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CBC Warns Canadians of "US Law Enforcement Money Extortion Program"
jfbilodeau writes The CBC is warning Canadians about a U.S. program where America law enforcement officers — from federal agents to state troopers right down to sheriffs in one-street backwaters — are operating a vast, co-ordinated scheme to grab as much of the public's cash as they can through seizure laws. "So, for any law-abiding Canadian thinking about an American road trip, here’s some non-official advice: Avoid long chats if you’re pulled over. Answer questions politely and concisely, then persistently ask if you are free to go. Don’t leave litter on the vehicle floor, especially energy drink cans. Don’t use air or breath fresheners; they could be interpreted as an attempt to mask the smell of drugs. Don’t be too talkative. Don’t be too quiet. Try not to wear expensive designer clothes. Don’t have tinted windows. And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.
The link is bad. American shakedown: Police won't charge you, but they'll grab your money
The link in the article is cut off and gives a 404. Here is the correct link:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/a...
Even the police are capitalist. They fiercely serve and protect their budgets.
As a U.S. citizen, I'm baffled as to why courts have accepted the validity of civil forfeiture laws. It strikes me as a blatant violation of our Constitution.
When nationalistic Americans brag about our Bill or Rights, I wonder which version they're excited about: the version one gets from a plain reading of its text, or the twisted monstrosity that the three branches of government have foisted upon us.
Looks like either the link is broken or the article has been pulled.
Similarly, 99% of the problem could be stopped if they cancelled the Equitable Sharing program and instead insisted that all such seizures to go to the federal government, not to any local fund.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
For some reason, Police seem to think anybody who has more than a couple of hundred dollars cash is either a drug smuggler or Al Qaeda.
Asking, "Am I free to go?" every minute isn't going to be regarded as suspicious?
American police run an extra-legal extortion racket in the name of RICO laws. They can impound property giving the citizen no legal recourse. What do they do with the money? Buy military style riot gear and surplus MRAPS. Boy, I feel safer.
I don't know why any one in Canada would want to visit that cesspool we have what they have only without the suck and with a lot more natural spaces to enjoy.
It's a sad thing.
CBC's article is just a Canadian take on things. The original article (just as scary) is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.
You never consent to a search. Make them get a warrant or conduct an illegal search. You may have just bought the car. It may have absolutely NOTHING personal in it. You still don't consent to a search.
Period.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Are you sure there aren't any democrats supporting this unholy mess? Cause I bet this abomination has bipartisan support.
OMG I'm shocked!!!
There's laws in our country that legalized this? What is that law and where can I find some confirmation?
Go shill for your political party somewhere else.
Did you even RTFA? Shall I avoid wearing designer clothes and having an air freshener? Drinking energy drinks is now a mark of being a drug dealer? Please send me a list of approved attire, standards of car cleanliness, and any other requirements for not appearing like a drug dealer.
Your naivete is mind blowing.
You haven't been following this issue very much, have you? Siezures have been made where there was no proof, only suspicion (based on the flimsiest of evidence). As the owner, you don't have the right to challenge the siezure -- the siezure is made against the property itself.
I don't expect that I have much to worry about, but that probably has more to do with my socio-economic status and the color of my skin than any other factors.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
No pretty sure police can't and don't do this in Canada. They actually have to arrest you and the money is evidence if purported to be proceeds of crime.
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Plagiarism.
First the militarization of small town police departments, SWAT teams for serving routine warrants, rising incidents of shocking brutality and now law enforcement has devolved to the point of being little better than a band of petty thieves. This is getting pathetic and scary. Foreign countries are issuing warnings about the conduct of U.S. law enforcement personnel. Am I the only person who has a problem with that?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You're missing the point: here in America you're *supposed* to be able to "do things that make you look like you are hauling drugs". You're supposed to be able to do whatever you want, as long as it's legal, no matter how illegal it looks.
Let's say I look like a burglar because I locked my keys in the house and now I have to climb in a window: the police have every right to stop me. If I'm (somehow) using my wallet to try and jimmy the window open, the police have a right to seize that wallet. But once I've shown that I'm not a burglar, I should get my wallet back.
The point of this article is, that's not actually how it works. From TFA:
"You’ll have the right to seek its return in court, but of course that will mean big lawyer’s fees, and legally documenting exactly where the money came from. You will need to prove you are not a drug dealer or a terrorist.
It might take a year or two. And several trips back to the jurisdiction where you were pulled over. Sorry.
In places like Tijuana, police don’t make any pretense about this sort of thing. Here in the U.S., though, it’s dressed up in terms like “interdiction and forfeiture,” or “the equitable sharing program.”"
> And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.
Well, of course, but I'd say "don't consent to a search, ever. At all."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Is it just me that thinks this is a sad reflection? The governments of the world are now publishing literature on "How to protect yourself from American Police".
The day you have to learn to protect yourself from police just highlights the whole problem - the institution was designed to protect and serve, not harass, intimidate, lie and extort. This is government sanctioned highway robbery and all in the name of padding out the department budgets. Giving over the proceeds of civil forfeiture cases to police departments represents a damning conflict of interest, especially when most people can't afford to fight these cases. Bullshit. Horseshit. The law has gone mad.
So, you believe it is okay for the government to confiscate your property, without being able to articulate a _reasonable_ suspicion of criminal activity, without charging you with a crime, and without convicting you of a crime?
Be reasonable, don't do things that make you look like you are hauling drugs (Including not actually doing it), and things will be OK.
Ugh. You fucking, disgusting bootlicker.
In a free society is not the job of ordinary citizens to avoid the scrutiny of the state.
How about you move to north korea where that sort of cowering is expected?
And there is only one group who puts them in a position to do it the Democrats?
Please there is no effective difference in US politics, it's the same group. Hell politician's change affiliation and still get elected. Sure one side tends to do one thing or another you need something to campaign on after all. Neither wants any real change.
No sir I dont like it.
My little brother had a gig at an auto rental place built into the side of a hotel. Once, they had to pick up a punk concert booker from the airport & they got pulled over by the 5-0 PO. There goes the $9K USD roll he needed to book bands in the city. They may have said something about picking it up from the evdience locker in a few months or something?
everybody knows that in a banana republic the cops are all corrupt and will rip you off.
Just ask John McAfee.
Why are the Canadians surprised by this fact?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Your link to the story is broken. Here's the correct link
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/american-shakedown-police-won-t-charge-you-but-they-ll-grab-your-money-1.2760736
That is all.
For the police departments, this kind of robbery is just a way to grab some cash. But I wonder if this is accepted on a political level to get rid of non-traceable monetary transactions altogether.
The cops have a tough job and the vast majority are not predators and have our best interests at heart. As long as I know they're keeping us safe, what's a little shakedown here and there? Just make sure you don't like someone who deserves it and take heart that they can only steal what's in the car or on your person. Just be *reasonable* about it, that's all.
And please, stop the nonsense about being in a police state. In a police state, they stick the plunger handle all the way up your ass, here they stop at 2/3 the way. Clearly *not* a police state....yet.
/Stockholm Syndrome
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Come on, don't fall for this stuff. It's not like we are a police state (yet).
Oh yes you are. You just haven't been paying attention.
[ReidNews]
Here in America, times are tough. The police has to make money somehow. They're taking it not just from regular folks they pull over, but also tourists. If you're a foreigner coming here, this is the toll you pay.
Seizing suspected drug money has been legal here for decades, but after 9/11 police acquired a whole new set of powers and justifications. And they set about using them for profit.
'The Washington Post this week reported that in the past 13 years, there have been 61,998 cash seizures on roadways and elsewhere without use of search warrants. The total haul: $2.5 billion.'
