Civil Asset Forfeiture

 

You're driving along a busy highway when you notice a neatly-dressed young man apparently hitch-hiking.  Feeling that someone dressed as he is probably doesn't pose much of a threat — and you've got a pistol with you — you pull to the curb and offer him a ride.  Within a half-mile, a police car pulls you over, for what you can't imagine.  The police have been surveilling this young gentleman because he's a suspected unregistered pharmaceuticals distributor.  In the subsequent search, he is found to be in possession of large quantities of contraband.  You are both detained.  Your car is towed.

At arraignment, you explain that you were merely giving a ride to someone who seemed to need one.  The police report seems to corroborate your tale.  That, and the fact that you have no 'record' to speak of, leads the prosecutor to decline to prosecute you.  Your passenger gets the book thrown at him.

When you ask where you go to get your car and your pistol back, you learn that both have been seized as instruments involved in a crime.  "But all charges against me have been dropped! I didn't commit any crime!" you object.  Everyone nods knowingly, then they explain that the pistol was in a car that was used to transport a criminal, presumably to a place where he could continue to do criminal things.  You're free to go; your car and your pistol are staying.

This is how 'civil asset forfeiture' (CAF) works.  Originally, it was an additional penalty laid upon lawbreakers that their tools would be lost to them and, hopefully, make future crimes more difficult and thus less likely.  During the last 80 to 100 years, prosecutors discovered that there's gold in them thar hills.  The first sign of a new wave of 'prospecting' by DAs happened when men trolling for prostitutes in the seedier parts of town ran afoul of scantily-clad policewomen posing as hookers.  They would arrest the 'john' and seize the car.  Bonanza!  Nowadays, virtually anything serious that you're involved in — whether you're guilty or not — and this is the part most sane people find most incredible — is going to be accompanied by instant on-the-spot seizure of cars, cash, firearms, and even houses.  If it can be sold at auction, say good-bye to whatever it was.

Sure, you can get your stuff back, but in CAF cases, the state doesn't have to prove the item was connected to a crime — they collected it as part of an arrest or a search under reasonable suspicion — you have to prove that the item was not involved in a crime!  You have to get a lawyer, file a motion with the court, and contend against a system that has a large, taxpayer-funded budget for just such things.  You could spend $15,000 to get your $21,000 car back — if you win which, considering that the DA and the judge are both paid from the same budget, is not assured.  And if you win your car back, you'll still have to pay the storage charges, and that could be thousands more.

Something like that happened to Arlene Harjo of Albuquerque.  She let her son take the family car to the gym.  He went to a party instead.  There was alcohol.  He had some and got arrested on his way home.  APD seized the car.  It took her two years, but this last July, a federal appeals court judge ruled that Albuquerque's 'law' that allowed civil asset forfeiture without a conviction was unconstitutional.  That's two: New Mexico and North Carolina.  In the other 48 states, you can still lose your stuff to the system even though you aren't charged with, much less convicted of, anything criminal.

Now, you may think that CAF is a minor problem, and you might think so because you never hear about such things on the 6-o'clock news.  Think again.  Over the last dozen years or so, federal and state forfeitures amounted to more than the total for all burglaries nationwide.  Yes, the cops are a bigger problem than the robbers.

I urge you not to believe any of this, but rather to do your own research and discover what a big liar I am — heh heh heh.

 

The Left Is Dead; So Is The Right

 

Something brought up the topic of Kelo v New London on FaceBook the other day and I responded by copying in my essay from 2005, The Old Order Changeth, that I wrote as part of my continuing series for Tampa Bay Mensa's newsletter, The Sounding.  In response, JohnC, my old schoolmate and debate opponent, came back with:

Don't particularly like the call, but all ownership is a social construct, and if you're gonna play the game, you have to bow to the refs' call.

This casual observation is laced with significance.  It encapsulates the entire Weltanschauung of what we think of as 'the collectivists'.  Remember Obama's remark that 'You didn't build this'?  It's right there in that quoted passage: all ownership is a social construct.

While it sounds innocuous enough, there are some unpleasant corollaries to it.  For one, all that income you 'made' last year?  It's not yours.  It was never yours, and you should be absolutely blissful that 'society' allows you to keep as much of it as it does.  Your house, as Suzette Kelo discovered, isn't your house.  Society merely allows you to live there as long as it pleases your community.  Your so-called 'life' also is not 'yours'.  It's only yours for so long as society judges that its continuance benefits society.  This is the rationale under which totalitarian regimes eliminate ethnic groups like Jews, Armenians, or Kulaks: they are no longer beneficial to 'society'.

