Tag: crime

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.

Printable PDF

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

crime and punishment general freedom nannyism national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Not Plutonium

marijuana, legalization, Ohio, law, crime, illustration, Common Sense

If Ohioans pass Issue 3 today, the days of pot prohibition will disappear like the smoke from a wild night’s last bong hit.

That’s sorta what Nick Gillespie of Reason argued yesterday, anyway. “[I]f marijuana can be legalized in Ohio,” he wrote, “it can — and will be — legalized everywhere and the war on pot is effectively over.” Why?

Ohio is the ultimate embodiment of mythical “middle America” and a state that once plastered “the Heart of It All” on its license plates. It’s poised to become just the fifth state to legalize weed — before liberal blue states like California, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, and perhaps most importantly, before its dark twin in college sports and economic dissipation, Michigan. Given its paradigmatic normalcy, Ohio can be the place where the drug war . . . finally goes to die.

But there is a disturbing aspect to Issue 3: “Crony Capitalism.”

The constitutional amendment would not simply legalize growth and sale, subject to regulation similar to alcohol or tobacco. Though it would legalize home growth, it stakes out a complicated limited licensing system for commercial sale, allowing for only a handful of growers in the state.

Gillespie quotes one pro-legalization activist who objects to the very idea that “any group or corporation has the exclusive right to grow marijuana and sell it. It’s not plutonium. It’s an agricultural commodity that should be regulated like one.”

A recent poll shows voters evenly split on Issue 3, but increasingly troubled that the measure creates an un-free market, a lucrative marijuana monopoly for those funding the initiative.

Today’s balloting may determine only whether voters like marijuana more than they dislike monopolies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags crime, law, legalization, marijuana, marijuana legalization, tax policy

Accountability crime and punishment general freedom responsibility

Heroism for Everybody

self defense, gun, responsibility, terrorism, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Liberty is achieved, when it is achieved, at a price. Vigilance.

And this isn’t just an inspiring political message. It’s practical advice for extraordinary circumstances.

What’s the best thing to do if you meet a mass murderer on a rampage, or a terrorist on his mission? It may not be to merely call 911. As one counterterrorism consultant puts it, “We are conditioned to dial 911 and wait, but, in the case of an active shooter, that does not work.”

This conflict expert, Alon Stivi, went on to explain that “[m]ost casualties occur within the first ten or fifteen minutes, and police response usually is too late.”

And speaking of 911, remember that on 9/11/2001, the most successful anti-terrorist effort was by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93.

That was heroism. It cost them their lives, but they accomplished something in that they saved lives, too.

Some people don’t like bringing this up for fear of, well, hurting some feelings. But Ari Armstrong has an answer for this:

If we avoid serious discussions about self-defense and survival tactics in cases of intended mass murder out of fear that such discussions are somehow insensitive to victims of past attacks, all we accomplish is to ensure that more people will be murdered in possible future attacks.

There is a reason we should keep ourselves fit, and alert. Who knows when we may be called upon, by circumstance, to defend not only ourselves and our loved ones, but our way of life?

Sure, this “call” is made by the unjust. But we, the just, should answer anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags crime, gun, guns, law, responsibility, self-defense, terrorism

crime and punishment national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Most Murders?

murder, gun, gun control, statistics, crime, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

As the nation reels from another school-place murder spree, this time at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, The Detroit News took notice of a not wholly unrelated milestone: St. Louis, Missouri, took “title” to “nation’s murder capital” from Detroit, Michigan.

Detroit’s Chief of Police waves, as he put it, a “flag of progress,” not a “flag of success.” Crimes overall are down . . . as are (interestingly) police forces. Still, as the FBI stats for 2013 make clear, “Motor City’s overall violent crime rate remains the nation’s worst for the second straight year for cities of more than 100,000 residents.”

St. Louis scored 50 murders per every 100,000 population; Detroit went down to 44 per 100,000.

But hold your breath: all this is based on a per capita reckoning: Detroit still tallied more murders than did St. Louis, 298 to 59. Detroit just has more population.

In total terms, Chicago actually leads the nation, with 411 murders. (These include all murders, not just gun-related homicides.) New York follows with 333. Then it’s Detroit, followed by Los Angeles (260), Philadelphia (248), Houston (242), and Baltimore (211).

The 2013 murder count for the nation?14,249. Subtract the seven highest grossing murder cities and the number is 12,246.

That’s still a lot, but remember: nationwide, the murder rate (including murders with guns) continues to plummet — even with more guns in private hands. Could it be that more than “more cops” and “more jails,” more guns is the answer?