The Washington Post this week reported that in the past 13 years, there have been 61,998 cash seizures on roadways and elsewhere without use of search warrants.
The total haul: $2.5 billion, divided pretty much equally between the U.S. government and state and local authorities (hence the Kafkaesque “equitable sharing” euphemism).
Half of the seizures, according to the Post, were below $8,800. Only a sixth of those who had money taken from them pursued its return.
Some, no doubt, were indeed drug dealers or money launderers and just walked away from the money. Others just couldn’t spare the expense and time of going to court.
Of those who did, though, nearly half got their money back, a statistic that fairly screams about the legitimacy of the seizures.
The real source is this Washington Post article(s).
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I love how in several of these cases, they force the person to wait, bring in a dog, and then the dog "alerts" but there are NEVER any drugs... just money. This seems to contribute well to the theory that many dogs are just acting on a signal from the trainer (whether implicit or otherwise).
Is where will you go when Canada becomes the Arctic's version of Mexico, eh?
It's happened 65 thousand times according to this article. You can't assume that just because someone can't afford a lawyer that they're guilty.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
They've been running this shake-down on Americans traveling out-of-state, too: http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
Basically, if you're not a local, they'll pull you over for some piss-ant, often fabricated infraction, claim that they "smell weed" (especially if your plates are CO or WA) threate-^h...extort you with some scary-sounding charges (which you'll be greatly disinclined to accept when you're a considerable distance from home, not wanting a huge ticket, points on your license and a trial that you'll lose in a kangaroo traffic court) and then miraculously offer to "make it go away" if you fork over whatever cash and valuables you've got in your car, which they get to use to pad their budget or their own fucking wallets (because it's untraceable and you're in the middle of dogfuck nowhere, who's gonna know, right?)
This is *literally* sanctioned and institutionalized highway robbery and they've gotten away with THOUSANDS of them.
I avoid political discussions, but LOL.
Utter and complete bullshit. The asset forfeiture regime was introduced under the Presidentâ(TM)s Commission on Organized Crime in 1986, at which time the President was Republican Saint Ronald Reagan, and was ramped up through the GHW Bush administration.
Not that I absolve the Democrats in any way of their part is this travesty, but make no mistake...when Republicans have their way, this is *exactly* the sort of corrupt power grab they are famous for.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
In places like near the borders where the police routinely randomly pull people over to search, NOT consenting will give them every reason to detain, bother, and harass you on the possibly-still-statistically-valid (well, it used to be valid, I don't know if still is) assumption that people who refuse consent are more likely to be hiding something than those who do consent.
In these situations, where they plan on doing a cursory search of every random vehicle they pull over, consenting will almost always get you on your merry way in a reasonable period of time - less time than not consenting. Why? Because the police don't want to waste time with someone who "looks like a regular person" if doing so will let many more people - some of whom may be "up to no good" - get through without being pulled over.
Of course, if you've already given the police a reason to want to harass you even through no fault of your own, such as (hypothetically) having a bumper sticker promoting a sports team that the cop hates, or if you are just unlucky enough to get pulled over by a cop that is in a bad mood, you may be screwed whether you consent or not.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As an indifferent third party with some knowledge of both recent and past American history,t he reason it has always failed is because nobody has taken a page from the revolutionary war and actually committed asymmetric warfare against the US.
Most of them are chuckleheads holed up in some well known compound somewhere thinking it will keep them safe. We can see how well that worked at Waco, Ruby Ridge, etc.
The second issue is the majority of people who act out do so against the civilian populace or unrelated 3rd parties (see Christopher Dorner's murder of the daughter of his public defender, rather than say starting by knocking off a member of the LAPD leadership, whether badged or suited.)
Personally I think the belief that any sort of positive revolution will take place in near or long term future is a fool's errand. The only major revolutions we have sweeping the globe right now are either nationalistic or religious in nature and neither is advancing either the freedom and prosperity of the peoples they claim to represent, nor helping erect the foundation for more long term and peaceful interrelations between cultures.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.
I have been pulled over twice for minor offenses such as a burned out taillight bulb and then had my vehicle searched for no cause. The police said they smelled marijuana and didn't need my consent. Basically, all they have to do is lie and the Bill of Rights is just a piece of paper as far as they are concerned. They found nothing either time.
Unless of course you are black, female, a registered democrat, or non-christian, in which case they feel you don't have rights, and should be in prison anyways.
It's happened 65 thousand times according to this article. You can't assume that just because someone can't afford a lawyer that they're guilty.
Seizure of property perhaps. Unjustified seizure of property, not so often. I've only heard of ONE case myself where the seizure was found to be unjustified.
So are you claiming that some people just let the property go when it wasn't a justified seizure? Can you produce examples? I'm sure there are organizations that would be happy to fund the legal bills to get their property back as what you suggest is a violation of the 5th amendment.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
1. Have a fast RWD car, a common one at that.
2. Have a tuner REMOVE THE SPEED LIMITER!!! - very important
3. Quickly evaluate each cop car you pass, ie. "Crown vic, top speed 120-130, no problem, Chevy Malibu, no problem, Charger or Challanger, maybe an issue, Corvette, no way!"
4. If the officer is at least a 1/8 mile away, and doesn't have your license plate, just floor it. They usually stop pursuing after a mile or so and pull over someone else so they don't look stupid.
5. Don't do anything stupid and injure or kill someone else! Stay as far away from other drivers as possible while driving 130+ on open roads or the interstate, and as soon as you've lost sight of the officer, get off at the nearest off ramp and take another direction.
6. If they are right behind you, just pull over. It doesn't matter if you get away, they've probably seen you and they have your license plate.
7. Just do what they say and never agree to any searches. You are doing nothing illegal, but it doesn't matter. Especially if it's a state trooper! They are the Nazi's of the interstate and they know it! While a local cop might stop you for whatever reason, he might let you go, but a State Trooper, a ticket every time. Even if you weren't doing anything wrong, he'll find something wrong.
I really don't like living in this Sh*thole of a country :-(
"Choose to look like you might be doing something illegal" is one heck of a slippery slope. The problem here is that police can seize cash from you without valid cause. You are right its not a mexico like thing where they are taking $100 off random Canadians. However, you might want to think twice about that 10,000 you have to buy a classic car/motorcycle. And that is what they (the government of the Canada) are saying. That anyone should have to go through such a crazy process to get there money back (prove you aren't a terrorist or drug dealer? isn't the deal here supposed to be they have to prove you are one first?) is a sign that the laws are amiss in favor of the ever-growing local police. The ones that seem less friendly than ever no matter how innocent you are. I'd also like to point out that "This unlawful seizure has only happened in a handful of cases over the last decade" as you mentioned is not necessarily true. Please cite statistics, I believe there have been only a handful of PUBLIC cases, but that's because not everyone is interested in a media circus, guilty or not. How do you know who is guilty and who's not? By if they fight to get the money back? What if it costs more to fight it (say if you... lived in Canada)? Once again, cites please. Lastly, even if this is more PR than reality as far as travelers go, it's a good idea to warn people about US LEOs. We seem to have a very large amount of people in prison compared to any other comparable nation. Is it because we are inherently worse than them? I doubt it.
there's an elephant in the room in all of this chatter in these comments, the united states is a failed state
That's the problem. Judges won't.
This is happening in small towns that see small highway streatches as a way of earning easy cash - with judges that at best don't give a damn or at worst were hired (yes, hired) to make the money stay where it is as much as possible.
You are so seriously misinformed, go look it up there are cases of this all the time.
If the judges are as close to corrupt as legally possible, of course most cases aren't going to get far.
