191–200 of 212 posts
Now that's a Kin-Dza-Dza grade police force.
I love old Soviet era sci-fi! The reason you're being downvoted is because sarcasm doesn't add to the discussion.
So now the working way is sarcasm, shunning and ostracism. Making it personal for people who invented and enacted this system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of money laundering operations is related to terrorist financing. Also, many terrorist organizations finance themselves via drug sales.
Why was this voted down? It strikes me as something requiring some citations or rebuttal, but not a simple downvote.
So we, as a country, had (and still have) a choice: who do we want managing this profitable market? Traditionally, we have chosen to fund violent gangs and cartels. We took what could have been a regulated - and taxed - market, and handed those profits to some of the worst people on the planet. So yes, there is funding going on of some bad people. That is by design - the prohibitionists even put "raising drug prices" as the purpose behind many of their attacks on the supply side ("dealers").
Yes, even in a legitimate market the regulations can fail and there are always loopholes and other problems. When the alternative is to hand piles of cash to violent gangs, even small improvements are worthwhile improvement.
Really, the people who still insist on full prohibition - that is, the people that are choosing to keep sending cash to gangs - are engaging in one of the nastier type of magical thinking. They make the assumption that simply by banning something, demand will magically change. In that view - where nobody should want drugs because they are illegal - it would indeed seem like the people "selfishly ignore the law an buy drugs" are funding various "bad" organizations. You see the same kind of magical thinking in other areas, too, such as "pro-life" groups. I suspect this type of attitude is derived from a Just World Hypothesis[2].
[1] If we can't cut off the supply side of the equation in prisons, we can't do it anywhere.
If this makes you sick, tell your congresspeople, and tell your friends to do the same. We do not get to have the rights we want without declaring that we want them.
This story is so unbelievably biased and one-sided, it confirms my suspicions of the value of the Washington Post anymore. Carrying $75K in cash around should raise anyone's suspicions as to the purpose, no matter what the carrier claims. Think about it. Why would YOU carry $75K in cash? The obvious and well known reasons are, it's the most secure way to fund drug and terrorist cells without leaving a trail. The Post…
Some child with no weapon gets shot in the head in a police car? You're there, absolutely refusing to accept the possibility of police mis-conduct.
What would ot take for you to accept that some police officers are corrupt and that some police officers disobey the law?
When someone has had their money taken what are they supposed to use to fund lawyers to get their money back?
In an era of budget shortfalls and market-based solutions, the American government is quickly becoming a for-profit enterprise at all costs.
Apparently it was very important to keep various Snowden disclosures secret, because:
DISCLOSURES THAT WE ARE CONVINCED THAT HAVE
SERIOUSLY HARMED THE NATIONAL SECURITY OF
THIS COMPANY
Company? Country? I'm going with "Freudian slip of the century"
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140813/23203228207/unsea...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging from the 5 or 6 cops I know personally (neighbors and what not), there's basically nothing you can do if they want something from you. They will lie or provoke you into doing something, even worse, one of the cops I know had a story about how someone said, "no, you cannot search my vehicle." The cop then asked if he wanted to be arrested for resisting arrest, and the guy gave in because he has no idea what hi…
> They will lie or provoke you into doing something I would love to see a law on the books that forbids law enforcement officers from lying to witnesses or the accused to extract evidence or confessions. After all, it's unlawful to lie to them; the playing field should be level on both ends.
'“9/11 caused a lot of officers to realize they should be out there looking for those kind of people,” said David Frye, a part-time Nebraska county deputy sheriff who serves as chief instructor at Desert Snow and was operations director of Black Asphalt. “When money is taken from an organization, it hurts them more than when they lose the drugs.”' Wait, what? I was unaware that 9/11 was perpetrated by drug trafficker…
A lot of money laundering operations is related to terrorist financing. Also, many terrorist organizations finance themselves via drug sales.
* Asset forfeiture abuses by police have been going on for at least a generation. Here's an excerpt from House Judiciary testimony by an African American gardener who dared to carry $9K in cash in 1991 to buy plants at a nursery. He had it all (surprise!) confiscated by cops. The fact that it's been 23 years and the abuses are worse, not better, is telling. https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/statement-rep-he... And here's a note I sent to Politech on the topic back in 1998: http://www.politechbot.com/p-00023.html
* Contrary to some claims in this thread, there are reasons to transport significant sums of $10K+ in cash. Contractors, tree removal companies, landscape installers, grading/excavation firms, etc. can charge that much for work and, I'm told by my SF peninsula neighbors who have had work done, often offer cash discounts. (Which means, of course, both the homeowner and the contractor would be transporting large cash amounts sequentially.)
* I suspect that governments would, to a first approximation, prefer that their own citizens engage only in traceable, trackable, non-anonymous electronic transactions with closely regulated financial firms. This is already happening: cash now represents only 14% of dollar payments by value. Though my favorite example in this area is this proposal that bubbled up inside the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; I wrote about it for Wired in 1999:
http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/10/32121 "The magnetic strip could visibly record when a bill was last withdrawn from the banking system. A carry tax could be deducted from each bill upon deposit according to how long the bill was in circulation... Systems would have to be put in place at banks and automatic teller machines to read bills, assess the carry tax, and stamp the bills 'current...'"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is terrible advice on multiple levels. Absolutely you shouldn't be leaving the money out in the open, and should probably hide it. You should absolutely NEVER give consent to search your car. You have no idea what a person is capable of until it's too late. I'm not saying the cop will plant something, though it wouldn't be the first time, but you also have NO IDEA what might be in your car accidentally.
You've been watching too many political thrillers. These guys are just sniffing around for low hanging fruit. If you want to get into a one hour bout of flexing nuts with a cop where he gets suspicious and orders a K9 unit and ends up thoroughly tearing apart your car and bags and potentially planting something, knock yourself out. Do the whole citizen lawyer thing. If you want to be on your way with minimal hassle,…
"Fuck you" is not an appropriate response, but videotaping responses to respectful questions is: "Am I free to go?" "Am I being detained?" "On what grounds am I being detained?" "Can you please tell me the relevant statutes so I can look them up?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because resistance is futile. The machinery of government explicitly favours authority and that very authority was given to them willingly by the voting - or non voting - masses. It is the authority that everyone, including the plundered, believe they must have in order to keep them safe. Resistance takes courage and a willingness to lose everything you care about, such as your prideful opinion, free time or an hour…
>> Why doesn't your society resist? > Because resistance is futile. Resistance is not futile. We are far bigger and stronger than they are. An organized and determined resistance could dismantle the police state. But the vast majority of the population is uneducated, uninformed and unmotivated. They're unwilling to turn off TV and talk radio and participate in their community. And the few who are educated, informed a…
That was always the case in past centuries (more so) and still, people frequently rebelled against malevolent authorities.
Have we become too civilized to resist? Or are we just too concerned with our individual well-being to sacrifice some personal safety for a common cause?