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How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

washingtonpost.com

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Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#351

Post by jMyles »

cbsmith wrote: post #117

"Asset forfeiture is lucrative for the DEA. According to their latest notification of seized goods, updated Monday, agents have seized well over $38 million dollars' worth of cash and goods from people in the first few months of this year." Umm... $38 million in three months works out to about 5% of the DEA's operating budget. If your revenue is 5% of your burn rate, that's not exactly lucrative. This is money that,…

> This is money that, absent some form of corruption, benefits exactly no one,

What does this even mean? Money gets spend by humans on things that humans want. How can you say it benefits exactly no one? Clearly it benefits the humans who stole it.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#352

Post by task_queue »

cbsmith wrote: post #338
task_queue wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is it ever not nice to have $38m kicking around that isn't pre-allocated and can be used for whatever?

Unlike with local seizures, it can't be used for whatever.

Source? I don't doubt you, but I'd like to read up on it anyway as I'm having trouble finding the pertinent information with Google.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#353

Post by jMyles »

rhino369 wrote: post #56
waterlesscloud wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key part for me is right here - "A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why." Yeah, no. We've already crossed into unacceptable police behavior right there. There's no reason to suspect me of a crime, so you don't get to question me. At all. Forget whether or not it's smart for me to answer it, it's wrong for…

The can try to question you all they want, but you don't have to answer. It isn't wrong for the cop to ask and it isn't wrong for you to not answer.

I think it's wrong for the cop to ask. He's not just making conversation in his spare time; he's ostensibly executing the laws of the land. What purpose does it serve to have this random conversation that is not part of any lawful investigation?

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#354

Post by myth_buster »

dba7dba wrote: post #347
Houshalter wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Orwell wrote a fantastic essay on this that is worth reading: >In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the profes…

dropping of the atom bombs on Japan I respectfully disagree that it's indefensible. It was either 100,000 Japanese civilians in those 2 cities OR million or more American casualties. AND if the invasion had taken place, millions and millions of Japanese civilians would've died also. I agree, with proper PR language, anything can be made look half decent and therefore tolerable.

  I respectfully disagree that it's indefensible. It was either 100,000 Japanese 
  civilians in those 2 cities OR million or more American casualties. 
  AND if the invasion had taken place, millions and millions of Japanese 
  civilians would've died also.
I respectfully disagree with your defense as it's speculative.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#356

Post by Prophasi »

Frondo wrote: post #201
titanomachy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If taxation today is theft, is there a time when it wasn't?

Taxation isn't theft. The anti-tax crowd is just like the anti-vax crowd. They both want a free ride on the rest of our backs; the anti-vaxers want the benefit of herd immunity, and the anti-taxers want others to pay the cost of living in the modern world. (*edited to a missing word)

This can only be accurate for people who want literally $0 to be taken for taxes, in any form, by any level of government... and yet still expect services to be rendered.

I don't know anyone like that, and I suspect they're in a tiny minority.

For my part, I'd consider those taxes to be theft when they are used for purposes other than a strict list of constitutionally mandated purposes. The other things are services I want to neither pay for nor receive.

Some examples: unemployment (ahem, now "Reemployment") tax, social security tax, welfare, domestic spying operations, Medicare/Medicaid, public education, the Affordable Care Act, much of our military spending, corporate bailouts, lots of alphabet agencies' budgets, etc.

Note that it's not freeloading; I don't want anyone to have them paid and/or provided for by government, including myself.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#357

Post by cbsmith »

task_queue wrote: post #352
cbsmith wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike with local seizures, it can't be used for whatever.

Source? I don't doubt you, but I'd like to read up on it anyway as I'm having trouble finding the pertinent information with Google.

Yeah, I don't have one that is explicit. All I know is that many of the rules around the use of civil forfeiture funds for local law enforcement are considered unusual because of the complete lack of regulation and oversight as to how that money can be spent (in a lot of towns, aside from fear of being run of of town, there really isn't much stopping the local sheriff from spending the money on hookers and blow). On the Federal spending side, military intelligence spending is kind of the elephant in the room for "light regulation & oversight" of spending, and even that has more checks and balances than local civil forfeiture.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#358

Post by warfangle »

adventured wrote: post #145
xroche wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US still ranks among the best nations on earth when it comes to low corruption in fact Yes, because corruption has been legalized through corruption. You can, as a rich person, or an enterprise, legally bride politicians so that they can pass laws for your own profit. "low crime, low corruption". Also remember that "no crime" has been committed in the 2008 financial crisis.

You may not be familiar with US history when it comes to that. It's actually far harder to legally bribe politicians today than it was eg 100 years ago. A century ago there were hardly any laws restricting such practices. What has changed in that time, is now the government has vast economic controls at its disposal. If the government doesn't control the economy, you can't buy economic favors from them. When the US w…

Explicit quid pro quo bribery is much harder than it used to be, certainly.

But the quid pro quo inherent in election financing ("If I make choice A, PAC #1234 will fund $5m of ads in my next campaign ... if I make choice B, I'll get a couple hundred checks from constituents at $50 each and PAC #1234 will run those $5m of ads against me") is much more insidious.

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#359

Post by [deleted] »

ohitsdom wrote: post #341
leap_ahead wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Patent trolls have no political clout. Zero chance of police arresting someone on their behalf (let alone them calling police to request this). But they have rich guys behind them. What if they decide to make "an example" of me, to scare everyone in the US and abroad and convince them to give in and just pay extortion money to them? Right know every non-US company just ignores them and that's huge potential money…

This fear is completely irrational. There is no legal justification to allow for anyone to be arrested due to a patent violation, regardless of how powerful or rich the patent holder is. There is just no way this would or could happen. To be fair, I'm sure I have a lot of assumptions about Russia that you would find equally ridiculous.

[deleted]

Re: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime

#360

Post by eunoia »

leap_ahead wrote: post #348
ohitsdom wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This fear is completely irrational. There is no legal justification to allow for anyone to be arrested due to a patent violation, regardless of how powerful or rich the patent holder is. There is just no way this would or could happen. To be fair, I'm sure I have a lot of assumptions about Russia that you would find equally ridiculous.

You might be right that I'm being irrational. But I've really developed some apprehensive attitude towards the US over the last few years. And the worst thing is, any new day brings some new information that reinforces this fear. Things are objectively getting worse, not better. Somehow I'll have to live with it. But at least I'm not doing any business in the US, so this is not a practical problem for me.

I think your fears are indeed irrational. You're reading sensationalized horror stories, internalizing the fear and using it as a justification to NOT do something. I see this mentality in my aging parents and their friends who watch a lot of Fox News.

Would you call me ridiculous if I told you I'll never come to Russia because I believe a joke I made about Putin years ago on the internet will get me assassinated in the streets? I would certainly hope so.

Don't let irrational fear guide your decisions.

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