Civil forfeiture is a shakedown on the face of it. The fourth amendment to the US Constitution specifically prohibits it, as long as one reads its language as being written simply and plainly. The logical contortions in having this meeting the simplest sniff test must be very creative.
They are not unlike the contortions engaged in to disjoint the "well-regulated militia" from the "right of the people to keep and bear arms," when the defense of the Second Amendment in the Federalist Papers was heavily couched in the idea that it was intended as an alternative to a standing army.
The Federalists were generally against the Bill of Rights on the premise that it was unnecessary under a republican form of government. The Anti-federalists had pushed for it on the premise that all power is derived from the people and that they wanted protections from possible government overreach (if they were alive today...).
Ignoring that, if the purpose was to avoid a standing army, then what was the intended purpose of avoiding a standing army? Then we also have to ask, who owns the arms of the militia if the concern was a tyrannical government? How were the weapons sourced for the suppression of the whiskey rebellion? Also, how is militia defined (check out US Code 10 ss 246)?
We can also look at state constitutions that were created around that same time and how their wordings do include it as an individual right.
Federalist 29 (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed29.asp) lays out the goals pretty clearly---to avoid the evils of standing army (perceived by the people of the time to be, broadly speaking, a subset of the citizenry who subsistence is based on enforcing the will of the government against the people) we can instead have each state organize militias, whose members would supply their own arms.
It's a reasonable question to ask the utility of the Second Amendment when the country has, for over a century, held a large, permanent standing army.
"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it..." US Constitution
If a government has a standing army and becomes tyrannical, it could be hard to abolish that government if the government has the means to use force and the people don't. I'd say that still gives it utility.
Even if it doesn't give it utility, the proper way to remove any constitutional rights is to amend the constitution.
Not practically in this era. Anyone who thinks America's private arms stores would turn back army-backed tyranny haven't heard of drones, missiles, or modern information warfare technology.
What you are forgetting is that the military is full of people too. Any uprising large enough to be legitimate would also include a portion of the military with access to those arms.
The military is always full of people. I don't think it changes the power dynamic that federal loyalists wind have access to modern high tech equipment and also their private caches.
A projected tight-goal military campaign is a poor comparison for a civil war on home soil.
The US was held back by international norms in Afghanistan. International norms tend to be softer on intervention for internal conflicts (and the primary source of muscle for such intervention is usually the US; not clear who would step in to keep a US deploying its own army against its own citizenry from committing as many war crimes as it finds necessary to suppress uprising). Contrast with how the US actually fought a civil war, which included 13 massacres and a civilian-targeted slash-and-burn campaign to break the morale of the Confederacy by making the tangible cost of the war felt by the citizenry supporting the military. Ultimately, you can't rebel from a city reduced to bedrock by a nuclear weapon, and the US has a lot of isolated cities that a hypothetical internal military-engaged civil war could use as an example.
The tool that holds the US back from military coup is good military and civilian leadership and the ultimate benefit not being outweighed by the cost (someone who wants political power can work with the existing systems to get elected, or get someone elected who aligns with their worldview). The Second Amendment was not a bad idea, but its goals didn't really bear out in practice (other than, perhaps, creating the doctrinal guardrails that encouraged creation of the National Guard. And even the Guard is ultimately under Federal control, thanks to the laws from '86 and '07).
I disagree with this characterization of "well-regulated;" the relevant Federalist goes into detail on how a state could organize its militia. Simply giving people the capacity to show up with guns is not what the preamble means.
Still, I think the rememdy is to amend it out if it is no longer useful; I agree with the plain interpretation that the right is an individual right, not a state right. The preamble can be part of a rational argument for the 2nd Amendment's lack of utility toward the end of repealing it; the argument can start with something like "The Second Amendment's preamble gives justification to its inclusion in the Constitution. That justification clearly doesn't apply to the modern world because modern civil defense looks nothing like what the Founders envisioned. It's time to ask whether the Second Amendment places contortions on proper regulation of deadly weapons that hinder a free and happy society in the 21st century."
> I disagree with this characterization of "well-regulated;" the relevant Federalist goes into detail on how a state could organize its militia. Simply giving people the capacity to show up with guns is not what the preamble means.
Well-regulated includes well-armed and that is what it means in context. How I would put it in modern language:
It's important that a large portion of the populace can be called upon to fight against threats to freedom and society. To ensure that the citizens are prepared to do so, they must be allowed to keep and practice with weapons of war.
Personally, I'm fine with discussing a repeal of the 2nd amendment; it's a perfectly valid question if it makes sense in a modern context. But that question is mostly academic since it's so politically unlikely to happen as it has broad support and the evidence against it isn't supermajority-level.
Great question, since they obviously are contortions. Those four words are extremely clear, and yet I can't walk down to my local army surplus and buy any manner of anti-aircraft battery (which might actually be useful against those drones the army can deploy ;) ).
I think the governing circumstance is that the law is assumed to not be a suicide pact, but I lack sufficient case history to really have the zen of how common-law precedent and the US legislature has squared the circle of "shall not be infringed" vs. various licensures, taxes, and bans applied.
Perhaps worth considering is that two of the restrictions - automated rifles and sawed-off shotguns - come from an era where organized crime began out-gunning the police. This may shed light on the question.
I wonder if something like Civil Forfeiture would be useful against police civil rights abuses. You would be able to bring a lawsuit against any police equipment that was used to violate civil rights. Thus if you get pulled for “driving while black”, you can sue the police cruiser for being involved in violating your rights. If you were a protestor that was assaulted by police, you can sue and seize the personnel carriers, cruisers, riot gear that were involved in the civil rights violation.
I think one area this would help is the over militarization. The police acquired a lot of military equipment ostensibly for fighting terrorism. However, with that equipment sitting around, the temptation is to use it for normal police work. If they knew they were risking losing the equipment, they might be less likely to use it when it should not be used.
First, you'll never get a prosecutor to touch that because of qualified immunity. Juries fall for the most expansive interpretations of immunity every time.
Recently Joe Biden was criticized for picking a retired general as the Secretary of Defense because it is improper to dilute the civilian control of the American military, even symbolically, by having men in uniform at the top of the DoD.
Yet police departments routinely evade control and scrutiny by management that did not come up through police departments. They resist oversight boards. They hide derogatory information about individual cops. All that has to end.
Civil Asset Forfeiture is one of the greatest constitutional crises of the modern era United States. It's existence is evidence that the federal government plans to continue furthering its encroachment on civil liberties and I truly hope that the people can find a way to get rid of it. 84 percent of Americans reportedly oppose it, and I often have a hard time understanding how the Supreme Court hasn't struck it down (outside of the obvious reason they don't, which is to continue to have stronger federal power).
The Supremes don't roam the legal badlands like caped crusaders, looking for injustices to set right. Somebody has to appeal a verdict in a lower court to them and they have to agree to hear it. Which generally doesn't: according to [1] they receive over 7000 petitions per year, so something like 30 per working day.
Do you know whether they have in fact refused to hear a case against CAF, or heard such a case and upheld it?
For context, there was a recent case on civil orfeiture in the Supreme Court (Timbs v Indiana 2019), but it was on whether or not the Eighth Amendment was incorporated (i.e., required to be upheld by the states and not just the federal government).
It ruled that civil asset forfeitures are subject to the 8th Amendment prohibition against excessive monetary fines. This doesn't mean that they necessarily violate the 8th Amendment, only that they are subject to it. Unfortunately, almost every state already has such a restriction on their books and it hasn't stopped CAFs yet.
It's likely that another CAF case would result in the court deeming federal CAFs to violate the Sixth Amendment where the CAF is not actually related to a criminal conviction. (This is conjecture based on certain justices' remarks to the Federalist Society before they were appointed to SCOTUS.)
"The Supremes" have long since failed the People of the United States and have proven all of Jefferson's fears about what the court would become to be true.
"The Supreme's" can not be trusted to protect the constitution, and because of their failure the constitution has more exemptions, and holes than swiss cheese
The court is a bit of a crutch compared to legislation, anyway. The only reason they play such a major role now is that our political parties have been in a dysfunctional deadlock for 40+ years.
> It's existence is evidence that the federal government plans to continue furthering its encroachment on civil liberties
The federal government doesn't have ideas of it's own.
It's steered by elected officials.
Politicians winning votes for "showing strength" being "tough on crime" and "standing with the police", is why some in the government might have a mindset where this makes sense.
Electing better politicians probably won't fix civil forfeiture anytime soon though, because there is far more pressing matters to fix -- say improve police training, or restore credibility of government agencies.
>Civil Asset Forfeiture is one of the greatest constitutional crises of the modern era United States.
Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF) goes back to 17th century Britain[0], and such laws were first enacted and ruled constitutional from the very beginnings of the United States.
You won't get any argument from me that CAF is a serious issue that needs to be addressed, but the idea that it's somehow a recent development doesn't comport with reality.
>It's existence is evidence that the federal government plans to continue furthering its encroachment on civil liberties and I truly hope that the people can find a way to get rid of it.
While the Federal government certainly engages in CAF, they took action[1] in 2015 to reduce (woefully inadequately, but action nonetheless) the incentive of state and local law "enforcement" to engage in CAF.
As such, while I agree in general (CAF is antithetical to liberty, is routinely abused and should almost never be used), your characterization of the history and main offenders/benefactors is flat wrong.
It's states and localities that engage in this sort of abuse much more frequently (and much more capriciously) than the Federal government.
I would argue the fact it was deemed legal in 17th century Britain and incorporated into the US early on doesn’t have any bearing on whether it’s a modern issue in a way that it wasn’t, or that it’s not a constitutional issue. Lots of things were legal and constitutional back then that would be a constitutional crisis now.