Dramatic Gun-Free-Zone shootings are trend exceptions. Most usages of guns remain in self-defense. Real gun control has been, in a sense, privatized.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags anti-gun hysteria, crime, gun control, gun panic, murder, statistics

Common Sense crime and punishment First Amendment rights folly ideological culture meme Popular

Scientists for Censorship

Climate Crime, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, censorship, global warming

“You have signed the death warrant for science,” scientist Peter Webster wrote to a colleague, recently.

The recipient of this charge had signed onto an entreaty to President Barack Obama, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren — along with 19 fellow climate scientists. They asked for an investigation into companies and organizations that publicly express doubt about predictions of impending catastrophic man-made global warming. Specifically, they urge the administration to pursue this line of assault using the oft-abused RICO statute, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.

Yes, the scientists are calling for harassment of dissenters and straight-out censorship.

Ronald Bailey, over at Reason, calls this a “new low in politicizing science.” Climatologist Judith Curry, who quoted Webster’s above judgment as an epigraph to her post on the subject, colorfully characterized her reaction: “When I first spotted this, I rolled my eyes — another day, more insane U.S. climate politics.”

The 20 alarmists, for their part, draw a parallel to the tobacco RICO investigations that were so influential a few decades ago. But that original case was badly decided. Moreover, RICO laws are themselves an affront.

The anthropogenic global warming catastrophists have previously undermined their case — lies, conspiracies to hide data, misleading use of computer models, and a relentless campaign to turn scientific inquiry into “settled science” will do that. But now, the grotesque spectacle of scientists demanding that the full weight and force of coercive government come down on their “opponents” completely destroys any remaining shred of credibility.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags censorship, climate change, climate politics, crime, global warming

Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture nannyism too much government

I Prefer Plastic

Paper or Plastic, collage, photomontage, Paul Jacob, James Gill, illustration, politics

When I go to the supermarket, and get asked “paper or plastic?” — about which bag the checker should wrap my purchases in — I almost always say “plastic.” They are lighter than paper bags, are easily re-usable for a wide variety of home purposes, and resist water — thus less apt to self-destruct on the trip from store to car, car to kitchen.

Of course, anything plastic and mega-popular makes a perfect target for environmentalist critics. Hundreds of cities, particularly on the West Coast — but throughout the world — now outlaw plastic bags or restrict their use.

We are encouraged to buy and re-use cloth shopping bags — which in my experience get stinky pretty quickly.

On many issues (say, pollution) my heart is with the environmentalists. But on the bag issue, I’m skeptical. Thankfully, Katherine Mangu-Ward has a great piece at Reason, showing that the scientific case against the plastic bag is weak — weaker than a paper bag holding wet veggies, an exploded Coke, and frozen meat.

Plastic bags are not the litter problem they’ve been cracked up to be, she says, citing one study figuring that “all plastic bags, of which plastic retail bags are only a subset, are just 0.6 percent of visible litter nationwide.”

And, as for harm to wildlife, she quotes a Greenpeace biologist to good effect: “It’s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags. The evidence shows just the opposite. We are not going to solve the problem of waste by focusing on plastic bags. . . . On a global basis plastic bags aren’t an issue.”

What is at issue is their utility, reusability, and . . . our freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags crime, environmentalism, environmentalist, Greenspeace, law, nanny state, plastic, pollution

Common Sense crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism responsibility too much government

Must the War Go On and On?

Post author By CS Admin
Post date August 18, 2015
13 Comments on Must the War Go On and On?

I was still a kid, but I remember: as the Vietnam War dragged on, and on, we Americans continued to receive hopeful missives about how the next assault, or regroup, or dedication of manpower and weaponry, would lead to better results.

That’s what came to mind as I read the latest dispatch from the War on Drugs, in the Los Angeles Times. “White House announces push to combat growing heroin epidemic,” ran the headline.

So, it’s growing again? Haven’t I read this about a thousand times?

Talk about a familiar story:

The path to heroin addiction and overdoses can begin when patients are legally prescribed drugs containing opium, said Dr. Walter Ling, professor of psychiatry and founding director of the Integrated Substance Abuse Program at UCLA. . . .

“Once they get hooked they find out it’s very expensive to get these medicines and it’s much cheaper on the street. . . . That leads to street heroin abuse, which leads to the increase in opium overdoses,” Ling said.

But the rest of the story? Not reported.

Oh, sure: we were regaled with how dangerous the cheap street drugs are, because of how they are diluted. What we are not told, though, is that this is not a characteristic of heroin, as such, but of illegal heroin.

Decriminalize it. Let the legitimate market do what black markets cannot: provide responsible information that would discourage accidental overdoses.