There is nothing I can say that hasn't been more eloquent than what has been said here. Bless you slashdot posters!!1
Let me add that I have been abused by police powers most of my life. Thank you again!! Maybe there is hope for a decent civilized america iff our law enforcement would do what they are supposed to do instead of what they are doing!
Let me guess, you either are a cop, or have never actually had any real dealings with an LEO?
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Oh I understand the issue just fine. But, they have to have a minimum level of proof to do the seizure and they also have to defend the action in court if/when the property owner objects. A judge will rip them a new one if they don't come up with justification and the property owner objects. There are checks and balances here.
No ,they don't need a minimum level of proof to carry out the seizure. They need a minimum level of proof to defend the seizure in court--which is a totally different ball game. Attorneys cost money, even if fees are eventually awarded many potential plaintiffs can't afford to be out of pocket for the time (months or years) required for a case to make its way through the courts. Seizures made against out-of-town and out-of-state victims are even harder to challenge--it can be quite costly to repeatedly travel to a distant jurisdiction's courts, even if you can afford to take the time off work. And to challenge even a blatantly illegal seizure is to invite additional scrutiny and future harrassment.
If crooked cops can hit the 'sweet spot' of around a few thousand dollars, in most cases it's going to be too much of a hassle and expense for a victim to fight.
~Idarubicin
Neatly proving that you don't have a clue. Read this and see how asset forfeiture happens in the real world.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
only one case where the seizure was found to be unjustified does not actually mean all the rest were really justified. (It also doesn't mean they weren't, of course. Insufficient data. But it feels unlikely that there were no other incorrect seizures; 65000 instances with no false positives is a better accuracy rate than almost any human activity.)
Absolutely. If I were running drugs, I'd just avoid all that shit's that listed.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Q.E.D.
You don't get out much, do you?
Philadelphia Earns Millions By Seizing Cash And Homes From People Never Charged With A Crime
http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/08/26/philadelphia-civil-forfeiture-class-action-lawsuit/
Why are the Canadians surprised by this fact?
Two answers:
1) We aren't.
2) We need to be reminded now and then just how corrupt and borken the republic to our south actually is, as we tend to forget it and have trouble believing it.
Canadians, for all of our manifest imperfections, live in a relatively lawful country and take for granted that people in the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand do as well. Despite being bombarded by news stories out of the US and UK in the past ten or fifteen years about how lawless things are getting there with their out-of-control security states we simply have trouble processing the practical implications.
Although... I renewed my passport recently and realized I haven't actually traveled to the US in over five years, whereas in the previous five years I had worked, lived and vacationed in the US. So we do kind of appreciate what a dangerous, arbitrary and lawless place the US has become, we just react by avoiding it rather than thinking much about it.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
I hate stuff like this. I hate it because it is crooked and evil. I hate it because there is very little recourse for the average citizen to make against an attack like this.
Contact your congress reps, local and federal. Try to get them to change the law. What is happening in these stories should be illegal.
Like I said to another poster. This unlawful seizure has only happened in a handful of cases over the last decade, and those where corrected by the courts, property returned and officers involved appropriately disciplined.
The original story reads like this happens every day. Sorry, that's not true. It doesn't happen once a week, or once a month even.
Are you sure?
From the Washington Post article that the CBC author quoted.
I'm not sure about the numbers either, but even if they're off by an order of magnitude, it seems like a lot of seizures.
Further interesting is the last line. It reads to me like half of the seizures are ABOVE $8,800.
Wrong. http://www.newyorker.com/magaz....
Why don't you shut the fuck up and stop being a pathetic police apologist when you have no fuckin clue what you're talking about.
Please send me a list of approved attire, standards of car cleanliness, and any other requirements for not appearing like a drug dealer.
I believe the primary rules for "not looking like a drug dealer" are:
1) be white
2) be middle-class
3) be middle-age
4) be male
5) be conventional in dress, behaviour and language
And really, if you aren't a white, middle-class, middle-age, conventional male, do you really have anyone but yourself to blame?
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Perhaps the author of the CBC article shouldn't have taken so many shortcuts in writing his article and just posted a link to the Washington Post article.
It says pretty clearly that abundant energy drinks or air fresheners were a potential indicator of smuggling -- which they are. While a back seat full of empty Monster cans might also be a good indicator of non-stop driving by spring breakers to Daytona, it's also a sign that you might be looking at smugglers. Abundant air fresheners, while possibly a sign that the guy in the passenger seat is lactose intolerant, is also a fair indicator of hiding a smell that wasn't just running over a skunk back up the highway. [In much the same way that slurring words doesn't necessarily indicate a drunk, it's certainly a possible indicator.]
As best I can tell nowhere in the WP article is clothing mentioned. I have to assume the CBC author came to that idea all on his lonesome.
Your retired citizens must not have gotten the memo. I wish that they had. I live in a part of the US that's popular among "winter visitors" and every winter it's Beautiful British Columbia license plates everywhere. You're risking your life every time you drive through certain parts of town from November - April...
Reining in Forfeiture
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...
Federal Asset Forfeiture Continues to Skyrocket Under Obama
http://reason.com/blog/2012/07...
Rand Paul introduces bill to reform civil asset forfeiture
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The Stealing of America By the Cops, the Courts, the Corporations and Congress
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
(As usual, the Huff Post gives the primary culprit, the head of the executive branch, a pass.)
When I want to buy something with $10,000, I use a check, credit card or bank transfer. I can't imagine actually taking that much in cash and there are a lot of good reasons not to even attempt such a thing.
The police aren't the only ones who'd take a wad of cash, you know.
we are going to need a citation from you on how there were not unjustified seizures.
http://jalopnik.com/5913416/co...
It has cost billions going into trillions of dollars and the only thing accomplished is the politicians have achieved the back door standing army they have been trying to get since the end of the civil war.
lose != loose
Unless you are incredibility stupid, or actually doing something illegal, you have nothing to fear from 99.999% of law enforcement, and for that 0.001% of the time there is a risk, there isn't much you can do anyway. But you have the same things at home I'll bet.
Are you deliberately lying or is the problem that you have not yet learned to Google before posting extraordinary claims?
Your claim is directly contradicted by an article in the New Yorker that was probably pivotal in raising the alarm. Here is a small sample:
Yet only a small portion of state and local forfeiture cases target powerful entities. "There's this myth that they're cracking down on drug cartels and kingpins," Lee McGrath, of the Institute for Justice, who recently co-wrote a paper on Georgia's aggressive use of forfeiture, says. "In reality, it's small amounts, where people aren't entitled to a public defender, and can't afford a lawyer, and the only rational response is to walk away from your property, because of the infeasibility of getting your money back." In 2011, he reports, fifty-eight local, county, and statewide police forces in Georgia brought in $2.76 million in forfeitures; more than half the items taken were worth less than six hundred and fifty dollars. With minimal oversight, police can then spend nearly all those proceeds, often without reporting where the money has gone.
It takes only a pinch of common sense to realize that if you allow a group of people the right to stop law abiding citizens and take their money and possessions with no legal repercussions then this right will be abused.
In some places it costs well over $1,000 for a citizen to start fighting a seizure. If the cops took $500 or less then fighting and winning will cost at least $500 and likely thousands of dollars more.
In a backhanded way, you seem to be saying that the police in America are a bunch of nincompoops who haven't yet figured out that it is much easier to steal smaller amounts of money from people who can't or won't fight back than it is to steal larger amounts of money from people who can and will fight back.
The way the system is set up, it may be impossible to provide accurate statistics on what percentage of these civil forfeitures had anything at all to do with criminal activity because no criminal charges need to be filed and there are big disincentives that prevent even completely innocent people from fighting back.