It’s a modern issue because of what’s changed. Now small police forces in on the cut shake people down in rural America like highway robber barons.
The institution of asset forfeiture is funky and stale IMO but, that notwithstanding, the modern constitutional crisis is that this literal highway robbery likely violates the due process clause of the 14th amendment.
>I would argue the fact it was deemed legal in 17th century Britain and incorporated into the US early on doesn’t have any bearing on whether it’s a modern issue in a way that it wasn’t, or that it’s not a constitutional issue.
I never said it wasn't (or couldn't be) a constitutional issue. And I disagree that the origins of CAF have no bearing on its current incarnation.
I bring up the history of CAF, not as some sort of endorsement of it, or to excuse its excesses or the harm it causes in our world today.
Rather, I look to history because it's generally an excellent guide to understanding who we are today and how we came to be that way. The old saw, "the past is prologue" is an old saw because it's both intuitively obvious and recommends one (of several) pathway to understanding current circumstances.
As Eugen Weber observed[0]:
"...This is what history is about. Where we come from, what lies behind the way we live and act and think. How our institutions, our religions, our laws were made."
Understanding the thought processes and mindsets that caused those who came before us to meet certain circumstances with CAF, as well as (as you correctly point out WRT the 14th Amendment) how changes in those thought processes and mindsets have (or should have) affected how we perceive and address the issues surrounding CAF today -- and most other things for that matter.
I think the difference now is that the war on drugs turned a large percentage of the population into criminals and an even larger percentage of the population into suspects.
It is useful to understand the origins of CAF and I appreciate your comment. I don't think it significantly changes the discussion, but it does enhance and inform it.
Most people aren't even aware of CAF. I think the ones that are, are either folks who have been stung by it or civil libertarians. The civil libertarians appreciate how serious the problem is, but I also think they may have a slightly inflated sense of the preponderance due to the news outlets they follow. In any case, I hope we fix it soon.
>I think the difference now is that the war on drugs turned a large percentage of the population into criminals and an even larger percentage of the population into suspects.
And more's the pity.
It's just one more good reason, on top of the many other serious harms (economic, social and personal rights) to the United States, to end the disastrous "war on some drugs."
Civil Asset Forfeiture stems from older in rem cases, which were intended as a remedy when the owner of some object is unknown, or potentially not subject to the country's jurisdiction, and thus prosecuting the owner is not feasible.
I'm fine with use of in rem based seizures in the following cases:
1. The object in question is unlawful, or creating a problem, and nobody claims ownership of the object in question. (E.G. police find a stash house full of contraband, and the actual owners don't want to claim it for obvious reasons.) Please note that I would allow for in rem to be used when the owner is obvious if said owner claims "not mine". This of course would not prevent separate prosecution of the obvious person if the state feels they can prove ownership.
2. The owner is known (claimed), but is not subject to US jurisdiction, and is unwilling to subject themselves to US jurisdiction. (e.g. somebody from overseas owns a boat to be seized for non-payment of fees, or somebody from overseas is found to be unlawfully flying a drone in the United Sites and the drone is to be seized and auctioned because we cannot do anything to the actual owner.)
Notice how neither of these are even remotely like the common scenario in civil asset forfeiture.
It isn't a constitutional crises any more than time manner and place restrictions on protests, or warrant-less searches of cars, or stops for DUI checkpoints without any suspicion, or a hundred other things are, or requiring a clear background check before purchasing a firearm.
Your constitutional rights are not absolute. With the appropriate level of scrutiny, in furtherance of a valid interest the government can restrict these rights
> 84 percent of Americans reportedly oppose it, and I often have a hard time understanding how the Supreme Court hasn't struck it down
That is because you shouldn't be looking to SCOTUS to decide cases based on popular vote. That's the responsibility of state and federal legislatures, either by adding constitutional laws or changing the constitution.
SCOTUS' job is just to make sure those laws are legal and followed. So only legal arguments are relevant.
Civil asset forfeiture makes it really annoying to travel through some of the prettiest parts of America.
Say that you like the parks and forests in places like Montana, Arkansas, Utah, New Mexico, etc. You're going to do a lot of driving along state highways with a lot of nice things packed away, and maybe a small water/dirt vehicle.
Most of those state highways have small towns every 20-80 miles where the speed limits briefly drop in increments of 10mph down to 30-40mph. In these towns, if you have out-of-state plates, you will regularly be pulled over for doing 5mph below the speed limit. You can expect a dog to sniff around your car if the patrol has one. You can feel the desire to just take everything that you own; it's palpable. I've gotten enough "warnings" to make a suit out of carbon-copy paper.
That's to say nothing of racial prejudices in many areas of the US, and you'll probably have to stop for CBP checkpoints in states like New Mexico, even in the middle of 80mph+ interstates.
It was a bad situation in 2018-2019, and I can't see it getting much better when restrictions start to lift in 2021. We badly need our courts to strongly re-assert the 4th Amendment.
I've road tripped all over the US without ever encountering that kind of behavior. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but your characterization of expecting to be pulled over and have a dog search your car is a bit melodramatic.
I understand your misgivings, and I'll admit that I don't literally have enough carbon paper to make a suit out of warnings.
But I do have a lot of them, and no actual tickets from those areas. I have had multiple K-9 searches with a clean car, and I did regularly get pulled over for doing less than the posted speed limit.
I can't prove that civil asset forfeiture is the reason, but my vehicle would have been a juicy target because of the things attached to it.
Doing less than the speed limit is indeed strange, that behavior is probably exhibited by drunk/doped up drivers more often than sober drivers. The fact that you get warnings demonstrates that they pull overs are not due to ill will, if they wanted to steal from you they were half way there: too slow is probable cause for a traffic stop and they could easily plant some drugs or just lie, the statement of a police officer is evidence. Set your cruise control at the speed limit or 1 mph over and don't swerve.
Driving over the speed limit is speeding, therefore actionable. Driving under the speed limit indicates impairment, therefore actionable. Driving exactly at the speed limit indicates a wise-ass and we can't have that.
I just finished taking a defensive driving course to get a speeding ticket washed.
The course material mentioned a couple of times that, quote, "driving at an unsafe speed" is illegal. And what's unsafe takes into account the prevailing conditions (so you can be ticketed when going the speed limit if, say, it's raining), and also the fact that deltas in speed are more dangerous than absolute speed (so if the speed limit is 55, everybody else is going 60, and you're going 40, you may well get a ticket 'cause you're creating a danger.
Almost sounds like the police can pull over and search whoever they like
Yep, that's true within 100 miles of the border - an area that accounts for the vast majority of US residents. I've been stopped several times near the Mexico border for no real reason; one office asks me questions for a minute or two, just long enough for their drug-sniffing dog to make the full round of my car and come up empty.
> Doing less than the speed limit is indeed strange
It really depends on locale; Some states (hello states rights southern states) have a 10 - 15mph speed trap (reform the police) style law from the speed limits in 1975. Some people drive on military bases, where, if they go 1mph over, it can affect their career.
The only time I ever got pulled over in that part of the country is when I was doing about a hundred mph. I think that was a bit unfair since the road was straighter than an arrow from horizon to horizon, but breaking dumb laws is still lawbreaking I guess.
Driving a hundred mph on a remote, empty road can be one of the most dangerous things you could possibly do. Large animals can and will jump right out in front of you; more than usual as they're not habituated to the dangers of cars.
I remember once driving through West Texas on US-90 (the highway, not the interstate) in the evening on a cross-country drive. I don't think I passed more than a handful of cars, if that, but after barely missing several antelope despite driving well under the speed limit, I just called it a night and pulled into the next motel I found.
It really drove home the point that the dangers aren't only the obvious ones. So even on a straight, empty road as flat as Kansas[1] and in broad daylight I would never go so fast. Who knows what might jump out at you, from any which way.
[1] I've driven US-50 coast-to-coast. Not much of interest in Kansas other than experiencing exactly how flat it is, particularly the western portion coming down from Colorado.
Also, if your tire is damaged (visible to the exterior of the tire or otherwise), fast speeds could cause a blowout. A blowout at fast speed can induce a rollover.
If your going to speed, at least make sure your car is in good shape the best you can.
I agree. This occurred about a week I had the car in the shop to be checked out before the trip. I only had about a thousand miles on it since it was last in a garage.
Totaled a car doing around 90mph on I-90 outside of Buffalo, WY when a deer jumped into the side of the car. It hasn't changed my driving behaviors, but I start to sweat bullets when the sun sets.
Large animals are part of the reason most people I know who can afford to do so drive large pickups and SUVs around these parts. My mother-in-law seems to have a deer run-in every other year.
If there's no other traffic around and nothing to hit I don't see how you can find fault with him going 100+mph. It's like any other dangerous thing people willingly do (e.g. rock climbing). It's also only like 15mph faster than the light traffic on a clear day speed on most beltway interstates to put it in perspective.
Because the United States--or most countries, for that matter--doesn't have autobahns. Interstates have all kinds of potential hazards owing to their multi-purpose function. But especially on rural highways that aren't limited access there's a ton more, like driveways hidden behind signage, or some kid on a 4-wheeler flying out a drainage swale.