Libertarians, whether big-L or small-L, will assert that 'I own myself', and from that follows the entirety of the libertarian ethos, prime among which is that I own my life and the results of what I do with that life, whether it's money, or property, or fame, or a felony conviction for armed robbery.  Because I own myself and you own yourself, it follows that I cannot own you, nor you me, and that is the big difference between individualists and collectivists.  It may be the only difference, although 'only' in this context covers a lot of ground.

Of course, the thrust of The Old Order Changeth was that the old left-right paradigm is obsolete, and that the only reasonable way to categorize political views these days is individualist-vs-collectivist.  That, unfortunately, means that John and I will never see eye-to-eye on almost anything political or societal, and we might as well just face the fact that we will each be forever a thorn in the other's side.

It also means that libertarian arguments seem to collectivists exactly as insane as collectivist arguments seem to us.  We are well and truly speaking a foreign language to the other, and while The Golden Rule translates understandably for libertarians, it's likely just gibberish to collectivists.

If you comfort yourself with the thought that our system of government makes it possible for two such incompatible philosophies to coexist side-by-side, I have bad news for you.  While the libertarian live-and-let-live style can tolerate collectivists, the reverse is not true, and we can see the dawning realization of that problem manifested in the vitriolic reaction of the collectivists (generally what we used to think of as 'Democrats') against the not-quite-as-collectivists (generally what we used to think of as 'Republicans').  Meanwhile, the real individualists (generally what we think of as 'libertarians') stand on the sidelines and wonder when this civil war is going to engulf us all.  (If the libertarians ever gain a foothold in government, we're going to catch hell from both of those factions.)

Oh, you think I have mischaracterized Republicans as semi-collectivists?  It's the GOP that wants to ban marijuana and similar substances because you peasants aren't smart enough to figure out that that stuff is bad for you.  While they are friendlier to gun rights than their Democratic counterparts, few of them (in Congress, at any rate) have much of a problem with those 'reasonable restrictions' that seem quite unreasonable to many of their constituents.  And that 'Constitution' thingy?  George W Bush once called it 'just a god-damn piece of paper', and he got elected President twice!  Didn't The Donald just say, in respect of so-called 'red flag laws': "Take the guns first; due process later"?  If the GOP were really as big a bunch of individualists as some people claim, Trump would have been impeached for that!  He wasn't, therefore they aren't.

No, a real individualist would be staunchly upholding the Constitution's seriously-individualistic fundamentals: primarily, a small, tightly circumscribed federal government that rarely makes its presence felt in your town, your county, or your state.  Republican voters may think of themselves as individualists, but they don't vote that way...  enough.

And that's why we should all be preparing for Civil War II.

 

Birthright Citizenship

 

The current hot-button domestic issue is something called 'Birthright Citizenship'.  It is the doctrine that anyone born in the United States (with a few exceptions) is automatically a citizen of the United States.  The argument centers around children of illegal aliens: a pregnant woman crosses the border illegally, births her child, and then demands to stay because her child is a citizen and she can't leave her child, can she?  The child is called 'an anchor baby'.

The problem arises because the 14th amendment says (right up front):

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

This is pretty plain-spoken and can be misinterpreted only in the presence of a serious Jones to do so.  Those who wish to misinterpret it will explain, slowly and carefully so you catch all the words, that this was phrased this way in order to enfranchise slaves who had previously not been considered 'persons' and that no one had anticipated people coming here just so their offspring could be natural-born citizens.

That position is probably correct, but the wording of the 14th amendment sits there staring back at us.  That may have been what they meant, but that's not what they wrote.  They wrote "all persons" and "subject to the jurisdiction" and "are citizens".  If this ever goes before SCOTUS and they rule that anchor babies are not really citizens, they will be 'legislating from the bench', something the GOP hates when Democrats do it, and the Democrats hate when the GOP does it.

Further, the whole debate dances around the real issue, carefully ignoring it — because if we can ignore it long enough, no one will notice that it's there — we hope.  The real issue is that we have turned the United States into a stereotypical welfare state.  Can't afford food?  Yes, you can have food stamps.  Can't afford rent?  Yes, you can have an AFDC supplement.  Don't worry about school; it's free.  Arrested and can't afford an attorney to defend you in court?  Miranda!