Many of the anecdotal stories in the New Yorker article show how easy it is for civil forfeiture laws to be systematically abused by the police. Even if the original system was created with the best of intentions it has devolved into us basically paying the police handsomely to violate people's Constitutional rights.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Obviously not written by a straight white Christian male, AKA "the only non-protected class."
I guarantee it. Basically distrust anyone who blames the countries ills on just one party because they are broadcasting their partisanship (and no, partisanship is not a virtue, it is a vice of the highest order).
Hmm, 62K seizures in 13 years across the entire nation...
So, a bit fewer than 5K per year nationwide. Which is considerably lower than your chance of getting killed in an auto accident (about 33K per year).
So, while it's pretty clearly corrupt and of questionable Constitutionality, it's not so prevalent as to make it something to really worry about if I have seven times as much chance of being killed in an auto accident (or twice as much chance of being murdered).
Note that I am not endorsing this sort of behaviour by police/judges/feds. Merely pointing out that TFA is aiming to be rather more alarmist than reality requires....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I used to look like the guy on a package of Zig-Zag papers, got pulled over all the time, and let them search my van. They never found anything because there was nothing to find.
Like I said to another poster. This unlawful seizure has only happened in a handful of cases over the last decade, and those where corrected by the courts, property returned and officers involved appropriately disciplined.
...
Can you point us to support for this claim, somewhere? I'm sure you wouldn't just be making this up.
Thanks.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
4) be male
I think you mean,
4) be FEMALE
(unless, that is, you are saying that most males look more like a drug dealer than a female)
There were several more specific cases cited in the Washington Post article, as well as statistics showing that 40% of people who chose to take the issue to court received their money back.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
I believe the primary rules for "not looking like a drug dealer" are:
1) be white
2) be middle-class
3) be middle-age
4) be male
5) be conventional in dress, behaviour and language
I'd agree with all of these except item 4. Do you really think that a woman is more likely to be suspected of dealing drugs than a man is? I'd expect it to be overwhelmingly the other way around, and arrest records bear this out.
If you want to avoid being bothered by the police, being a white, middle-class, middle-aged, conventional female is really your best bet.
Yep, and that is where people differ.
I see 5/6ths of people walk away from 'upto' $8k as an implied 90% are guilty and 10% it wasn't worth it to fight. You see 1/6th of people fight and 1/2 of that is given back as these are half illegal seizures.
Looking at it impartially however we should be able to see that all we really know is that a court said 1/12 are bad and 1/12 are good. Now if we just had some idea on the other 10/12ths.
And ANY of what you listed is grounds for civil forfeiture of cash the person might have on hand? Jesus H.
Wrong. They can. They currently don't, but they're warming up to it fast.
...Steve
Cool.. what if I don't want the police digging through my possessions at will? I assume you'd be cool with them rummaging around in your house too, yeah?
Police officers have to fit the profile of a psychopath else the force won't hire them. In reality, they swear a secret oath to always have each others backs no matter what the circumstance. Think skull and bones, and how John Kerry and George Bush swore a secret oath greater than the president of the united states to their fraternity. Police have no concept of empathy or rights; instead they only carry out the state's and their own psychopathic agenda. Police are not here to protect you at all.
I don't believe this is a partisan issue. It's a matter of good and honest governance, which neither of the two major parties has clealry demonstrated in recent memory.
Canada isn't trying to tell you anything. It's just warning Canadians that US cops are corrupt as fuck, and how to reduce the chances something bad could happen to them when travelling in the US.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
The current IRS scandal hasn't entered your consciousness, has it?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
As far as I know, cash is still legal to use. If the police cannot prove it was ill-gotten gain, than it should always be returned (in a fair country).
police himself or just woefully misinformed, or paid shill?
Like I said to another poster. This unlawful seizure has only happened in a handful of cases over the last decade, and those where corrected by the courts, property returned and officers involved appropriately disciplined.
The original story reads like this happens every day. Sorry, that's not true. It doesn't happen once a week, or once a month even.
Are you serious? Someone already called you out for not reading the article, but now you're just digging yourself deeper.
The Washington Post this week reported that in the past 13 years, there have been 61,998 cash seizures on roadways and elsewhere without use of search warrants.
The total haul: $2.5 billion
That's an average of about 13 times per day for the last 13 years. Would you like to clarify where you got that "not even once a month" information?
No. They're signs that law-enforcement can use to help them identify possible smugglers. Do you feel a special need to put words in my mouth and then become outraged at them?
Odd then that women get far lesser prison sentences than men for the exact same crimes. Muh soggy knees!
we can check policy votes and budget votes....Republicans are lockstep against government agencies that do oversight
Thank you Dave Raggett
No., I'm saying that doesn't happen. It's only happened a handful of times, EVER, and the courts fixed it.
It happens every time property is seized and used without an associated criminal conviction. Why in the hell is this concept so hard for people, if the property is used or the proceeds of a crime PROVE IT! Anything else is such a prima face violation of the 4th and 5th amendment that I am surprised the founding fathers haven't risen from the grave to kick the ass of whoever supports this crap.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the (supposed) good of its victims may be the most oppressive
yeah i know it's a message for Canadians, but my comment was about the *significance* of the bulletin and *who is responsible*...because that's part of how you **fix the problem**
Thank you Dave Raggett
So, basically the same advice they give when travelling to any other banana republic?
Pathetic when they give the same warnings about American cops as they used to about Mexico or other places with corrupt cops.
Any badly written law will get abused like this. Because now these guys can seize money and stuff without any legal process other than "because I said so".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Were you a pirate?
Sent from my PDP-11
Because that absolves Reagan and his pals?
The point is not that Democrats are magical, but that "if the Republicans were in charge, this wouldn't happen!" is a demonstrably false claim.
So did Germans in Nazi Germany.
Not really. The Nazis got control of the Reichstag by forming a plurality coalition government with other fringe parties, then negotiated with Germany's two MAIN political parties (neither of which had a majority, but both of which had pluralities that were larger than the number of Nazis, but smaller than the coalition of minor parties assembled by the Nazis) to convince them that allowing them to be nominally in charge was a lesser evil than cooperating with their traditional arch-rivals.
At the risk of getting downmodded, the Nazi takeover of Germany's government is basically the same thing that happened to the US when the Tea Party ended up with enough seats in Congress to be disruptive, without actually being able to seize outright power. We just got damn lucky that they ended up being just a few seats short of achieving their goals before Americans realized how completely nuts most of them were.
I say this with direct first-hand knowledge, because I went to college and used to be friends with some of them... there are Tea Party strategists who've studied the Nazi Party's rise to power, their tactics, and the strategies that worked. The Nazis won tiny victories, then had some of the finest filmmakers to ever walk the earth produce documentaries that were mostly fiction, but had enough truth to be accepted by many as plausible. Many of those strategists are vaguely aware that they're playing with fire, but have NO IDEA just how dangerous the game they're playing can become almost overnight.
There's a reason why the Nazis held their biggest public events at night. They used the same tricks modern directors use to turn a few dozen extras into a cheering crowd big enough to fill a stadium. They herded the attendees into crowded areas, then blinded them with arc lights so they couldn't see that the stadium was mostly empty. They deafened them with loudspeakers that amplified the (small) crowd ITSELF. And creatively edited in footage from unrelated sporting events (that DID have large crowds) to convince everyone who saw the newsreel a few days later -- including the relatively small number of attendees at the event itself -- that it was WAY bigger than it really was.