Just because you think you're alone on a road doesn't mean you actually are. I'm not clutching pearls. I grew up in a rural area with relatively long (but not Texas long) distances between points of interest, and where people often flew down rural county roads. There're reasons car accidents are so frequent out in those parts. You get lulled into a sense of complacency until the tragic moment you realize your perception was wrong. Having grew up in said rural area, I'm probably less risk averse than most people. But I don't feel the need to point out the crazy stuff I've done or seen growing up to establish my credibility; some stuff is just objectively dangerous to oneself and bystanders, and driving 100mph on American public roads is one of them. And, to be clear, pointing out the danger is not the same thing as admonishing people for doing it. Pretending it's anything else but dangerous, though, just leads to people making even more dangerous decisions. The OP said the law was dumb; it's not dumb because it is dangerous. Full stop.
Large animals in the middle of nowhere on land so flat you can see for miles? I hit a deer once in Pennsylvania so I'm wary of the possibility, but that only concerns me when visibility next to the roads is poor. If there were corn fields or tall grass next to the road I'd be going slow.
I’m a white guy. I can absolutely attest to the type of policing the parent comment is referencing. I’ve grown up in and traveled all over the midwestern and southwestern United States and I can tell you right now, police in rural areas absolutely _are_ looking for any and every excuse in the book to pull you over, search your vehicle, and question you far more intensely than the situation warrants. I’ve also had my car searched by K-9 after getting pulled over for an alleged turn signal violation, so it’s definitely not melodramatic or hyperbolic. For reference, I was driving a stock Acura with in-state plates when that happened. Not anything flashy or suspect. They rely on asset forfeiture for income to make up budget differences and it’s absolutely immoral to leverage law enforcement like that. They know that what they seize goes directly into their budgets and they act on it. More than likely we have the war on drugs to thank for it, too, but that’s a different argument for a different day.
Your comment echoes my experience... in New York City. I’m white too, and I’d gotten pulled over more times in NYC than anywhere else. There’s always something: you drove over the yellow line for a second; your hands weren’t on 10 and 2; we may have seen a cell phone at your ear; why does your car have a big dent? The NYPD is one huge pain in the ass.
I live in Florida now; sheriff’s deputies in my county are very chill. They wave and say hello, and they don’t care why there’s something weird in the back of my truck.
Huh, this is strange. My experience has been the opposoite When did you live in NYC? I'm not white (I'm of Indian / South Asian ancestry.) I lived in NYC for years, and even owned and drove my own car in NYC for a few years (2017, 2018, and 2019). There were many times that I'd been speeding, and I've never been pulled over for speeding (not even once) inside of NYC. I've only been pulled over by NYPD once, and that one time was not without reason (I had made a right turn where right turn were not allowed). That one time they were pretty professional.
There was even a time when I was distracted, and drove partially through a red light (in Queens), and the car coming from the other side was a NYPD cruiser. If I hadn't braked, I would have hit them. The officers inside the NYPD cruiser glared at me (with a very angry face), and I braked, and then reversed back to behind the red light. But they went on their way (and didn't give me a ticket or anything). I'm not sure why my experience has been so different. Maybe the NYPD changed after wave of BLM/etc. protests that started in 2014?
Lack of evidence isn’t evidence of lack. Presence of evidence is evidence of presence.
That is to say just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen - and because it happened to other people, we know it does happen in spite of it never having happened to you.
Florida is an amazing state, I wish I lived there. DeSantis has successfully banned local governments from future coronavirus restrictions including lockdowns/shutdowns.
There is 100% chance I will lose a substantial amount of money due to a lockdown, there is %99+ chance I will survive the virus. Of course this risk profile isn't for everyone but that's the beauty of personal liberty: the freedom to make the choice that's right for you.
> Of course this risk profile isn't for everyone but that's the beauty of personal liberty: the freedom to make the choice that's right for you.
But your personal choice does determine if you put the lives of not only everyone around you but also your entire community at risk. Does that count for anything?
Personal protection is just that: personal. If masks are not adequate to protect you from others who may not be following best practices then I think the PPE standards need to be adjusted. You cannot trust/expect everyone to adhere to them perfectly.
I live in an area that isn't Florida but does not adhere to quarantine guidelines. Personally, I don't know of anyone who has been sick. We wash our hands and take basic precautions and anecdotally that has been sufficient.
Personal disclaimer: I am anti lockdown. This is causing substantial damage to our economy and I depend on my community having the financial means to purchase my services and products.
I work in construction and the majority of the jobsites do not wear masks. We are all ok. If you are feeling sick then don't be an asshole and show up to work. Everyone I know has followed this basic guideline. Of course you will say you can have it and be asymptomatic etc and we could discuss this ad nauseum but I will just tell you I am not open to changing my mind. I have an absolutism mentality on this position. I don't think we know enough about the virus to make these types of detrimental restrictions. For example we now know putting someone on a ventilator for an extended period of time typically does more harm than good.
> Personal protection is just that: personal. If masks are not adequate to protect you from others who may not be following best practices then I think the PPE standards need to be adjusted.
That's not the point of using a mask at all. It never was, to begin with.
Masks are intended to limit or eliminate the chance you infect people around you. Sure, they also help you not breed in particles, but masks are quite literally a filter you place over your mouth and nose to stop the droplets you're emitting from spreading around.
The rationale is that covid carriers can spread the disease for over a week without even suspecting they have it. They spread the disease by spraying infected droplets through their airways. Thus, the right thing to do is to be on the safe side and ensure we cannot contribute to spread the disease.
If the whole community acts responsibly and takes basic measures to stop the disease from spreading, the disease stops spreading and the epidemic is reigned in.
You wear a mask to protect the community and ensure everyone around you stays safe. You're intentionally putting everyone around you and everyone you contact with at risk if you not only refuse to take basic precautions such as wearing a mask but also engage with people who also refuse to do so.
> If masks are not adequate to protect you from others who may not be following best practices then I think the PPE standards need to be adjusted.
I mean, he did say it right here. Seems like in your theoretical world everyone wears a mask perfectly and there's no issue. In the real world, you'll always have people who don't follow the rule and you have to adjust to those.
We have laws against speeding, people still speed. We have laws against murders, we still have murderers.
Do you think people don't know why we wear masks yet? His whole argument is that if those guidelines don't work in the real world maybe they have to be adjusted. Maybe if you're so afraid of the virus you should be the one taking the financial hit. Not everyone around you, but you. You have the responsibility to make sure you don't contract COVID. If you're allergic to peanuts because they might kill you if you touch them do we ban peanuts everywhere?
NYPD is extremely corrupt. I know someone who became an officer there and quit and moved to long island due to the pressure for corruption/hazing/etc.
Another friend of mine is a retired NYPD lieutenant and I forgot exactly what happened but he told me a story of someone claiming to be innocent and his response was "How do you think I became lieutenant?"
While we're sharing anecdata, here's mine: I've driven all over this country, in almost every state, frequently in rural areas, and usually speeding (and not trivially).
I've rarely been stopped and never felt like the police were trying to seize my vehicle or acting more intensely than the situation warrants.
I don't know what the difference is, but I can second GP's statement that the experience you and GGP had isn't universal.
I know it happens, and for some unlucky people it happens more than once, but I think discussions like this tend to overstate how often it occurs because of self selection bias.
I definitely understand that I might be the unlucky one, I'm in no way implying it's the norm, and the selection bias is definitely a thing here - but what I'm trying to convey is that it's far more common than people think, and that even if it's pretty uncommon to rare, the consequences can be far worse than warranted or earned, and in many cases can be devastating, which is unacceptable for a system that is entirely constructed and can be changed with some legislation and enforcement.
Your first comment was certainly implying that its the norm:
> I can tell you right now, police in rural areas absolutely _are_ looking for any and every excuse in the book to pull you over, search your vehicle, and question you far more intensely than the situation warrants.
As was the root comment in this thread:
> In these towns, if you have out-of-state plates, you will regularly be pulled over for doing 5mph below the speed limit. You can expect a dog to sniff around your car if the patrol has one.
That's what I'm disputing here, not the injustice of CAF when it happens. Even people who oppose civil asset forfeiture (including me) still feel comfortable traveling throughout the nation.
I'm not suggesting that people don't travel - my personal opinion is quite the opposite - I'm only saying that it's more common than people think and part of my statement to that was a personal anecdote in agreement with the OP because I've experienced nearly the exact phenomenon they described.
I would not call that "implying the norm".
Regardless, CAF needs to be abolished and I wish the crowd that cares so much about the Constitution would care about Amendments that aren't the 2nd and 1st.
In this case we're not looking for the universal or the average, we need to fix these awful things happening to these people - even one example is too much and we have way kore than that, and you should be happy it hasn't happened to you yet, because it's nothing more than luck.
I completely agree; many of these cases are unjust, there are undoubtedly many cases of corruption, and the law should be changed.
I only take issue with the suggestion in this thread that we should be afraid to travel around the nation because of these rare events. There's far more reason to be afraid of dying in a crash.
I’m not saying you should be afraid of traveling the U.S.
I’m saying I’ve traveled the U.S. a /lot/ in several different capacities (from personal trips to touring with bands) and that rural areas by and large have given me more problems in terms of police than urban areas ever have.
I’m not implying that you should be afraid to travel - I’m saying quite plainly that the incentives around CAF are severely misaligned and that cops are very aware of this fact and abuse it when they can, and that takes different forms but one of those is mundane traffic stops that turn into roadside interrogations.
> I’m saying I’ve traveled the U.S. a /lot/ in several different capacities (from personal trips to touring with bands) and that rural areas by and large have given me more problems in terms of police than urban areas ever have.
How much time do you spend traveling in rural vs urban area do you think? If you traveled 75% of the time in rural areas it would follow suit that 75% of the time those arrests would be in rural areas.
Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean shit in a country with 330M people.
