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A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

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Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

#191

Post by selectodude »

mnm1 wrote: post #175
warent wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't what I intended to communicate at all. Lower level personnel behaving badly is just a symptom of the real problem, and punishing them would be an easy scapegoat for higher up authority. Just like with a toxic CEO in a company, firing some employees isn't a long term solution to fixing the culture. The leaders, the heads of the departments, is where the accountability should be.

Absolutely. The supervisors and chiefs of the cops who murder, steal, or otherwise break the law should indeed also be held accountable. But so should the actual perpetrators. Because in many of these cases, it is actually the low level cops who decide to commit crimes without any outside influence. Theft like this probably does go all the way to the top, but when cops murder unarmed, innocent people who are no threa…

And those scumbags are the ones that get promoted because bringing money into the system is "good police work". The rot is so embedded.

Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

#192

Post by JackCh »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #127
woolvalley wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go live in the USA, and you'll see the multiple ways it's more broken than Canada. Many other friends who have moved over from other developed countries collaborate the experience. I'm in the bay area, maybe it's just a special kind of broken that you don't see in other places in the USA, but things like flint, michigan also exist in the USA.

Canadians as a whole apparently disagree. There are about ~700,000 Americans living in Canada, and also about ~700,000 Canadians living in the U.S. (see links below) However, the U.S. population is more than 8x that of Canada. That means that on a proportional basis, Canadians are about 8x more likely to move to the U.S. than Americans are to move to Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_the_United_St…

Maybe this says more about climate than it does about governments. Of course if that's true, that people care more about the weather than the government, maybe that in itself is saying something.

Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

#194

Post by drtillberg »

badminton1 wrote: post #143

Civil forfeiture is technically a legal action against your property, not you. Since your property will not and cannot legally defend itself, it loses by default.

Next the government will indict the left hand of a thief, or the foot of a common brawler. Those are just body parts with no constitutional rights, so forget about habeas corpus and all that jazz. It'll be much better. Cops can just focus on arresting fists and feet and not worry about explaining themselves to juries.

Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

#195

Post by exabrial »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #187
exabrial wrote: post #186

Has civil asset forfiture been to the Supreme Court? It's blatantly unconstitutional, and given the current panel I'd say it has a great chance of being killed. I do have to say, it's a well known fact trying to make it across any border with a sum of cash is a risky business. I would hope America would be an exception to that fact due to "Due Process", but even I wouldn't place a bet on that. It says very clearly on…

Transferring money from China is easy via a wire. Converting RMB tO USD, on the other hand is a PITA and you won’t succeed if you don’t have the right documentation in triplicate. You can use wechat to pay for things as a foreigner if you have a resident permit, or so I here. Carrying more than $10k of cash is actually ok as long as you report it.

> xferring is easy via wire

No, it's not, you cannot wire it unless the recipient is a Chinese national.

> If you have a resident permit

The only requirement is a Chinese phone number which requires hours in line, a visa, facial recognition scan, and passport, and the same requirements for the bank account. Once you have a Chinese bank account, you can hook it up to wechat. The only ways to fund it are via cash however.

This was not a communication issue, I had a native speaker with me at Bank of China and China mobile.

Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

#196

Post by 392c91e8165b »

3pt14159 wrote: post #18
seibelj wrote: post #14

It amazes me when people think the government should be the go-to solution to society's problems. The government can indeed be used for good, and it has solved many problems, and regulations can be a good thing. But government should be applied very carefully, and probably as the last solution, after we see the failures of non-government solutions. The government is all powerful. They can destroy any business, destro…

Not last. Not first. Not all powerful. Not feckless. Americans act like their government is representative of governments. It isn't. They act like everything needs to be invented there. It doesn't. They believe that America is the greatest country in the world. It isn't. If people in America just stopped to look around at how other countries do things they'd be doubly as well run. Most parts of Europe, Japan, Canada,…

I'm not convinced that the US government is more broken than the others you list.

Most people killed by a government are killed not by police forces, but rather by armies, navies and air forces. And if you live in or near the US you have a lower chance of being killed in a war than if you live in or near Europe because although the US starts more small wars, it starts fewer big wars, and most people killed in war are killed in big wars.

Europe has started fewer wars and killed fewer people since 1945 than the US has, and this is a sign that Europe is safer for the average resident or neighbor than the US is, but that sign is more than cancelled out by Europe's record (and Japan's record) before 1945.

Over the centuries, most prolonged rivalries and most expensive arms races between European nations ended in a war. In contrast, the intense prolonged rivalry and extremely expensive arms race between the US and the USSR did not end in a war -- at least not a war in which the most lethal available weapons were used or in which civilians were targeted to the extent that civilians were targeted by European and Japanese governments during WW II. Surely, the USSR's government deserves some of the credit for that surprisingly good outcome, but so does the US government.

And if you want to claim that the US did not have to participate in the intense prolonged rivalry and extremely expensive arms race -- if you want to argue that the fact that it did is a sign that the US is badly governed, you have to face the fact that if it had not participated, all of Europe would've been overrun by the USSR. There was far less political will in Western Europe to prepare for yet another war than would've been necessary to resist an invasion from the USSR if the US hadn't paid for most of the preparations.

I do not conclude from this analysis that the US government is better than most governments -- only that it is not clear to me that it is definitely worse. And I think it is a mistake to draw a boundary at 1945 and claim that anything that happened before then was too long ago to have any bearing on the question of which of today's governments are better.

Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

#197

Post by skookumchuck »

3pt14159 wrote: post #18
seibelj wrote: post #14

It amazes me when people think the government should be the go-to solution to society's problems. The government can indeed be used for good, and it has solved many problems, and regulations can be a good thing. But government should be applied very carefully, and probably as the last solution, after we see the failures of non-government solutions. The government is all powerful. They can destroy any business, destro…

Not last. Not first. Not all powerful. Not feckless. Americans act like their government is representative of governments. It isn't. They act like everything needs to be invented there. It doesn't. They believe that America is the greatest country in the world. It isn't. If people in America just stopped to look around at how other countries do things they'd be doubly as well run. Most parts of Europe, Japan, Canada,…

It is the greatest country in the world, despite its problems. For example, since 2016, CNN has been attempting to destroy the Trump Presidency 24/7, without any of their reporters being harassed, disappeared, imprisoned, dying in mysterious accidents, etc.

It takes a great country for that to happen.

Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

#199

Post by caf »

arcticbull wrote: post #98
wetpaws wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer being harrased and bullied rather than having to live in a country that has a legal power to punish me for what I say.

You can absolutely get punished for what you say in the US -- freedom of speech was long ago recognized as anything but absolute. You can't yell fire in a crowded theater. Obscenity (as defined in Miller v. California) is not protected by the constitution. You can't lie under oath. You can't deliberately tell lies about people (Libel). The First Amendment doesn’t protect the speech of people plotting to overthrow the…

Don't forget "born secret" Restricted Data.

Re: A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

#200

Post by Taniwha »

seibelj wrote: post #14

It amazes me when people think the government should be the go-to solution to society's problems. The government can indeed be used for good, and it has solved many problems, and regulations can be a good thing. But government should be applied very carefully, and probably as the last solution, after we see the failures of non-government solutions. The government is all powerful. They can destroy any business, destro…

but that's because you have a crap government and don't hold them to high enough standards - vote in a better one and complain until they do a better job - a democratic govt is supposed to be accountable to the people, not the other way around, I don't think many Americans understand this
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