The people worrying about 'anchor babies' and 'illegal aliens' are really worried that somebody will arrive on our doorstep and demand a piece of cake that should justly be reserved for Real Americans™.  They will deny it, of course, but it has to be true.  We are in a job-surplus position at the moment — too many jobs and not enough people to fill them — so if Real Americans™ were worried them Messicans were going to take our jobs...  which jobs?  The ones there aren't enough workers to fill?  The only thing 'adding more workers' to the mix would do is bump the GDP up a notch or two.  Horrors!

We don't have 'an illegal alien problem'.  We have 'a welfare state problem'.  Fix the 'welfare state problem', and the illegal alien problem will evaporate like dew on a Summer morning.

 

Arab Culture and Other Myths

 

Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post reporter critical of the Saudi regime. strolls into his local Saudi embassy and is never seen again.  Turkey claims that he was killed by strangulation seconds after entering the building, dismembered, and the body parts spirited away, although how they might know this is anybody's guess.

Two sisters, Saudis, go missing in Virginia and are only found when their lifeless bodies, bound back-to-back waist and ankles with duct tape, wash up on the shores of the Hudson River.  They had applied to the United States for political asylum.  The cause of death is unknown, but a preliminary autopsy reveals that they were alive when they went into the water.  'Drowning' is not, apparently, within the coroner's vocabulary.  Their family has been ordered by the Saudi government to return home immediately.

In Pakistan, a Christian woman must have said something she shouldn't have.  She was arrested for blasphemy, a capital offense there, tried, and convicted.  This week, an appeals court overturned her death sentence and now one of Pakistan's political parties is calling for the death of the judges who deprived them of the joy of seeing her head lopped off by a scimitar.

President Trump, Mike Pompeo, and scores of others are trying to make nice with the Saudis for reasons that are not at all clear.  It may have something to do with the $1.3 billion they're planning to spend at Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, and a clutch of other military equipment suppliers.  The American people may be starting to notice that we're supplying one of the most murderous regimes on Earth with equipment they may one day turn on their former friends (us), just as they are now doing in Syria.

There are two kinds of Muslim.  The first kind wants to kill all the unbelievers.  The second kind wants somebody else to kill all the unbelievers.

Selling these people things they can kill with is an absolutely insane foreign policy.

 

Representation Without Taxation

 

One of the issues over which we Americans fought our Revolutionary War was "taxation without representation".  We were being taxed by the Crown (King George III) and denied the ability to choose our own representatives in Parliament.  There were other issues, of course, but that was one of the biggies that could get those unruly colonists to rise up in revolt.

Our Constitution is written to, among other things, guarantee that every taxed American is represented — mostly.  The Territory of Puerto Rico, for example, has no representative in Congress, and therefore Puerto Ricans do not have to pay income taxes to the federal government.  They have their own local government and pay local taxes to support that.  The same is generally true of Guam and other territories:  if you can't vote for a Congressional representative, you don't get taxed.  (This is not 100% true 100% of the time, but it's 'close enough for government work'.)

There is, however, another side to that coin.  Some people pay no taxes but still get to vote.  They have 'representation without taxation'.  It may turn out that your income is so small and your tax credits and authorized deductions are large enough that your 'taxable income' is zero and your tax is also zero.  People in this situation are incentivized to vote a certain way because the result of their vote will cost them nothing — there's no penalty for voting this way as opposed to that way.

This may explain why our country is in the condition it's in.  When the number of tax filers who actually pay no tax crosses a certain threshold, the controls that would normally act to correct fiscal irresponsibility disappear.  If you know you won't be taxed for that new road, there's no reason for you to vote against it, is there?

The same sort of analysis applies to those who receive stipends from the government.  'Social Security' is a fine example.  For people who are retired and whose income consists of pensions and social security payments, it is very likely that the 'tax due' line on one's 1040 will be smaller than the total received from taxes paid by others, even if that number is not zero.  That is, there are two categories of 'tax filers': those who pay taxes, and those who consume taxes.

Without the ability to put the brakes on out-of-control spending, bankruptcy looms.  It's inevitable.  It may be that our next revolution will be fueled by the issue of 'representation without taxation'.  At some point in the future, one's W-2s and 1099s that report the core of one's income may show income in two categories: income derived from taxes, and income not derived from taxes.  It will make for an interesting new world when, as must eventually happen, the franchise is restricted to those whose tax contribution exceeds their tax consumption.