I've had a lot of problems crossing the borders between Colorado and neighboring states, presumably because my Colorado plates are considered probable cause that I'm smuggling marijuana. It's always "oh I thought your tail light was out but now I see it's not", "your registration has expired... oh I must have read it wrong". I've been ticketed for things that when I showed up to court were laughed at or dismissed for not even being a thing. I've yet to have a drug dog search the car, but I've had a handful of very confrontational and aggressive police officers get in my face and take a good look around my car making vague comments about how something fishy is going on, asking where I'm going, where I've come from, who's who in the car, etc.
It's worth noting that these civil asset forfeiture programs were sold to a lot of these small towns as a way of generating revenue off of popular drug routes.
E.g., a town is off a highway that's a known part of a drug route. A consultant comes in to the police dept. and does a powerpoint showing an average annual amount of drug money they can confiscate in order to fund the police/town budget. And the consultant probably has numbers from other towns who did the same. Boom-- you've got yet another civil asset forfeiture program in yet another small town.
So you get this town's police pulling over a larger and larger set of people who fit whatever description they've taught themselves rakes in the dough. There's a big incentive to do this, and to enlarge the set of who can be pulled because-- until relatively recently-- there has been very little risk.
I'm going to rankly speculate that the value of the OP's stuff he was lugging was high enough for such officers to take the time to pull OP over. But since OP didn't fit the drug runner description and the officer couldn't find any other pretense, they let them go.
I'll also rankly speculate you've carried stuff of much less value visible to an officer who sees you drive by.
Race almost certainly plays into this as well, but I haven't read a study to know the numbers on that.
Decades ago, it was well known in many areas that if you had a military sticker on your car you were to be pulled over whenever possible. They did this because they knew you weren't a local.
It seems the courts treat the 4th amendment about as well as they do the 2nd and the 10th.
More than anything the War on Drugs, which Civil Asset Forfeiture is a part of, has lead to the direct destruction of the bill of rights.
This is one of the primary things that lead me to be a political and philosophical libertarian, and why I oppose prohibition completely (even for so called hard drugs)
Most people think anyone that oppose prohibition on weed or other drugs simply wants to use them, but for me it is recognition that the War on Drugs has lead to the complete subversion of every single right protected by the US Bill of rights, every single one.
>The War on Drugs is the mechanism through which an enormous amount of the bad laws and precedents have been created and permitted.
>Add Mandatory Minimums and Three-Strike Laws to your list of reasons to hate it.
But don't forget the economic impact either:
1. We spend Billions on "interdiction" and "enforcement", even though the vast majority of folks who do use drugs that are currently illegal don't have a dependency problem, and treatment on demand for the small number that do would be significantly less expensive;
2. Putting someone in prison costs tens of thousands of dollars a year, and that person isn't contributing to the local economy where they lived, a double negative impact on the economy;
3. The stigma of a felony conviction usually makes most better paying jobs unavailable to folks convicted, further reducing economic output;
4. Building ever larger prisons and hiring more and more prison guards, administrators, etc. takes money away from other, more productive endeavors, often limiting economic growth due to lack of infrastructure, better quality of education and a host of other factors.
The goal isn’t prevention or increasing economic output, it’s to punish people for breaking social norms. And that goes triple for people of color. It promotes the power of the powerful, who can always make an exception for their friends while claiming with certitude that all other addicts are morally deficient.
So people can make arguments all day long that the War on Drugs is expensive and ineffective and unwinnable, but some people aren’t going to care, because it’s a long-running culture war that empowers the powerful.
I agree with your position and wish to add this quote:
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
(H.L. Mencken)
I have been. New Mexico in particular with out of state plates I've been pulled over 3 times for little to nothing.
Then I moved to NM and have lived here for over a decade (with NM plates) and have been pulled over once and let go with a warning.
I have to back OP up on the little towns, rapidly dropping speed limits and desire for revenue because it matches my experience completely.
Interstates are a different situation so maybe that's the difference in perception. Or maybe I just got unlucky. There were no dogs in any of the pull overs although in one case they did want to look through the car.
When posters from rural areas complain about "coastal elites" (often a dogwhistle for PoC) stealing from their hard-earned living via taxes, this is one of the things that flashes through my mind. So many - SO many - of America's small towns cannot sustain themselves through honest business and labor.
These are the people who erase the visceral horror of slavery from textbooks, who detest cosmopolitanism, who advise hard-up city-dwellers to simply "move to where the jobs are" (nevermind that they denigrate immigrants). But god forbid you suggest that these small towns aren't solvent, can never be so, that they have to move. That the future for America is a progressive urbanism with higher population density (and the advances in public infrastructure policy that will have to come with it). That's socialism. But dragging travelers out of their cars for a protection bribe (if you're lucky enough not to get Sandra Bland-ed) is a-ok. /s
> When posters from rural areas complain about "coastal elites" (often a dogwhistle for PoC)
Coastal elites are wealthy, educated, mostly white liberal/progressive members of the professional managerial class who think they know how everyone else should live.
> So many - SO many - of America's small towns cannot sustain themselves through honest business and labor.
Thats because tax-and-spend policies crowd the rural populace out of markets.
> who advise hard-up city-dwellers to simply "move to where the jobs are" (nevermind that they denigrate immigrants)
You forgot "illegal" in front of "immigrants"
> But god forbid you suggest that these small towns aren't solvent, can never be so
The crowded urban spaces you prefer are largely dependent on rural areas for their food.
> That the future for America is a progressive urbanism with higher population density (and the advances in public infrastructure policy that will have to come with it). That's socialism.
Its weird that you conflate forcing people to live in 3m^3 tubes like the Japanese and high tax rates on capital. They don't have to go together, do they?
> But dragging travelers out of their cars for a protection bribe (if you're lucky enough not to get Sandra Bland-ed) is a-ok. /s
These same rural people don't approve of the extortion but when you have a system where the government decides what people pay they don't have any recourse.
> The crowded urban spaces you prefer are largely dependent on rural areas for their food.
Most farming in the US is done by the same kind of bigcorp groups that do everything else, with a tiny number of well-educated employees mixed with mass seasonal agricultural labor (who usually aren't even citizens in the first place). It happens in rural locations because that's where land is cheap, not because it's actually being primarily operated by some idealized urban farmer.
> Most farming in the US is done by the same kind of bigcorp groups that do everything else, with a tiny number of well-educated employees mixed with mass seasonal agricultural labor (who usually aren't even citizens in the first place).
It depends on how you measure "most" but a lot of food is produced on farms owned by large agriculture companies. The food is grown by farmers who live in the rural areas. The farming itself doesn't occur in a vacuum, the entire economy of the rural area is mostly built around supporting the farming activity.
> tiny number of well-educated employees
Some have a b.s. in agriculture. I'm not sure what you mean by "tiny number" except that there are a lot of non-farmers living like sardines in urban areas.
> It happens in rural locations because that's where land is cheap, not because it's actually being primarily operated by some idealized urban farmer.
I'm not sure this is relevant, the cities where people live on welfare or develop marketing programs from cubicles are dependent on people in rural areas growing their food.
Edit: we've had to warn you many times and you've been posting like this a lot lately. If it continues we're going to have to ban you, so please stop it.
Yes, plenty of people unjustly have their property seized.
No, the chance of it happening to you just driving through these states on a vacation is very, very low. For example, there were 400 total forfeitures in Utah in 2015[1] and well over 10M tourist visit the national parks in Utah alone.[2]
Am I missing something? "The police can take your stuff without proof of wrongdoing" seems like a 100% literal violation of the 4th Amendment's prohibition on, and I quote, "unreasonable searches and seizures".
You're not missing anything. Police are allowed to rob you under the guise of "preventing future crime". Don't ever get caught with large sums of cash, even if your use is legitimate.
They could also prevent future crime by imprisoning all suspects, executing people arbitrarily or forcing those on the edges of the justice system directly into its maw.
Lots of ways for police to be effective in their role.
Below is a link to the existing, published study. There's no date on it, so it's uncertain if this is the updated study that the article mentions will be released tomorrow or if it's a previous one.
I'm sure police departments and associations will object. But as Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Getting mugged by the police reduces crime? Ha, good one. How much of a pathologic liar do you have to be to make a public statement like that with a straight face?
Our new Vice President is a former prosecutor with a long history of fighting to keep demonstrably innocent people in prison on technicalities [1], subverting state mandates requiring the release of nonviolent prisoners [2], and viciously fighting against compensating those she had wrongly imprisoned [3]. She also sought to expand the use of civil asset forfeiture in California [4]. Her record is the very definition of prosecutorial predation and abuse.
So the idea that the Biden/Harris administration will do any better than Trump on any issue involving the restraint of law enforcement is farcical. If anything, they'll expand civil forfeiture, unless the courts keep them in check.
In 1983 Biden introduced the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act, which became law in 1984. That's the main piece of law that enabled civil asset forfeiture. That's how cops take property, alleging it to be drug money without any evidence. It's legalized theft, turning cops into gangs that prey on the people. Note that "defund the cops" will make them rely more on this source of revenue!
It's true, Biden was an awful option in so many ways.
It's amazing that voters knew this and were still happy to crawl through broken glass to vote for him. The alternative was that much worse. I hope republicans find some moment of clarity and let their extreme wing be banished to a third party. It will cost them a huge amount of political power short term, but they need some time in the wilderness to rediscover the concept of principles. We need a sane opposition party that actually has ideas and isn't a general-purpose personality cult.