In many cases, elected Nazi officials did things that were blatantly illegal, or at least ambiguously taboo, and did it amidst a media firestorm they stoked with contrived moral outrage. They piled HUGE lies onto small lies, knowing that people would dismiss the big ones, but believe the more reasonable-sounding small ones. And every step of the way, they built up the exploits they got away until German voters started to believe they were legitimate, if not respectable.
Truth be told, most Nazi voters were fairly normal people. Many of them DID think the party's leadership was kind of nuts, but swallowed their propaganda hook, line, and sinker. The Nazis used the same tactics used by modern religious cults to draw in families, then convinced them to cut off contact with friends and family members who left the party... and socially-pressure them into publicly displaying their support for the Nazi party, even if they privately voted for someone else.
We NEED to study and understand the Nazis. Not because they were in any way, shape, or form admirable (or even non-reprehensible), but because their tactics are alive & well today, and being actively used against us, and most people are fucking OBLIVIOUS to it. Over the past 70 years, we've hyperfocused so much on Nazi concentration camps that we've completely forgotten how they managed to totally pwn Germany itself... and as a result, we (Americans) don't recognize what we're seeing now as the latest manifestation of the same tactics that finally allowed them to take control of Germany, even WITHOUT a real majority. In a very real sense, the Nazis lost the ground war, but perversely won an enduring victory in the public relations realm that has scarred our society with an eternal belief that the Nazis wer
Same in canada, you risk yourself driving any time from November - April when ever you see a states license plate that is further south than NY.
Well, in other less polished countries that the US is so fond of accusing of human rights violations, they call it a bribe. Do nto pay the bribe, the cops will probably hit you, beat you up, hold you and cause much grief.
So is this article saying US is not much different? The First World US? The prime paragon of freedom and human rights?
I mean, the cop stops you, looks around for cash, asks you to hand it over?
You get a receipt but to get ti back you have to hire attorneys costing $300/hr?
If you dont let them confiscate/search you can get beaten up? Killed even? And all the cop might get is a paid suspension??
What next???
Just because confiscating legal/legit cash on some imagined pretext is institutionalized does not make it any different from a third-world shakedown you know?? Just call it the right name, a bribe..
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
From your link a few paragraphs, you posted AC, but this story needs to be modded up a bit.-----
The county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell, arrived an hour later. Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer, told Henderson and Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road. “No criminal charges shall be filed,” a waiver she drafted read, “and our children shall not be turned over to CPS,” or Child Protective Services.
“Where are we?” Boatright remembers thinking. “Is this some kind of foreign country, where they’re selling people’s kids off?” Holding her sixteen-month-old on her hip, she broke down in tears.
Later, she learned that cash-for-freedom deals had become a point of pride for Tenaha, and that versions of the tactic were used across the country. “Be safe and keep up the good work,” the city marshal wrote to Washington, following a raft of complaints from out-of-town drivers who claimed that they had been stopped in Tenaha and stripped of cash, valuables, and, in at least one case, an infant child, without clear evidence of contraband.
That's just the cash. There's also the cars, boats, houses, businesses etc. About a year ago the CBC had a show on this including an interview with a motel owner who had his motel forfeited due to renting out a room to a drug user. He was as innocent as could be and eventually got his business back after much hassle but it seems forfeiting houses is also common. Interestingly they only go after stuff that is paid off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Don't visit the US! I've had a great experience visiting Cuba. Hell, some people probably had a better experience visiting East Germany.
Come to the US, we'll strip search you, steal you money, and and we won't even say please. And that's if you're white!
A fixed, dusty, written-on-parchment Constitution means what it said when it was written (yes, even including the non-free persons being only counted as 3/5ths for congressional seat allocation (the Constitution does NOT discriminate on skin color - READ it)) and may only be changed via a lengthy and politically-difficult amendment process. A "living" Constitution can have all its words "re-interpreted" to fit modern times, of course by any judge in any jurisdiction to fit any political desire de jour.
The modern left learned in the 1960s that it was far easier to get their way in the courts through judicial rulings than in the legislatures, so they became big fans of changing society through the courts - and left-leaning judges declaring that the Constitution says things it plainly does not are key to this political scheme; One need look no further than the Roe-v-Wade case where whacko lefty judges cite "penumbras" and "eminations" (instead of the actual words of our founders) to justify what would become the wholesale slaughter of MILLIONS of innocent human beings. They had an agenda: enable abortion via the courts, even though the Constitution said NOTHING either way about the issue, because they could not get it legitimately through the congress. The PROPER method would have been to make their arguments to the public, convine the public to support them, and then use that public support to motivate the politicians to change the laws. The IMPROPER way was to get some left-wing judges to write that there were "penumbras" in the Constitution. The only reaon the left likes all this "living document" nonesense is that nobody on the right uses it against them. Imagine a right-wing court imagining that there were "shadows" and "penumbras" in the Constitution that meant all gays should be put to death by the same means as those the court allowed to be aborted... the shrieks and howls from the left (and even the right, who are after-all the ones who despise thi sort of lawless judicial activism) would be deafening. This sort of on-the-fly re-interpretation of the words in the Consitution should be repugnant to ALL Americans.
The modern era of jucidial "litmus tests" started when Ted Kennedy and the other left-wing Senators um, well... Borked judge Bork. They desperately needed to maintain the support of all the pro-choice groups in their coalition by protecting Roe-v-Wade and saw Bork as an extreme threat to that ruling (he was a "strict constructionist" who saw the language of that ruling as the intellectual garbage it was) so they completely trashed the man in an act so unprecedented that there was no term for it (hence the method now being called "Borking", and-in "he got Borked").
As for "Political correctness", this is an INVENTION of the Left!!!! The term never applied in the United States before the Clinton Administration. We used to laugh at the concept when Americans (and Immigrants escaping Soviet Russia) used to tell us about the intellectual lunacy that happened in totalitarian Communist Russia where everybody KNEW the truth (like "the store is out of toilet paper but has a glut of toothpaste") but had to say "the party line" (like "our economy is doing so well we are producing more of the stuff people need, like toothpaste, than can fit on the shelves!"). When Bill Clinton brought Donna Shalala (on Hilary's recommendation) from the University of Wisconsin into his administration at HHS she brought her "speech codes" with her and immediately began infecting the federal government with this vile disease which is present (by necessity) in every leftist attempted-utopia. Utopia is impossible, so the left always needs to control speech in places where it attempts to deliver utopia, in order to suppress critics who, like the little boy pointing to the naked emperor, might speak the truth about the failures.
Are you SERIOUSLY arguing that the left has no litmus tests for "politically-correct" judges????
Would the left require a judicial nominee to support "abortion rights"?
Would the left require a judicial nominee to support "LGBT rights" and "marriage equality"?
Would the left require a judicial nominee to support "union rights" for government employees and government contractors?
I could easily list another 30 things the left insists on for judges... so don't delude yourself - the left DEMANDS "political correctness" and "litmus tests" for judges. In FACT, many of the things this article refers to were demands by left-wing politicians who are HUGE supporters of monitoring and documenting every detail about the American People and using any detail about what you are carrying as evidence you might be "up to something" - because they see this as more FAIR than suspecting actual suspects (which they have derided as "profiling").
Name a Consitution that has provided more freedom for its people over a longer time than ours; a Constitution that has lofty words but provides less freedom is not "better" and one that has not withstood centuries of tesing is not proven to be durable enough to protect better.
Please cite the "ridiculous rhetorical" content of the U.S. Constitution, and explain why you think it is worthy of ridicule.