Under such a system, Congressmen will vote, but only when they're at work.  They can all stay home on Election Day because their salary is all derived (it damned well better be) from taxes; they are 'tax consumers'.  Policemen and firemen will not vote, along with FBI agents and (uh-oh...) soldiers, although volunteer firemen will vote because they actually have income producing jobs beyond volunteering.  Public school teachers won't vote, but private school teachers will.  The kid who delivers sandwiches from Quizno's will get to vote, but the clerk at DMV who issued his driver's license won't.  It's very likely that SS recipients will no longer vote unless the income from their 401Ks is so large that the tax on the proceeds exceeds their SS checks — in which case they probably don't care, either.

But as long as our electoral system allows people to vote who do not actually 'pay the bill', we will see the wrong kind of politicians elected over and over and over.  It's a recipe for disaster that is just now becoming clear.

 

Around The World In 79 Days

 

Norene and I are toying with the idea of a trans-Pacific cruise next year, Seattle to Australia/New Zealand.  If we go, we will cross both the Equator and the International Date Line and this got me to thinking — always a dangerous situation.

In Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days, the plot twist hinges on the fact that Phileas Fogg travels eastward from London.  As a result, each day's sunset is a little earlier than yesterday's.  In the days before time zones, local time was established by local noon, and it was customary for travelers to set their timepieces to that local standard.  When in Rome...

Because each of Fogg's 'days' was shorter than the canonical 24-hours, he actually arrives back in London a full day ahead of his deadline — but doesn't realize it because he has seen 80 sunsets (in 79 days), although, realistically, when he got to San Francisco, he must certainly have wondered why Thursday's newspaper was being published on Friday...

(Aside: the phenomenon is said to have been discovered by the 17th-century Norwegian explorer, Andersrag, who named it after himself: the Alex Andersrag Time Band...)

In the modern world, we accept that crossing the International Date Line west-to-east involves crossing into yesterday, and crossing east-to-west into tomorrow.  Why should this be so?  Let's perform a little thought-experiment:

We start with two observers in London at 8am on a Tuesday, both with clocks set to GMT and we send both on a high-speed trip (able to cross vast distances in the wink of an eye), one westward to American Samoa, and the other eastward to Tonga.  They are instructed to change their clocks backward or forward as appropriate for the time zone they're currently in.  The one traveling eastward to Tonga will constantly set the clock forward from 8am to 9am to 10am until arriving at Tonga 12 time zones later at 8pm Tuesday.  The other travels west to American Samoa inching his clock backward to 7am and 6am until arriving in American Samoa 11 time zones earlier at 9pm Monday.  At this point, the two observers are a (reasonably) short flight from each other and their clocks say different days.  One of them must be wrong, right?  No, they're both right.

They're both right because neither has crossed the date line.  If the observer in American Samoa travels to meet his partner at Tonga, he will be forced (by convention) to adjust his clock from 'Monday' to 'Tuesday'.  If the observer at Tonga travels to American Samoa, he will be forced to adjust his clock from 'Tuesday' to 'Monday'.  This is what Phileas Fogg didn't realize: at some point during the trip, convention says he stepped across the line from Tuesday into Monday.  Of course, we all know how that worked out: he realizes his error just in time to complete the trip according to the wager he made 80 days prior.

(If we go on that cruise, we will 'lose' a day just after leaving American Samoa — then gain it back and lose it again as the ship weaves back and forth across the line — and not get it back until we return to the U.S. at the end of the cruise.)

 

Buying Testimony

 

It is nominally against the law to offer anything of value to another in exchange for testimony at trial.  I cannot offer you money, no matter how small an amount, to get you either to testify or not to testify or (especially) to testify in a particular way — notice how I skillfully avoided the word 'perjury'.

Yet, prosecutors do this all the time without penalty as when a criminal is offered leniency in sentencing in exchange for one criminal testifying against another.  There's even a name for the process.  It's called 'rolling'.

It is said that one knows one is living in a police state when the government may do with impunity that which the citizen cannot.

In fact, we're seeing this happen in real-time as Robert Mueller bags Paul Manafort for tax evasion and offers an easy sentence if he'll only testify against Donald Trump so Mueller can get a conviction for election tampering or 'collusion with the Russians' — or something.