You missed the point if you thought Trump was about a personality cult. Lots of Americans tolerated his personality because they like the policy and the results:
He built over 500 miles of crime-stopping wall, raised tariffs on China, didn't attack a new country, appointed decent judges, appointed a wonderful person for the Department of Education, put an end to racist anti-American hate sessions at federal employers, improved the H1B visa situation, ditched the Paris Accord, cut our taxes, got that pipeline approved, stopped China from using NAFTA via Mexico, got several peace treaties signed, and cut lots of economy-choking regulations. Just before that virus hit, he got us to the lowest unemployment numbers in recorded history (half a century) for black people and he got income inequality to go down a bit for the first time in ages. He even signed the First Step Act, fixing the overly harsh sentences imposed on crack users by another Biden-sponsored law.
That's all policy that people wanted, not personality. I don't know if that is more reassuring or more terrifying for you.
A few translations, as seen by a majority of the electorate:
> He built over 500 miles of crime-stopping wall
Mostly repaired the existing wall which accomplishes practically nothing about illegal immigration anyway
> raised tariffs on China
Started a trade war that ravaged the farm sector, resulting in costly bailouts
> didn't attack a new country
Partnered with Saudi dictatorship to escalate drone strikes, and abolished transparency around them, attempted to start war with Iran by brazenly assassinating a high-ranking official
> appointed decent judges
Packed the courts with unqualified ideologues
> appointed a wonderful person for the Department of Education
Appointed a person who ruthlessly fought against relief for student debt
> put an end to racist anti-American hate sessions at federal employers
Aggressively fought against improving race relations
> ditched the Paris Accord
Went back on a climate policy supported by 70% of voters
> stopped China from using NAFTA via Mexico
Used foreign bogeyman to distract from automation, which has eliminated far more jobs
> Just before that virus hit
Bungled the biggest crisis to hit the nation in decades
> got us to the lowest unemployment numbers in recorded history
Was born on third base and claimed he hit a triple
Overall the biggest signal that they've devolved into a personality cult was that the republican party was so overconfident, despite all signals to the contrary, that they had no platform whatsoever in the 2020 campaign.
I hope that's just how you believe the majority of the electorate to be uninformed. Some is opinion, but some is just wrong.
Calling the wall a "repair" is far from reality. It is different in size and structure. The new wall is 18 or 30 feet high, cuttable more as a stunt than a practical bypass. It extends at least 10 feet underground as a 2-foot-thick concrete wall to prevent easy tunneling. In some places the wall is both sizes, doubled up with a road down the middle. Much of the old barrier was only I-beam steel in the ground, intended to stop cars and trucks. You could ride through on a horse or motorcycle. Other parts were just 8 to 12 feet high, without any underground protection from tunnels. Instead of being a major operation, a tunnel just required 1 person with a trowel and an hour to spare.
To say it "accomplishes practically nothing" is strange. About half of the illegal aliens present in the United States came via illegal crossings. Those are the ones who matter the most, because they obviously were denied a visa. In other words, they probably have a history that caused them to fail the background check. Illegal crossings also bring drugs to the USA, guns to Mexico (see "Operation Fast and Furious" for when we even allowed it), dehydration in the desert, drowning in the All-American Canal, and migrants getting rapped by their smugglers.
The trade war started half a century ago. It's still a war when we aren't fighting back. We can't opt out. We can fight, or we can accept certain loss. The farm sector provides far fewer jobs than the manufacturing that is lost to China.
Assassinating a high-ranking official is not attempting to start a war. The USA can get away with that, so it does. It's notable that CNN had a few days of loving Trump when he did that; they want war.
It's a matter of opinion about judges, but for certain the top 3 are not unqualified ideologues in comparison to Sotomayor.
Relief for student debt would be horribly unfair to both non-borrowers (like a plumber, car salesman, or marine) and responsible borrowers. The economics term for the problems caused is called "moral hazard". We would be subsidizing expensive low-value incomplete degrees, and thus encouraging more of this waste.
The effect of those racist employer-mandated hate sessions has been studied. It turns out that they cause the exact opposite effect from the supposed intent. When you put a bunch of employees in a room and lecture them about race, they start thinking of each other by race. It brings out the latent racism, raises suspicion, and creates resentment. Race relations were doing better under Trump until the BLM fundraising riots started stirring up anger. Sometimes you have to forgive and forget, but that isn't good fundraising.
People like climate policy when detached from any mention of job losses and taxes. The same goes for healthcare and many other things. Who wouldn't want something if there isn't a price tag? Mention the price, and opinions suddenly change. You won't find 70% in favor of the Paris Accord when you mention the price.
Automation may have eliminated far more jobs than foreign bogeymen, but that only increases the urgency for pulling jobs back from China and elsewhere. If the USA loses 1 job to a Chinese worker and 5 jobs to automation, that means that 6 jobs need to be transferred from China to the USA.
The virus crisis was mostly self-imposed by the states and by the people. The actual virus harms very few. The fact that rioters were allowed to form huge groups while businesses were shut down tells us the truth: the motive was to prevent Trump from having his record-breaking economy. In any case, basic hygiene is a personal choice, not a presidential choice.
There was a republican platform. For a rather democratic reason, it was the same as in 2016. The virus had prevented gathering everybody together, and it wouldn't be proper to choose a new platform without everybody there. No n...
I don't think many Republicans realize how much nose-plugging there was during this election to elect Biden and ESPECIALLY his former AG Vice President.
They have a lot of history to un-live; but, removing the man that said he wasn't going to wear a mask, and who regularly stuck his foot in his mouth was priority #1.
I don't understand why we are subjecting a practice that is objectionable on the grounds of violating property rights to "studies". It frankly doesn't matter if the correlation is 1. Taking people's personal property when they have not even circumstantial suspicion of having done anything wrong other than having the property and putting the legal burden of proof on them to reclaim their ownership is frankly just as abusive as a medieval lord plucking whatever he likes, and not even half as honest.
I think the way the researchers might phrase it is "the cops are doing this activity, I might as well watch them."
Hell, from the article: "according to a new study set to be published on Tuesday by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that has been advocating reforms to forfeiture laws."
"Police Say Civil Asset Forfeiture Reduces Crime. New Study Shows They’re Wrong"
Well if we count the fact that asset seizure without a trial is a crime itself (no due process and a violation of the 4th ammendment), then it should be obvious that it would increase crime directly in its actions and and indirectly by delegitimizing government authority.
People in this thread seem to be a little confused about amendments. The constitutional case against CAF is strongest in the Due Process Clause of A5:
>No person shall be [...]; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The SCOTUS interpretation of this clause allowing civil asset forfeiture was written by Rehnquist in 1996 Bennis v. Michigan, because the acceptance of such forfeitures was too "firmly fixed" to displace:
The evil monster that Civil forfeiture has become is no different than how the Mexican Federales turn into bandits at night shaking down their citizens on the highways for cash.
This is just another shakedown. America is no longer a democracy.
135 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadThe Federalists were generally against the Bill of Rights on the premise that it was unnecessary under a republican form of government. The Anti-federalists had pushed for it on the premise that all power is derived from the people and that they wanted protections from possible government overreach (if they were alive today...).
Ignoring that, if the purpose was to avoid a standing army, then what was the intended purpose of avoiding a standing army? Then we also have to ask, who owns the arms of the militia if the concern was a tyrannical government? How were the weapons sourced for the suppression of the whiskey rebellion? Also, how is militia defined (check out US Code 10 ss 246)?
We can also look at state constitutions that were created around that same time and how their wordings do include it as an individual right.
It's a reasonable question to ask the utility of the Second Amendment when the country has, for over a century, held a large, permanent standing army.
If a government has a standing army and becomes tyrannical, it could be hard to abolish that government if the government has the means to use force and the people don't. I'd say that still gives it utility.
Even if it doesn't give it utility, the proper way to remove any constitutional rights is to amend the constitution.
Not practically in this era. Anyone who thinks America's private arms stores would turn back army-backed tyranny haven't heard of drones, missiles, or modern information warfare technology.
The US was held back by international norms in Afghanistan. International norms tend to be softer on intervention for internal conflicts (and the primary source of muscle for such intervention is usually the US; not clear who would step in to keep a US deploying its own army against its own citizenry from committing as many war crimes as it finds necessary to suppress uprising). Contrast with how the US actually fought a civil war, which included 13 massacres and a civilian-targeted slash-and-burn campaign to break the morale of the Confederacy by making the tangible cost of the war felt by the citizenry supporting the military. Ultimately, you can't rebel from a city reduced to bedrock by a nuclear weapon, and the US has a lot of isolated cities that a hypothetical internal military-engaged civil war could use as an example.
The tool that holds the US back from military coup is good military and civilian leadership and the ultimate benefit not being outweighed by the cost (someone who wants political power can work with the existing systems to get elected, or get someone elected who aligns with their worldview). The Second Amendment was not a bad idea, but its goals didn't really bear out in practice (other than, perhaps, creating the doctrinal guardrails that encouraged creation of the National Guard. And even the Guard is ultimately under Federal control, thanks to the laws from '86 and '07).
Even so, it's a preamble, not a qualification. The second part is explicit it's an individual right, not a state right.
Still, I think the rememdy is to amend it out if it is no longer useful; I agree with the plain interpretation that the right is an individual right, not a state right. The preamble can be part of a rational argument for the 2nd Amendment's lack of utility toward the end of repealing it; the argument can start with something like "The Second Amendment's preamble gives justification to its inclusion in the Constitution. That justification clearly doesn't apply to the modern world because modern civil defense looks nothing like what the Founders envisioned. It's time to ask whether the Second Amendment places contortions on proper regulation of deadly weapons that hinder a free and happy society in the 21st century."