The problems in modern America are NOT in the constitution - they ALL lie in the fact that our politicians and judges have spent the past several decades pretending that is says some stuff it does not, while simultaneously pretending it does not say things it plainly DOES. This is the sickness of pretending that it is a "living document" whose words can freely be interpreted to mean whatever-the-hell you need to interpret them as meaning to get the results you want at any given moment
I'll take the US Constitution over ANY other, particularly Canada's where they pretend to be free but have repeatedly tried to jail people for SPEECH (particularly warnings about radical Islam. Islamists have been using Canadian law to suppress all criticism there and I personally consider travel to Canada "unsafe")
They plainly wrote in the Constitution:
The 4th Amandment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"
Their other writings give us a pretty good idea that by "unreasonable" they were NOT nullifying the rest of what they were writing; they were allowing for things like life-and-death emergencies. Note that they REQUIRED search warrants that [a] were tied to a "probable cause" [b] were obtained from the judge by the searching officals being put "under oath" (and therefore subject to purjury charges if dishonest) [c] and with specifics about both the location of the search and about what could be siezed. Sadly, we've rarely prosecuted-and-jailed cops or presecutors for being dishonest in their warrant applications (lesser punishments are NOT what the founders had in mind even though they might be common in the "good-ole-boys" club of government) nor have we as a public forced them to be as specific in their searches as the founders intended. There is simply NO WAY that our founders would have allowed things like the NSA phone records snooping.
As for "carrying a load of cash" - our founders did most transactions with cash, and everything else on handshakes and with notes (like modern checks) - they had no such things as "wire transfers" and credit cards. They would be ASTOUNDED that ANY judge would pretend that a large amount of cash was evidence of ANYTHING other than, perhaps, a lack of trust in banks and checks (which they WOULD certianly understand)
No American should ever consent to a search without a warrant under any circumstance except an emergency where it is obviously in the interest of ALL parties (including the person being searched) to quickly get it done and move-on.
Most money is tainted with drugs. Dogs smell this. Is this surprising?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency
I am not a lawyer, but in most cases, you have to be detained officially in order for them to make you wait.
If you are officially detained, you have more rights in many cases.
If an officer says they will get dogs, they are free to do so. You are to ask, am "I free to go or am I being detained". If you are detained, you will want to shut the hell up and stop saying anything except "Am I under arrest? I would like to speak with an attorney". Like a broken record.
If you are free to go, after checking your records, you can leave in many cases. You have to ask. Over and over.
Learn the laws that you live under. Laws vary. Many places you cannot refuse a breath or alcohol test under any circumstances. Most places protect your right to refuse a search if you do so.
Reading this story for a moment I thought I was in Brazil or Argentina. More closely from the borders you're more extorted.
*For the police departments, this kind of robbery is just a way to grab some cash. But I wonder if this is accepted on a political level to get rid of non-traceable monetary transactions altogether.*
One has to wonder. Are there occasions when an officer finds a tourist with a lot of cash, and knowing that there might not be much of a trace, siezes a lot of the cash of the tourist "you're in MY country now, give me all your money or jail. You aren't a citizen so no rights for you!", followed by a quick trip to the bank prior to end of shift, followed by a new car and trip for the family the following week.
Although... I renewed my passport recently and realized I haven't actually traveled to the US in over five years, whereas in the previous five years I had worked, lived and vacationed in the US. So we do kind of appreciate what a dangerous, arbitrary and lawless place the US has become, we just react by avoiding it rather than thinking much about it.
This, in spite of the fact that the violent crime rate in the US is a fraction of what it once was when you used to visit... and a fraction of what it is today in that place you take for granted - the United Kingdom.
Yes, this.
I asked an officer "what if I say no?" "Well, I'm going to search it anyways"
He found nothing, there was nothing, as I said. My tobacco cigarette smelled like pot was his excuse.
If there is suspicion of drugs, they can and will search you whether you consent or not.
Suspicion means:
- you have the wrong color of skin
- you have the wrong color of car
- I don't like your face
Not totally convinced that we have a lawless security state, although there was a recent scandal when a police officer was armed during routine policing. Not the sort of thing we really want to see in this country.
In order for Germany to turn Nazi a situation of deep, moral depravity was required. The collapse of the economy created terror and panic and the Soviets gathering strength also menaced Germans. A state of great fear was key to dumping all sane morality into the crapper. Belief in God among the masses took a hit as well. After all in poverty and panic it is all too easy to claim that there was no God as God would never allow such a state of affairs to exist. There is another unpopular fact that the world doesn't want to admit. German science and art was the pinnacle and no nation came close to doing what Germans had done. They actually had something to loose. And the Soviets did threaten to erase German culture completely while a failed economy mean building a competitive military was very unlikely. The effect was that the German masses sent their morals to the dump and were very aware of the mass murders taking place, Keep in mind that concentration camps were railroad depots and travelers could easily see Jews at forced labor, starving and without protection from the cold, laboring on the tracks near the camps. These inmates were walking ghosts who were obviously being starved. One American GI that I met was laboring in the cities in public view with complete nudity as his clothing had decayed on his back and fallen away, He was forced to defuse bombs that had not exploded. A German housewife was offended by his male organs showing and tossed him a used pair of pants, The notion that Germans did not know is bullshit.
Cops are being forced to generate income for cities and counties. By putting pressure on the cops they are forced to concentrate on trivial traffic violations rather than catching people who are really menacing in traffic. The housewife who is five miles over the speed limit may get lots of tickets. But laying in weight for the person that drag races at very high speeds takes too much time so the cops are sort of encouraging extreme violations. One red light cam can grab over one million dollars a year for the city. Local policy is to not take points away for cam caught offences. They just want the money and keeping people driving means more tickets. The average good driver does create enough minor violations to suffer loss of license every year.
Heh... And I thought that "Interstate 60" was a satirical comedy with little basis in reality.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
To really seal the deal put NRA and Tea Party stickers on your vehicle. Playing country music and Rush Limbagh is also a big plus.
Why is Snark Required?
"the Nazi takeover of Germany's government is basically the same thing that happened to the US when the Tea Party ended up with enough seats in Congress to be disruptive"
Except for the part where nazis killed political opponents.
There's many things wrong with the UK, but in general our police forces are not corrupt and won't take money from you if you're pulled over. They're incredibly unlikely to shoot you either.
I don't see a contradiction between what you're saying and what the parent is saying. It's entirely plausible that the Germans knew of the holocaust (even if in a deep state of denial later), and that their rise to power happened, in part, via crazy propaganda tricks.
You do not know what youre talking about. Most germans did not travel at all during the time of the war. Most concentration camps, while having tracks laid to them, were not at central stations. There were no travelers to see your nonexistant-camps-at-stations. most german's WERE unaware of what was happening. there were rumors, and they saw groups of Jews taken away, but hard evidence of what was occuring was hidden from view.
Oh, don't be too proud of the difference. We have the same kind of out-of-control security state, but it isn't as well funded, creative, or competent at the job they are doing in the US. Which turns out to be a good thing.
It's analogous to the situation before the 2008 financial crisis. Canadian banks had been persuading the government to let them get in on the same less-regulated action as the US banks were able to do with securitized mortgages and all sorts of other risky stuff. Thankfully, the Canadian consideration of these changes had ground along much more slowly than in the US, and when the crisis hit our banks were still operating with the same constraints in place that they had to deal with since the 1930s. In the US, quite a number of key regulations had been stripped away years before. Our slower, less innovative approach actually paid off for once. But don't mistake this for being too clever to make the same mistakes the US had. We were getting ready. Things went bad before we did.
Same with the out-of-control security state. Hopefully that laggardly pace will help, but it isn't because we're wiser. We're playing catch up quite avidly.