Instead, we have a new and futile $1.3 million plan.

We’re overdosing on government. The cure is to cut down government to the proper dose.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags addiction, big government, crime, Drug War, drugs, law

crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Robert Reich Makes Common Cause With Police State

Post author By CS Admin
Post date July 22, 2015
4 Comments on Robert Reich Makes Common Cause With Police State

Police State Apologist, Facebook, Robert Reich, collage, photomontage, Paul Jacob, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, political, politics

Common Cause says its job is “Holding Power Accountable.” Robert Reich is the pre-eminent “people’s progressive” propagandist of our time, promoting himself as on the side of underdogs and against corporate power structures.

After the Wisconsin John Doe probe was judicially squelched, last week, Reich promoted Common Causes’s official reaction, insisting that “Corruption — even the appearance of corruption — erodes our democracy. Corruption of our system of justice undermines strikes at the heart of our government.”

This is the Common Cause take:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ended the investigation of possible illegal activity between Scott Walker’s 2011-2012 recall campaign and outside special interest groups.

Four of the justices of the court were the beneficiaries of dark money spent in their behalf and which was the heart of this case. They should have recused themselves and did not.

Robert Reich enthusiastically reiterated Common Cause’s demand for adoption and practice of strict judicial “recusal rules.”

Hmmm. No mention that a federal judge had also ordered the investigation shut down, but that ruling was stayed awaiting state court resolution.

No mention, by either Reich or Common Cause, of the methods the prosecutors used in this case, the gag rules and secrecy, the official attempt to squelch public discussion.

Also no mention of the pre-dawn raids, complete with SWAT teams, barking dogs, and pointed guns, as if the political activists (targeted for unsubstantiated campaign finance rule breaches) were violent drug dealers or terrorists.

The lack of mention of those tactics suggests not merely a lack of interest in the real rule-of-law questions, but also an acceptance of those tactics . . . when applied to political enemies.

That is worse than mere corruption.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags crime, injustice, justice, Justices, Robert Reich, Scott Walker, Wisconsin

crime and punishment general freedom too much government

Why Police-State Tactics?

What do the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, and campaign finance law have in common?

Police-state tactics.

Most folks now understand how the War on Drugs and the War on Terror can erode civil liberties — but how does campaign finance law fit in with the other two?

My weekend Townhall column explains.

Several years ago, Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker sought to tame public unions in his state, and against much opposition — quite a bit of it national — not only succeeded in changing law but beat back a recall vote as well.

So Democratic Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm orchestrated a crack-down on conservative groups supportive of Walker’s reforms, complete with night-time SWAT-team raids on the homes of activists who were, they judged, “on the wrong side.”

The thin rationale was possible campaign finance violations, the idea that citizens and their organizations “coordinating” with the governor to advocate for public policies is somehow illegal.

The police state tactics were used because they were available. And obviously thought to be politically acceptable. That the courts have now ruled the means — indeed, the whole probe by prosecutors — unconstitutional doesn’t negate the terrifying fact that the state used such horrific methods to attack peaceful people.

Clearly, people in government have used understandable fears regarding drugs and terrorism to erode our liberties, even when the “crimes” they fight with such illiberal overkill have nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with drugs or terror.

Except the drug that is — and the terror wielded by — out-of-control government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags crime, Drug War, John Doe, police, police abuse, police militarization, prosecution, war on terror

crime and punishment

Cops as Robbers

If there’s anything that cops should not be, it’s robbers.

By “cops” I mean anyone, including prosecutors, charged with protecting us against criminals. The guardians should not become predators themselves.

Thankfully, these two presumptively opposite categories of men have not become wholly indistinguishable — yet. But every day brings more evidence that we’re skating closer to that abyss.

Consider the police raid on the Michigan home of Ginnifer Hency, whose alleged crime was possession of marijuana with “intent to deliver,” i.e., to use it to assuage her own disease-caused pain, as well as that of others for whom she is a registered caregiver. Hency is fully compliant with all state law. A judge has therefore dismissed the charges wrongly brought against her.

At least one official involved in the case, then, has exhibited the respect for rights and justice that all should be exhibiting.

Good.

But questions remain.

Why was her home raided to begin with? Why was she charged? Why did police use the raid to grab loot, everything from TV sets to her kids’ cell phones and iPads?

And why, after the charges were dismissed, did a prosecutor gloat that he didn’t have to return Hency’s belongings, that “I can still beat you in civil court”?

Actually, we don’t need to know the motives of such thugs to know that they must be stopped.

The Michigan House is considering bills that would make this type of legalized robbery harder.

It should also be punishable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags crime, Drug War, police