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crime and punishment general freedom property rights

Guilty of Claiming Innocence

civil, asset, forfeiture, police, robbery

Some gangsters take it personally if you object to being railroaded. So they railroad you some more.

That’s what happened to Robert Reeves, a Detroit auto mechanic and construction worker. In 2019, Wayne County confiscated his Camaro after police saw him visit a site that supposedly contained stolen equipment. The police did not formally accuse him of the alleged theft or try to convict him of it.

Nevertheless, the county wanted Reeves to pay $900 to retrieve his car.

Instead, Reeves went to court to end what Institute for Justice, which has been representing him, calls a “seizure-and-ransom policy.”

Soon the county was accusing Reeves of made-up felonies of receiving stolen property and telling the court that he had no right to challenge its forfeiture policy while being accused of these felonies.

Reeves challenged the county’s dishonest challenge, and the court dismissed the charges for lack of evidence. Two weeks later, though, the county did the exact same thing, making the same fake charges and asking the same judge to dismiss the same case on the same grounds. The judge again refused.

Now, years later, Reeves is suing Wayne County for the way it further violated his rights when he challenged its initial violation of his rights.

Although this again makes Reeves a target, “Robert will not be silenced,” says IJ attorney Christian Lansinger, and the Institute will continue to hold accountable governments that seize the vehicles of individuals without evidence of wrongdoing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Graham Greene

It is the story-teller’s task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

Graham Greene, upon receiving the Shakespeare Prize awarded by the University of Hamburg, Germany (1969).
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Today

To Freedom

On June 16, 1961, dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union.

The great Scottish moral philosopher, political economy pioneer, and Enlightenment intelectual Adam Smith (1723-1790), best known for authoring the 1776 masterwork The Wealth of Nations, was born on June 16.

On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln delivered his “House Divided” speech in Springfield, Illinois.

On this date in 1963, the Soviet Space Program achieved a first with the Vostok 6 mission, placing Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into orbit as the first woman in space.

June 16th is Bloomsday, a celebration of the life and work of Irish expatriate author James Joyce (1882-1941). The date was selected because June 16, 1904, was the date in which Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses was set. The ceremonial day is named after the character Leopold Bloom.

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Accountability government transparency international affairs

Patients Zero (1, 2, 3)

Covid, Fauci, patient 0

Three-and-a-half years late, the U.S. Government is admitting and publicizing the first victims of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China — who just so happen to be scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In a Substack article by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, we get something close to actual evidence strengthening “the case that the SARS-CoV-2 virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).”

The “patient zero” is not one but three, namely:

  1. Ben Hu
  2. Yu Ping
  3. Yan Zhu

The Substack authors quote Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and coauthor with Matt Ridley of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid19, who identifies Ben Hu as the “star pupil” of “the bat woman of China,” who, with Yu Ping, co-authored a paper on the coronavirus strain in question with said “bat woman.”

David Asher, who led a State Department inquiry on the virus’s origin during the Trump Administration, told The Daily Mail: “I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus.”

Much of the talk from officials in the U.S. and in China has stretched our credulity — but they were obviously trying to cover their foolhardy and borderline illegal gain-of-function research program. 

Unfortunately, a great deal remains unclear, like “who in the U.S. government had access to the intelligence about the sick WIV workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public.”

But on that latter point, we have a good idea.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Aldous Huxley

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954).
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Today

Pig War!

The Oregon Treaty, signed June 15, 1846, established the boundary between Great Britain’s Canadian territory and the United States of America, from the Rocky Mountains to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, using the 49th Parallel as the handy marker. However, the treaty was not exactly clear on the territorial status of the San Juan Islands, so exactly 13 years later, to the day, a war erupted . . . over a shot pig.

An American farmer shot a pig rooting through his garden. The pig belonged to an Irishman. The two did not agree upon compensation, and “the authorities” were called in, with infantry mustering from the south and the Governor of Vancouver Island instructing marines to land on San Juan Island — though the rear admiral in charge refused to comply with the order, on the reasonable grounds that war over a pig was not worth it. Local troops from both sides lined up against each other, but under command to defend themselves only and not shoot first. All that was exchanged in this war were insults. It turned out to be a bloodless war, discounting the pig, so it might qualify as the best war in American history.

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture

After Anarchy, Sue!

Seattle, BLM, protests

In 2020, in Seattle, Washington, “anarchists” took over a section of the Capitol Hill district and set up their own ersatz government, first called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and then, confusingly, Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). At the crime scene, which went on for weeks during what Seattle’s mayor called “The Summer of Love,” the anarchistic element was always a bit hard to figure, but the Black Lives Matter (BLM) presence stuck in memory. 

Now it’s routinely considered a BLM event.

What it accomplished was a lot of violence and property loss. So Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream, a shop in the center of the 10-block CHAZ/CHOP territory, is suing.

Not Black Lives Matter.

Which the owner, Molly Moon Neitzel, takes pains to say she still supports: “At Molly Moon’s we hold race equity at the top of our list of our priorities for how we want to make the world better. Black Lives Matter. The lawsuit filed on Wednesday, June 7 is not meant to undermine that important message,” Ms. Neitzel explained. 

She’s also not suing the individuals who organized and engaged in the insurrection/conquest, especially the 30 or so “protesters” eventually arrested.

The target? The City of Seattle.

Molly Moon demands compensation for revenue losses, of course, and the “team morale impacts we experienced during and for many months after CHOP caused by the City of Seattle’s decision to affirmatively create and assist the CHOP occupation of Capitol Hill, to abandon the police precinct and to stop responding to public safety needs in our beloved Capitol Hill community.”

In short: Blame the government for not protecting you from the criminals you support!

One might laugh were it not for all the violence that this very attitude excuses.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Karl Kraus

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.

Karl Kraus, Die Fackel, no. 445/53 (January 18, 1917).
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Today

Stars and Stripes

On June 14, 1777, U.S. Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the United States Flag.

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Accountability national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Facing the Debt with Deceit

trillion dollar coin, platinum, folly

The “trillion dollar coin” solution to the federal debt reared its absurd head, again, during the recent “debt ceiling” brouhaha.

I wrote about it over ten years ago, when Big Talkin’ Republicans were challenging Big Spendin’ Democrats over raising the debt ceiling at that time. 

The idea is bold trickery, allowing the President to inflate the currency by leveraging Treasury’s Congress-given ability to coin platinum coins at any face dollar value. 

Typically, such collector coins sport on the reverse a value far below the metal’s value.* The trillion dollar coin would invert that, fixing the face value far, far above the metal value. The freshly minted coin would be sent to the Federal Reserve, covering the books that way.

It’s inherently deceptive and obviously ridiculous.

Thus it symbolizes contemporary politics quite aptly.

After the recent budget compromise that forestalled any real work of marshaling the federal government’s scarce (if astoundingly awesome) financial resources, however, the trillion dollar coin has been shelved.

For now.

Indeed, Democrats are tiring of the debt ceiling brinksmanship game. And it is mostly posturing. “Democrats have introduced a bicameral proposal to overhaul the debt ceiling process, leaning heavily into the recent default scare to push a bill that would essentially let Treasury ignore the debt cap and continue writing cheques with no limit,” explains The Epoch Times.

Would this any be better than the fake coin?

Perhaps more honest.

But, once again, it would be Congress giving away its authority. 

And until Congress can restrain its spending habits, we, the people, will always come up tails.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* On the day I checked, the spot price for an ounce of platinum was just over $1000, and the face value on the American Platinum Eagle remained $100, the ratio being a tenth of metal value.

trillion dollar coin, debt, Congress, folly

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