We have so many laws and regulations that it is probably physically impossible for a single individual to read all of them in a lifetime, and we are creating more every day. Even one segment of the law that almost everyone has to deal with each year is basically unintelligible as it is almost 4 million words long and that is just the US Federal tax code.
Now joking aside we are probably at a point where due to the number of laws we as a country are very similar to a lawless one. You know it is bad when the people who do research for congress can't provide a count of the criminal offenses that exist in the USC:
When staff for a task force of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee asked the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to update its 2008 calculation of criminal offenses in the U.S.C. in 2013, the CRS responded that they lack the manpower and resources to accomplish the task.
Time to offend someone
One American GI that I met
American GI or American guy? What does GI stand for?
Is this a corporate shill? All he's doing in this whole write-up is implying that the Tea Party, and only the Tea Party, are Nazis and a future group of psychopaths. Fuck whoever modded him up.
And fuck this bag on the Tea Party nonsense. It's a diverse group of individuals, no matter who your goddam corporate whore-masters are. The only batshit insane people in this country are the ones who think things are going to change for the better with their crony-ass Republicratmasters in charge. They've got you guys so convinced that you don't need liberty and freedom that you think people who want to keep them are crazy.
GI = Government Issue
It's slang for an American Soldier.
Ooooh some political organizations didn't get non-profit status that they were not entitled to anyway. Seriously it doesn't even rate as far as substantive political scandals go. Made for some good TV and soundbites though.
Not posting AC, because this is beyond idiotic.
1: Just like the insurgency in Iraq was stopped quickly? It's quite obvious that you can't take out stealth bombers with pistols and you can't protect yourself against nukes with a shotgun, but it's quite impressive what an armed populace can accomplish.
2: American society exposes its citizens to more violence than nearly any other developed country.
3: This is the only point you make that isn't total shit.
4: We're teaching our kids creationism in public schools, but you say Christianity is declining? Brownskins across the country are getting harassed, even Sikhs for fucks sake, but Islam is destined to be the top US religion in ten years? How out of touch with reality can one possibly be?
5: This is comical. Why are countless countries around the world complaining about how heavily subsidized US food exports are destroying their domestic agriculture industries? Why isn't China already invading any of the countless places in the world that have quality arable land but a weak government? Why does my broker tell me that my shares of KRFT (Oscar Mayer, one of our largest bacon producers, is owned by Kraft) are still owned by me and not China? How will Mexico conquer Texas if they can't even control the territory they already have? Why isn't some Middle Eastern nation building a new Damascus or Dubai in Mexico, which already has a weak government?
6: The US has been a belligerent in many (if not most) of the world's recent conflicts. Read a book.
7: Hostile actors? Who the fuck are you talking about? Japan 75 years ago?
8: What the fuck does this even have to do with a revolution? Is there some reason why we'd need a new government to take the form of a federated republic?
tl;dr, both you and the people who talk about revolution are clueless. A revolution would be stupid primarily because we already have a government, and the pain of getting a new one would be greater than the suffering we experience under the current one. It has nothing to do with Obama converting everyone to Islam or China invading our farms.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Fantastic comment.
I can't read it however without thinking immediately of Fox News in the US and the Daily Telegraph in the UK.
'Contrived moral outrage' indeed.
No, we are more conservative, is all.
This just gives me some ideas of what condition I should keep the interior of my old junk jeep in. It is perfectly road worthy but beat up and rusty on the exterior and I don't bother to really clean the interior after hunting or camping. There are even blood stains on the roof from the deer I have shot over the years. I am the kind of person who would make a big stink about things and do my best to put the screws to the police department if they pulled that on me.
Time to offend someone
While sitting in a similar boat to yours self I have wondered if one could file theft charges against the officer doing the seizure. I don't know if this has been tried or is even prevented by law but if I found my self in that situation that is what I would do.
Granted you would be filing it in the with the department that the officer works for but if you had a video and audio recording of the incident it would seem like good evidence and make some hay with the local media about it providing them the recording.
Time to offend someone
The GP probably just expects his police states to have iron gauntlets instead of velvet gloves.
Time to offend someone
4) be male
Wha... huh? Ok, I'm seriously confused here. Since when are females considered drug dealers?
You, sir/ma'am have successfully flabbergasted me.
Unless you are a Brazilian plumber.
That sounds exactly like what a drug smuggler would try to look like, therefore being all 5 of these woud be suspicious...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
But I am a white middle class, middle aged male drug dealer and number 5 is my standard professional dress I'm an account for the CIA funding black ops.
Russia?
Or Blind samurai -because basically they shot a blind guy with a white stick.
Americans in their own country might not have privacy rights, but Canadians signed a US-Canada treaty that gives them the same privacy rights in the US as they have in Canada.
Be polite (not hard if Canadian), but don't let them treat you like an American serf.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Fairly sure the Rich don't have a lawless security state in the States, it's just everyone else.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
With a taser, not a gun.
nless you are a Brazilian plumber.
Mod parent up.
When comparing the US with the UK, I'd choose the US within a second. At least the US isn't ruled by a great-grandma.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
An armed populace practically can't be subjugated by any outright oppressor, be it foreign of domestic. If you have to have a gunfight with, and kill most of the populace, then you didn't really 'win' as an oppressor. You can't kill them all.
First, subjugation has many forms. Can you buy a non-low flush toilet in the U.S (federally mandated by George Bush (first) since 1997) no matter how many guns you own? Can you deposit over $10,000 without being reported to the federal government? Can your land be forcably purchased to build a shopping centre?
Second, "force" can be coersive, not just physical. So you have guns. Do you have money? Not any more you don't. Do you have electricity, water, internet, phone service? Nice while they lasted. Can you leave home and go anywhere to get food, gas, or other supplies? Those were the days. No matter how many guns you might have, a seige will eventually end - and not worth it for most people.
Third, both George W Bush's war in Iraq, and Putin's actions against Ukraine shows that even in a modern internet-connected world, the vast majority of a country's population can be completely convinced of something that is demonstrably not true (Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Ukrain wasn't overthrown by Nazis putting Russians into concentration camps). When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S testified to Congress that she was actually a nurse in Kuwait who watched Iraqi soldiers dump babies out of incubators to die on the floor (no such event was ever confirmed) - nobody asked even the very first question that would have exposed this lie. Opponents of the U.S government can be adequately demonized, then taken down with overwhelming public support.
Fourth, acting against the entire population might be impractical, but it's much easier to target specific groups one at a time. A large percentage of the U.S population already has nearly no rights already, as a result of nickle-and-diming laws that build up. For example, some states charge court fees to the accused, even when they are found innocent (i.e you used the court to prove your innocense, you must pay for that service), even for a minor crime like tresspassing. The poor often cannot pay, and can be imprisoned for that. There are prison fees, and failing to pay those can extend the term or result in reincarceration on release. There has built up a population of "un-people" who are otherwise law-abiding, but must avoid arrest, relying on a growing underground society of family, friends, and criminals to get illegal work, handle finances, find places to live, and so on. When sick they can't go to the hostpial or be turned in (they have back room "clinics"), when a victim of crime they can't go to the police. They can't use banks (so need cash, which the police can take as mentioned in the posted story). For other people, many are denied voting rights due to technicalities like lack of a drivers license or permanent residence. People caught urinating in public are put on a sex offenders list, which has such impossible restrictions on where to live and limits to work these days that many need to go into hiding just to survive. Minorities are stopped and searched on New York streets for no reason other than being black or hispanic.
Those are things that are already done. Those laws and actions are supported because the victims are "criminals" and in a black-and-white viewpoint, a "technical criminal" is as much a criminal as a murderer, and deserves no rights (and to be accused is to be a criminal).