Well-regulated includes well-armed and that is what it means in context. How I would put it in modern language:
It's important that a large portion of the populace can be called upon to fight against threats to freedom and society. To ensure that the citizens are prepared to do so, they must be allowed to keep and practice with weapons of war.
Personally, I'm fine with discussing a repeal of the 2nd amendment; it's a perfectly valid question if it makes sense in a modern context. But that question is mostly academic since it's so politically unlikely to happen as it has broad support and the evidence against it isn't supermajority-level.
I think the governing circumstance is that the law is assumed to not be a suicide pact, but I lack sufficient case history to really have the zen of how common-law precedent and the US legislature has squared the circle of "shall not be infringed" vs. various licensures, taxes, and bans applied.
Perhaps worth considering is that two of the restrictions - automated rifles and sawed-off shotguns - come from an era where organized crime began out-gunning the police. This may shed light on the question.
I think one area this would help is the over militarization. The police acquired a lot of military equipment ostensibly for fighting terrorism. However, with that equipment sitting around, the temptation is to use it for normal police work. If they knew they were risking losing the equipment, they might be less likely to use it when it should not be used.
Yet police departments routinely evade control and scrutiny by management that did not come up through police departments. They resist oversight boards. They hide derogatory information about individual cops. All that has to end.
And isn't the DoD much far away from the voter that the police and local government?
Just saying, the two things might not compare very well :)
Do you know whether they have in fact refused to hear a case against CAF, or heard such a case and upheld it?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_St...
[0] https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-poli...
It ruled that civil asset forfeitures are subject to the 8th Amendment prohibition against excessive monetary fines. This doesn't mean that they necessarily violate the 8th Amendment, only that they are subject to it. Unfortunately, almost every state already has such a restriction on their books and it hasn't stopped CAFs yet.
It's likely that another CAF case would result in the court deeming federal CAFs to violate the Sixth Amendment where the CAF is not actually related to a criminal conviction. (This is conjecture based on certain justices' remarks to the Federalist Society before they were appointed to SCOTUS.)
"The Supreme's" can not be trusted to protect the constitution, and because of their failure the constitution has more exemptions, and holes than swiss cheese
The federal government doesn't have ideas of it's own.
It's steered by elected officials.
Politicians winning votes for "showing strength" being "tough on crime" and "standing with the police", is why some in the government might have a mindset where this makes sense.
Electing better politicians probably won't fix civil forfeiture anytime soon though, because there is far more pressing matters to fix -- say improve police training, or restore credibility of government agencies.
Constructed minds have goals and desires like any other mind. Weather or not the federal government is conscious is another question.
Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF) goes back to 17th century Britain[0], and such laws were first enacted and ruled constitutional from the very beginnings of the United States.
You won't get any argument from me that CAF is a serious issue that needs to be addressed, but the idea that it's somehow a recent development doesn't comport with reality.
>It's existence is evidence that the federal government plans to continue furthering its encroachment on civil liberties and I truly hope that the people can find a way to get rid of it.
While the Federal government certainly engages in CAF, they took action[1] in 2015 to reduce (woefully inadequately, but action nonetheless) the incentive of state and local law "enforcement" to engage in CAF.
As such, while I agree in general (CAF is antithetical to liberty, is routinely abused and should almost never be used), your characterization of the history and main offenders/benefactors is flat wrong.
It's states and localities that engage in this sort of abuse much more frequently (and much more capriciously) than the Federal government.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/120799/holder-ends-most-equi...
It’s a modern issue because of what’s changed. Now small police forces in on the cut shake people down in rural America like highway robber barons.
The institution of asset forfeiture is funky and stale IMO but, that notwithstanding, the modern constitutional crisis is that this literal highway robbery likely violates the due process clause of the 14th amendment.
I never said it wasn't (or couldn't be) a constitutional issue. And I disagree that the origins of CAF have no bearing on its current incarnation.
I bring up the history of CAF, not as some sort of endorsement of it, or to excuse its excesses or the harm it causes in our world today.
Rather, I look to history because it's generally an excellent guide to understanding who we are today and how we came to be that way. The old saw, "the past is prologue" is an old saw because it's both intuitively obvious and recommends one (of several) pathway to understanding current circumstances.
As Eugen Weber observed[0]:
"...This is what history is about. Where we come from, what lies behind the way we live and act and think. How our institutions, our religions, our laws were made."
Understanding the thought processes and mindsets that caused those who came before us to meet certain circumstances with CAF, as well as (as you correctly point out WRT the 14th Amendment) how changes in those thought processes and mindsets have (or should have) affected how we perceive and address the issues surrounding CAF today -- and most other things for that matter.
[0] https://youtu.be/XCyO8meahME?t=430
Edit: Clarified language.
It is useful to understand the origins of CAF and I appreciate your comment. I don't think it significantly changes the discussion, but it does enhance and inform it.
Most people aren't even aware of CAF. I think the ones that are, are either folks who have been stung by it or civil libertarians. The civil libertarians appreciate how serious the problem is, but I also think they may have a slightly inflated sense of the preponderance due to the news outlets they follow. In any case, I hope we fix it soon.
And more's the pity.
It's just one more good reason, on top of the many other serious harms (economic, social and personal rights) to the United States, to end the disastrous "war on some drugs."
I'm fine with use of in rem based seizures in the following cases:
1. The object in question is unlawful, or creating a problem, and nobody claims ownership of the object in question. (E.G. police find a stash house full of contraband, and the actual owners don't want to claim it for obvious reasons.) Please note that I would allow for in rem to be used when the owner is obvious if said owner claims "not mine". This of course would not prevent separate prosecution of the obvious person if the state feels they can prove ownership.
2. The owner is known (claimed), but is not subject to US jurisdiction, and is unwilling to subject themselves to US jurisdiction. (e.g. somebody from overseas owns a boat to be seized for non-payment of fees, or somebody from overseas is found to be unlawfully flying a drone in the United Sites and the drone is to be seized and auctioned because we cannot do anything to the actual owner.)
Notice how neither of these are even remotely like the common scenario in civil asset forfeiture.
Your constitutional rights are not absolute. With the appropriate level of scrutiny, in furtherance of a valid interest the government can restrict these rights
That is because you shouldn't be looking to SCOTUS to decide cases based on popular vote. That's the responsibility of state and federal legislatures, either by adding constitutional laws or changing the constitution.
SCOTUS' job is just to make sure those laws are legal and followed. So only legal arguments are relevant.
Say that you like the parks and forests in places like Montana, Arkansas, Utah, New Mexico, etc. You're going to do a lot of driving along state highways with a lot of nice things packed away, and maybe a small water/dirt vehicle.
Most of those state highways have small towns every 20-80 miles where the speed limits briefly drop in increments of 10mph down to 30-40mph. In these towns, if you have out-of-state plates, you will regularly be pulled over for doing 5mph below the speed limit. You can expect a dog to sniff around your car if the patrol has one. You can feel the desire to just take everything that you own; it's palpable. I've gotten enough "warnings" to make a suit out of carbon-copy paper.
That's to say nothing of racial prejudices in many areas of the US, and you'll probably have to stop for CBP checkpoints in states like New Mexico, even in the middle of 80mph+ interstates.
It was a bad situation in 2018-2019, and I can't see it getting much better when restrictions start to lift in 2021. We badly need our courts to strongly re-assert the 4th Amendment.
But I do have a lot of them, and no actual tickets from those areas. I have had multiple K-9 searches with a clean car, and I did regularly get pulled over for doing less than the posted speed limit.
I can't prove that civil asset forfeiture is the reason, but my vehicle would have been a juicy target because of the things attached to it.
Almost sounds like the police can pull over and search whoever they like, weird.
The course material mentioned a couple of times that, quote, "driving at an unsafe speed" is illegal. And what's unsafe takes into account the prevailing conditions (so you can be ticketed when going the speed limit if, say, it's raining), and also the fact that deltas in speed are more dangerous than absolute speed (so if the speed limit is 55, everybody else is going 60, and you're going 40, you may well get a ticket 'cause you're creating a danger.
Almost sounds like the police can pull over and search whoever they like
Yep, that's true within 100 miles of the border - an area that accounts for the vast majority of US residents. I've been stopped several times near the Mexico border for no real reason; one office asks me questions for a minute or two, just long enough for their drug-sniffing dog to make the full round of my car and come up empty.
> Yep, that's true within 100 miles of the border - an area that accounts for the vast majority of US residents.
If you're outside that 100 miles they can just make something up.
Lived in a small Midwest town where the high school dunces became the town police.
They’d brag about “probable cause” power trips letting them pull over women they were attracted to and men they wanted to intimidate.
America is a helicopter police state, yet to breed out a generation raised on great war success, and Cold War paranoia.
I find that very interesting.
It really depends on locale; Some states (hello states rights southern states) have a 10 - 15mph speed trap (reform the police) style law from the speed limits in 1975. Some people drive on military bases, where, if they go 1mph over, it can affect their career.
I remember once driving through West Texas on US-90 (the highway, not the interstate) in the evening on a cross-country drive. I don't think I passed more than a handful of cars, if that, but after barely missing several antelope despite driving well under the speed limit, I just called it a night and pulled into the next motel I found.
It really drove home the point that the dangers aren't only the obvious ones. So even on a straight, empty road as flat as Kansas[1] and in broad daylight I would never go so fast. Who knows what might jump out at you, from any which way.
[1] I've driven US-50 coast-to-coast. Not much of interest in Kansas other than experiencing exactly how flat it is, particularly the western portion coming down from Colorado.
If your going to speed, at least make sure your car is in good shape the best you can.
