

How so? Well, Canadian politicians have long picked at a cultural scab: their identity crisis, their fear of being overshadowed by the U.S. So, up north, regulation of broadcast content centers on the promotion of “Canadian” artistry and talent in place of programming generated elsewhere, chiefly America.

Yes, the Canadian Radio-​television and Telecommunications Commission has quotas.

And like all quota systems, it has long ago embraced absurdity.

The latest nonsense?

The demand that two Canadian porn channels provide more home-​grown pornography. In addition, the channels have been charged with not been providing enough closed captioning. (Just what adult movies need, careful transcription.)

AOV XXX Action Clips and AOV Maleflixxx are on notice, and their respective licenses are under review:

The X‑rated specialty channels are supposed to air 35 per cent Canadian programming over the broadcast year and 90 per cent of its content should have captioning.

As part of proposed licence renewals, the commission plans to hear evidence on the apparent non-compliance.

It might be awfully funny to horn in on those hearings, listen to what people will say about upping Canadian porn production to meet standards that encourage, uh, national pride.

But the dirtiest truth is that most regulation of the airwaves is just as ridiculous, if not quite as nakedly so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment local leaders property rights

Rights Violations Close to Home

Connor Boyack, founder of Utah’s Libertas Institute, has earned a reputation combating the dangerous no-​knock raids characteristic of the War on Drugs/​People. The point of these raids is not to defuse a violent situation, but to hunt for drugs or arrest a slumbering, peaceful home-​dweller. Sometimes people die as a result.

Now Boyack is fighting to reverse a stealthier assault on Utahans — the latest legislative weakening of protections against wrongful seizure of property passed in 2000 by citizen initiative.

The changes, put over as a minor “recodification” of civil forfeiture law, make it almost impossible for an innocent victim of a property grab by police to recover legal costs. For one thing, compensation is now optional. For another, any compensation awarded is now limited to a mere fifth of the value of the property taken. Yet the cost of litigating such takings is often much greater than the property value.

Boyack hopes to persuade Utah officials who do care about individual liberty to pay more attention to close-​to-​home hazards.

“One thing I noticed at the Tenth Amendment Center is that while liberty-​minded Utah legislators could join arms to [oppose] the federal government, they weren’t nearly as skeptical of the government here in Utah,” he says, quoted in a profile by Rise of the Warrior Cop author Radley Balko.

Boyack champions greater consistency. After all, when your rights are violated, the injustice and the harm are the same whether the perpetrator is local, state or federal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.