All put together, this means even if the entire free population of the U.S were armed and trained, they could still be subjugated completely by a government that wanted to. Keep in mind that the repressed population of Iraq (pre-2003 overthrow) was also heavily armed (rifles mostly), but that didn't help them against Saddam Hussein's well organized repression.
So if they're all , essentially, crooked, will bribery work, like in Mexico? OTOH, probably not ;-) They might think there's more where that came from! Well, here we have it, don't we? Crooked government, dismantling of all constitutional rioghts, except for those in the authorities favor, and now, crooked cops.. using the legal system to portray the impression of legitimacy... Once a society gets all three of these, nothing less than all out civil war will return liberty. Honestly, how'd y'all let it get so bad? I'm not saying we don't have a problem in Canada, but so far , corruption isn't nearly at the levels it is across the border...
... Interestingly they only go after stuff that is paid off.
That makes a good case for being mortgaged to the hilt ;-)
A state of great fear was key to dumping all sane morality into the crapper.
The sense of duty, a more prominent feeling of the previous generations, some of which was raised with the Austrian style of whipping the sense of self away, might have something to do with it also.
And the Soviets did threaten to erase German culture completely
Do you mean explicitly, or via the local communist party?
Belief in God among the masses took a hit as well.
Nazis got support from the Catholics and Protestants fearing the rise of the Communist party, the party which attracted more of those who preferred their Sartre to their Bible.
Keep in mind that concentration camps were railroad depots and travelers could easily see Jews at forced labor, starving and without protection from the cold, laboring on the tracks near the camps.
Duty again: they must have done something bad to be imprisoned and slaved, like being communists or other criminals. "That is the business of those in charge, not mine. *forgot ever seeing the prisoners, blink*"
The sad part is this is good for anyone that lives here in the USA as well.
Hmm, 62K seizures in 13 years across the entire nation...
So, a bit fewer than 5K per year nationwide. Which is considerably lower than your chance of getting killed in an auto accident (about 33K per year).
So, while it's pretty clearly corrupt and of questionable Constitutionality, it's not so prevalent as to make it something to really worry about if I have seven times as much chance of being killed in an auto accident (or twice as much chance of being murdered).
Note that I am not endorsing this sort of behaviour by police/judges/feds. Merely pointing out that TFA is aiming to be rather more alarmist than reality requires....
Apples and oranges. By definition, everyone in a motor vehicle is potentially a motor accident fatality. But that roughly 5k/year of cash seizures can only involve those individuals who were both stopped and had enough cash to be "suspicious" - police aren't seizing $37 or whatever small cash amount at every traffic stop, else there would be an uproar. AFAIK, we don't have any statistics on what percentage of drivers go around with giant cash wads, but I bet it's damned few. Balance that rarity against 5k/year seizures, and it becomes obvious that this is a serious problem.
- T
although if it looks really illegal, probable cause can come into play, and its reasonable for it to do so.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You're absolutely right that its *members* are a diverse group of individuals... but the people who are actually providing 99.9% of the funds that allow them to make as much noise and get as far as they did are a dozen or two billionaire social darwinists who believe their wealth gives them the sovereign right to undo 225 years of liberal democracy in a shameless attempt to bring back the Gilded Age, if not outright feudalism. They might not openly exercise line-item vetoes over the agenda of the local Tea Party cells they finance... but the people who RUN the local orgs know damn well what's likely to get them more funding, and what's likely to get them a cold shoulder. They might privately disagree with a large part of the donors' agenda, but ultimately rationalize most of the doubt away. At least, until the day they accidentally see something they weren't supposed to, the cracks in the façade accumulate until they can't ignore them anymore, and finally conclude that they've been taken for a ride.
In college, I was just about the most diehard Republican you'd have ever met. I was LITERALLY drinking buddies with the guys who are now doing their best to turn the US into the kind of Third World country that would have made even J.P. Morgan blush and hang his head in shame. At one time, I had total religious faith in the infallibility of the all-holy Free Market, and it took more than a decade of seeing firsthand what happens when powerful companies and individuals are allowed to keep becoming more and more powerful without limit.
The Republicans and Democrats might *allow* plutocracy, but the practical outcome of Tea Party power would BE plutocracy. A country where Verizon would be allowed to merge unfettered with AT&T, outbid everyone for spectrum licenses they didn't need just to keep it out of their competitors' hands, and made bulk fiber progressively harder and more expensive to get until only THEY had all the backhaul they wanted. A country where two big airlines could merge, completely dominate air travel markets in half the country, then use their same dominance to rein in the REST of the country as the opportunity presented itself.
I'll be the first to say that the Democrats in the 70s and 80s were completely loony. In fact, they were about as loony as the most extreme third of the Republican Party (or what's left of it) today... or Republicans in the 1920s, for that matter. Back in college, I used to wonder how the Republicans could have possibly become almost irrelevant for much of the middle third of the 20th Century, especially compared to the loony 1960s & 1970s Democrats who looked almost like caricatures of bad taste in clothing (in contrast to the Republicans from the same era, who looked relatively normal). Then 2002 and 2008 happened, and made it unflinchingly obvious... the core of both the Republicans AND Democrats are at opposite loony ends of the spectrum, but at any given point in time, one of them drifts towards relative sanity. Like them or hate them, any alternative to a two-party system that has a shakeup every generation or two and has the mainstream voters drift back & forth between them would be worse.
The Democrats and Republicans might be shameless corporate whores, but even whores have limits and boundaries. Elected Tea Party officials are more like wealthy meth addicts who don't really care what happens around them as long as they're left alone to enjoy their drugs.
This should mark the Godwin point for this thread, but your post is too informative for that. Congrats, you have found an exception to the law!
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Yup! We're so goddamn legit we have laws that prevent you from reading the laws that protect the laws that end up making those laws possible. Wait WTF?
"At least the US isn't ruled by a great-grandma"??
It could only improve it. My great-grandma was a remarkable woman, practical, restrained & wise.
Same can't be said for most of the occupants of the Oval Office for the past 40 years.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
My great-grandma was a remarkable woman, practical, restrained & wise. Same can't be said for most of the occupants of the Oval Office for the past 40 years.
The difference is that the occupants of the Oval Office were elected, and could be thrown out every 4 years. Same can't be said for the great-grandma that rules Great Britain.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Except that she's only a figurehead. The real power resides in Westminster and the Prime Minister.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
For centuries to come, Youtube's hours of unscripted Gopro, cop-cam and cell phone clips of American police brutality reality out-advertise any CBC travel advisory. Sadly, such a police state is exactly what Hillary Clinton repeatedly relishes and she's the likeliest to replace Obama sans any savior from left field.
So did Germans in Nazi Germany.
Uh, you're wrong those stadiums were filled not that I endorse the Nazis, but I think you underestimate the stupidity of herds of humans.
Oh great wise one! (#1148), can you please point me to the source of your wisdom (seriously I'd love to see for myself but I can't find anything on this in Canada).
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Please there is no effective difference in US politics, it's the same group.
People keep saying that, but it is too broad a brush. If you take corporatism, levels of corruption, national defense, privacy rights (patriot act, wiretapping, etc...), police power, etc., as the sole indicators, then yeah, Republicans and Democrats are identical.
But you can't pretend there aren't huge differences in other areas. You may consider those areas inconsequential, but lots of other people consider things like social issues (education, medicine, reproductive rights/lack of rights, gay marriage, legalize/don't legalize pot, etc...), taxes (trickle down vs trickle up, etc..), federal vs state power, as huge issues.