Large animals are part of the reason most people I know who can afford to do so drive large pickups and SUVs around these parts. My mother-in-law seems to have a deer run-in every other year.
Just because you think you're alone on a road doesn't mean you actually are. I'm not clutching pearls. I grew up in a rural area with relatively long (but not Texas long) distances between points of interest, and where people often flew down rural county roads. There're reasons car accidents are so frequent out in those parts. You get lulled into a sense of complacency until the tragic moment you realize your perception was wrong. Having grew up in said rural area, I'm probably less risk averse than most people. But I don't feel the need to point out the crazy stuff I've done or seen growing up to establish my credibility; some stuff is just objectively dangerous to oneself and bystanders, and driving 100mph on American public roads is one of them. And, to be clear, pointing out the danger is not the same thing as admonishing people for doing it. Pretending it's anything else but dangerous, though, just leads to people making even more dangerous decisions. The OP said the law was dumb; it's not dumb because it is dangerous. Full stop.
I live in Florida now; sheriff’s deputies in my county are very chill. They wave and say hello, and they don’t care why there’s something weird in the back of my truck.
There was even a time when I was distracted, and drove partially through a red light (in Queens), and the car coming from the other side was a NYPD cruiser. If I hadn't braked, I would have hit them. The officers inside the NYPD cruiser glared at me (with a very angry face), and I braked, and then reversed back to behind the red light. But they went on their way (and didn't give me a ticket or anything). I'm not sure why my experience has been so different. Maybe the NYPD changed after wave of BLM/etc. protests that started in 2014?
That is to say just because it didn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen - and because it happened to other people, we know it does happen in spite of it never having happened to you.
There is 100% chance I will lose a substantial amount of money due to a lockdown, there is %99+ chance I will survive the virus. Of course this risk profile isn't for everyone but that's the beauty of personal liberty: the freedom to make the choice that's right for you.
But your personal choice does determine if you put the lives of not only everyone around you but also your entire community at risk. Does that count for anything?
I live in an area that isn't Florida but does not adhere to quarantine guidelines. Personally, I don't know of anyone who has been sick. We wash our hands and take basic precautions and anecdotally that has been sufficient.
Personal disclaimer: I am anti lockdown. This is causing substantial damage to our economy and I depend on my community having the financial means to purchase my services and products.
I work in construction and the majority of the jobsites do not wear masks. We are all ok. If you are feeling sick then don't be an asshole and show up to work. Everyone I know has followed this basic guideline. Of course you will say you can have it and be asymptomatic etc and we could discuss this ad nauseum but I will just tell you I am not open to changing my mind. I have an absolutism mentality on this position. I don't think we know enough about the virus to make these types of detrimental restrictions. For example we now know putting someone on a ventilator for an extended period of time typically does more harm than good.
That's not the point of using a mask at all. It never was, to begin with.
Masks are intended to limit or eliminate the chance you infect people around you. Sure, they also help you not breed in particles, but masks are quite literally a filter you place over your mouth and nose to stop the droplets you're emitting from spreading around.
The rationale is that covid carriers can spread the disease for over a week without even suspecting they have it. They spread the disease by spraying infected droplets through their airways. Thus, the right thing to do is to be on the safe side and ensure we cannot contribute to spread the disease.
If the whole community acts responsibly and takes basic measures to stop the disease from spreading, the disease stops spreading and the epidemic is reigned in.
You wear a mask to protect the community and ensure everyone around you stays safe. You're intentionally putting everyone around you and everyone you contact with at risk if you not only refuse to take basic precautions such as wearing a mask but also engage with people who also refuse to do so.
I mean, he did say it right here. Seems like in your theoretical world everyone wears a mask perfectly and there's no issue. In the real world, you'll always have people who don't follow the rule and you have to adjust to those.
We have laws against speeding, people still speed. We have laws against murders, we still have murderers.
Do you think people don't know why we wear masks yet? His whole argument is that if those guidelines don't work in the real world maybe they have to be adjusted. Maybe if you're so afraid of the virus you should be the one taking the financial hit. Not everyone around you, but you. You have the responsibility to make sure you don't contract COVID. If you're allergic to peanuts because they might kill you if you touch them do we ban peanuts everywhere?
Another friend of mine is a retired NYPD lieutenant and I forgot exactly what happened but he told me a story of someone claiming to be innocent and his response was "How do you think I became lieutenant?"
Don't fuck with the white shirts.
I've rarely been stopped and never felt like the police were trying to seize my vehicle or acting more intensely than the situation warrants.
I don't know what the difference is, but I can second GP's statement that the experience you and GGP had isn't universal.
I know it happens, and for some unlucky people it happens more than once, but I think discussions like this tend to overstate how often it occurs because of self selection bias.
> I can tell you right now, police in rural areas absolutely _are_ looking for any and every excuse in the book to pull you over, search your vehicle, and question you far more intensely than the situation warrants.
As was the root comment in this thread:
> In these towns, if you have out-of-state plates, you will regularly be pulled over for doing 5mph below the speed limit. You can expect a dog to sniff around your car if the patrol has one.
That's what I'm disputing here, not the injustice of CAF when it happens. Even people who oppose civil asset forfeiture (including me) still feel comfortable traveling throughout the nation.
I would not call that "implying the norm".
Regardless, CAF needs to be abolished and I wish the crowd that cares so much about the Constitution would care about Amendments that aren't the 2nd and 1st.
How frequent should that problem be until it's recognized as a problem?
From where I'm standing, civil asset forfeiture sounds like blatant corruption and outright stealing made good on paper.
I only take issue with the suggestion in this thread that we should be afraid to travel around the nation because of these rare events. There's far more reason to be afraid of dying in a crash.
I’m saying I’ve traveled the U.S. a /lot/ in several different capacities (from personal trips to touring with bands) and that rural areas by and large have given me more problems in terms of police than urban areas ever have.
I’m not implying that you should be afraid to travel - I’m saying quite plainly that the incentives around CAF are severely misaligned and that cops are very aware of this fact and abuse it when they can, and that takes different forms but one of those is mundane traffic stops that turn into roadside interrogations.
How much time do you spend traveling in rural vs urban area do you think? If you traveled 75% of the time in rural areas it would follow suit that 75% of the time those arrests would be in rural areas.
Anecdotal evidence doesn't mean shit in a country with 330M people.
But then again, our cops aren't exactly despised or severely strapped for cash. They're mostly like the cop from wayne's world.
E.g., a town is off a highway that's a known part of a drug route. A consultant comes in to the police dept. and does a powerpoint showing an average annual amount of drug money they can confiscate in order to fund the police/town budget. And the consultant probably has numbers from other towns who did the same. Boom-- you've got yet another civil asset forfeiture program in yet another small town.
So you get this town's police pulling over a larger and larger set of people who fit whatever description they've taught themselves rakes in the dough. There's a big incentive to do this, and to enlarge the set of who can be pulled because-- until relatively recently-- there has been very little risk.
I'm going to rankly speculate that the value of the OP's stuff he was lugging was high enough for such officers to take the time to pull OP over. But since OP didn't fit the drug runner description and the officer couldn't find any other pretense, they let them go.
I'll also rankly speculate you've carried stuff of much less value visible to an officer who sees you drive by.
Race almost certainly plays into this as well, but I haven't read a study to know the numbers on that.
It seems the courts treat the 4th amendment about as well as they do the 2nd and the 10th.
This is one of the primary things that lead me to be a political and philosophical libertarian, and why I oppose prohibition completely (even for so called hard drugs)
Most people think anyone that oppose prohibition on weed or other drugs simply wants to use them, but for me it is recognition that the War on Drugs has lead to the complete subversion of every single right protected by the US Bill of rights, every single one.
Not just the 4th, 2nd, and 10th, but all of them
Add Mandatory Minimums and Three-Strike Laws to your list of reasons to hate it.
>Add Mandatory Minimums and Three-Strike Laws to your list of reasons to hate it.
But don't forget the economic impact either:
1. We spend Billions on "interdiction" and "enforcement", even though the vast majority of folks who do use drugs that are currently illegal don't have a dependency problem, and treatment on demand for the small number that do would be significantly less expensive;
2. Putting someone in prison costs tens of thousands of dollars a year, and that person isn't contributing to the local economy where they lived, a double negative impact on the economy;
3. The stigma of a felony conviction usually makes most better paying jobs unavailable to folks convicted, further reducing economic output;
4. Building ever larger prisons and hiring more and more prison guards, administrators, etc. takes money away from other, more productive endeavors, often limiting economic growth due to lack of infrastructure, better quality of education and a host of other factors.
So people can make arguments all day long that the War on Drugs is expensive and ineffective and unwinnable, but some people aren’t going to care, because it’s a long-running culture war that empowers the powerful.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." (H.L. Mencken)
Then I moved to NM and have lived here for over a decade (with NM plates) and have been pulled over once and let go with a warning.
I have to back OP up on the little towns, rapidly dropping speed limits and desire for revenue because it matches my experience completely.
Interstates are a different situation so maybe that's the difference in perception. Or maybe I just got unlucky. There were no dogs in any of the pull overs although in one case they did want to look through the car.
https://texasmonitor.org/in-small-town-texas-speeding-driver...
These are the people who erase the visceral horror of slavery from textbooks, who detest cosmopolitanism, who advise hard-up city-dwellers to simply "move to where the jobs are" (nevermind that they denigrate immigrants). But god forbid you suggest that these small towns aren't solvent, can never be so, that they have to move. That the future for America is a progressive urbanism with higher population density (and the advances in public infrastructure policy that will have to come with it). That's socialism. But dragging travelers out of their cars for a protection bribe (if you're lucky enough not to get Sandra Bland-ed) is a-ok. /s
Coastal elites are wealthy, educated, mostly white liberal/progressive members of the professional managerial class who think they know how everyone else should live.
> So many - SO many - of America's small towns cannot sustain themselves through honest business and labor.
Thats because tax-and-spend policies crowd the rural populace out of markets.
> who advise hard-up city-dwellers to simply "move to where the jobs are" (nevermind that they denigrate immigrants)
You forgot "illegal" in front of "immigrants"
> But god forbid you suggest that these small towns aren't solvent, can never be so
The crowded urban spaces you prefer are largely dependent on rural areas for their food.
> That the future for America is a progressive urbanism with higher population density (and the advances in public infrastructure policy that will have to come with it). That's socialism.
Its weird that you conflate forcing people to live in 3m^3 tubes like the Japanese and high tax rates on capital. They don't have to go together, do they?
> But dragging travelers out of their cars for a protection bribe (if you're lucky enough not to get Sandra Bland-ed) is a-ok. /s
These same rural people don't approve of the extortion but when you have a system where the government decides what people pay they don't have any recourse.
Most farming in the US is done by the same kind of bigcorp groups that do everything else, with a tiny number of well-educated employees mixed with mass seasonal agricultural labor (who usually aren't even citizens in the first place). It happens in rural locations because that's where land is cheap, not because it's actually being primarily operated by some idealized urban farmer.
It depends on how you measure "most" but a lot of food is produced on farms owned by large agriculture companies. The food is grown by farmers who live in the rural areas. The farming itself doesn't occur in a vacuum, the entire economy of the rural area is mostly built around supporting the farming activity.
> tiny number of well-educated employees
Some have a b.s. in agriculture. I'm not sure what you mean by "tiny number" except that there are a lot of non-farmers living like sardines in urban areas.
> It happens in rural locations because that's where land is cheap, not because it's actually being primarily operated by some idealized urban farmer.
I'm not sure this is relevant, the cities where people live on welfare or develop marketing programs from cubicles are dependent on people in rural areas growing their food.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
Edit: we've had to warn you many times and you've been posting like this a lot lately. If it continues we're going to have to ban you, so please stop it.
Yes, plenty of people unjustly have their property seized.
No, the chance of it happening to you just driving through these states on a vacation is very, very low. For example, there were 400 total forfeitures in Utah in 2015[1] and well over 10M tourist visit the national parks in Utah alone.[2]
But yes, that 400 is 400 too many.
[1]https://ij.org/new-data-shows-utah-law-enforcement-overwhelm... [2]https://gardner.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019-TTtrifold.p...
Lots of ways for police to be effective in their role.
https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/
> "...I think you'll be back in shape. So, asset forfeiture, we're going to go back on, okay?"
[1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?423663-1/president-trump-holds...
So the idea that the Biden/Harris administration will do any better than Trump on any issue involving the restraint of law enforcement is farcical. If anything, they'll expand civil forfeiture, unless the courts keep them in check.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azy98/kamala-harriss-office...
[2] https://prospect.org/justice/how-kamala-harris-fought-to-kee...
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-14/kamala-ha...
[4] https://www.johnlocke.org/update/flashback-kamala-harriss-re...
In 1983 Biden introduced the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act, which became law in 1984. That's the main piece of law that enabled civil asset forfeiture. That's how cops take property, alleging it to be drug money without any evidence. It's legalized theft, turning cops into gangs that prey on the people. Note that "defund the cops" will make them rely more on this source of revenue!
He didn't just vote for it. He introduced it.
It's amazing that voters knew this and were still happy to crawl through broken glass to vote for him. The alternative was that much worse. I hope republicans find some moment of clarity and let their extreme wing be banished to a third party. It will cost them a huge amount of political power short term, but they need some time in the wilderness to rediscover the concept of principles. We need a sane opposition party that actually has ideas and isn't a general-purpose personality cult.
He built over 500 miles of crime-stopping wall, raised tariffs on China, didn't attack a new country, appointed decent judges, appointed a wonderful person for the Department of Education, put an end to racist anti-American hate sessions at federal employers, improved the H1B visa situation, ditched the Paris Accord, cut our taxes, got that pipeline approved, stopped China from using NAFTA via Mexico, got several peace treaties signed, and cut lots of economy-choking regulations. Just before that virus hit, he got us to the lowest unemployment numbers in recorded history (half a century) for black people and he got income inequality to go down a bit for the first time in ages. He even signed the First Step Act, fixing the overly harsh sentences imposed on crack users by another Biden-sponsored law.
That's all policy that people wanted, not personality. I don't know if that is more reassuring or more terrifying for you.
> He built over 500 miles of crime-stopping wall
Mostly repaired the existing wall which accomplishes practically nothing about illegal immigration anyway
> raised tariffs on China
Started a trade war that ravaged the farm sector, resulting in costly bailouts
> didn't attack a new country
Partnered with Saudi dictatorship to escalate drone strikes, and abolished transparency around them, attempted to start war with Iran by brazenly assassinating a high-ranking official
> appointed decent judges
Packed the courts with unqualified ideologues
> appointed a wonderful person for the Department of Education
Appointed a person who ruthlessly fought against relief for student debt
> put an end to racist anti-American hate sessions at federal employers
Aggressively fought against improving race relations
> ditched the Paris Accord
Went back on a climate policy supported by 70% of voters
> stopped China from using NAFTA via Mexico
Used foreign bogeyman to distract from automation, which has eliminated far more jobs
> Just before that virus hit
Bungled the biggest crisis to hit the nation in decades
> got us to the lowest unemployment numbers in recorded history
Was born on third base and claimed he hit a triple
Overall the biggest signal that they've devolved into a personality cult was that the republican party was so overconfident, despite all signals to the contrary, that they had no platform whatsoever in the 2020 campaign.
Calling the wall a "repair" is far from reality. It is different in size and structure. The new wall is 18 or 30 feet high, cuttable more as a stunt than a practical bypass. It extends at least 10 feet underground as a 2-foot-thick concrete wall to prevent easy tunneling. In some places the wall is both sizes, doubled up with a road down the middle. Much of the old barrier was only I-beam steel in the ground, intended to stop cars and trucks. You could ride through on a horse or motorcycle. Other parts were just 8 to 12 feet high, without any underground protection from tunnels. Instead of being a major operation, a tunnel just required 1 person with a trowel and an hour to spare.
To say it "accomplishes practically nothing" is strange. About half of the illegal aliens present in the United States came via illegal crossings. Those are the ones who matter the most, because they obviously were denied a visa. In other words, they probably have a history that caused them to fail the background check. Illegal crossings also bring drugs to the USA, guns to Mexico (see "Operation Fast and Furious" for when we even allowed it), dehydration in the desert, drowning in the All-American Canal, and migrants getting rapped by their smugglers.
The trade war started half a century ago. It's still a war when we aren't fighting back. We can't opt out. We can fight, or we can accept certain loss. The farm sector provides far fewer jobs than the manufacturing that is lost to China.
Assassinating a high-ranking official is not attempting to start a war. The USA can get away with that, so it does. It's notable that CNN had a few days of loving Trump when he did that; they want war.
It's a matter of opinion about judges, but for certain the top 3 are not unqualified ideologues in comparison to Sotomayor.
Relief for student debt would be horribly unfair to both non-borrowers (like a plumber, car salesman, or marine) and responsible borrowers. The economics term for the problems caused is called "moral hazard". We would be subsidizing expensive low-value incomplete degrees, and thus encouraging more of this waste.
The effect of those racist employer-mandated hate sessions has been studied. It turns out that they cause the exact opposite effect from the supposed intent. When you put a bunch of employees in a room and lecture them about race, they start thinking of each other by race. It brings out the latent racism, raises suspicion, and creates resentment. Race relations were doing better under Trump until the BLM fundraising riots started stirring up anger. Sometimes you have to forgive and forget, but that isn't good fundraising.
People like climate policy when detached from any mention of job losses and taxes. The same goes for healthcare and many other things. Who wouldn't want something if there isn't a price tag? Mention the price, and opinions suddenly change. You won't find 70% in favor of the Paris Accord when you mention the price.
Automation may have eliminated far more jobs than foreign bogeymen, but that only increases the urgency for pulling jobs back from China and elsewhere. If the USA loses 1 job to a Chinese worker and 5 jobs to automation, that means that 6 jobs need to be transferred from China to the USA.
The virus crisis was mostly self-imposed by the states and by the people. The actual virus harms very few. The fact that rioters were allowed to form huge groups while businesses were shut down tells us the truth: the motive was to prevent Trump from having his record-breaking economy. In any case, basic hygiene is a personal choice, not a presidential choice.
There was a republican platform. For a rather democratic reason, it was the same as in 2016. The virus had prevented gathering everybody together, and it wouldn't be proper to choose a new platform without everybody there. No n...
They have a lot of history to un-live; but, removing the man that said he wasn't going to wear a mask, and who regularly stuck his foot in his mouth was priority #1.
Well if we count the fact that asset seizure without a trial is a crime itself (no due process and a violation of the 4th ammendment), then it should be obvious that it would increase crime directly in its actions and and indirectly by delegitimizing government authority.
>No person shall be [...]; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
The SCOTUS interpretation of this clause allowing civil asset forfeiture was written by Rehnquist in 1996 Bennis v. Michigan, because the acceptance of such forfeitures was too "firmly fixed" to displace:
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten...
because civil asset forfeiture is a crime.
For that matter executing the entire population would be the most effective crime prevention strategy of all time.
We don't and should not do all the things that "reduce crime".