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

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

#391

Post by dpark »

harryh wrote: post #375
diyorgasms wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone accused of robbing a bank should not be able to use their own money to defend themselves against such an accusation? You have a major problem with your presumption of guilt.

Assets aren't forfeited without evidence of guilt.

Yes, they are, quite frequently. That's the entire point of the article. It's also quite pretty much the definition of civil asset forfeiture. Assets are taken on simple suspicion of criminal activity, and the assets' retention by the state is not predicated on criminal guilt of the owner. In fact it is the assets themselves which are sued by the state (which makes no sense, but is nonetheless true).

> Once property has been seized, the burden of proof falls on the defendant to get it back -- even if the cops ultimately never charge them with a crime. "We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty," an Albuquerque DEA agent told the Journal. "It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty."

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

#392

Post by yellowapple »

Frondo wrote: post #220
itistoday2 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One involves non-coercive mutual consent (a signed agreement), the other doesn't.

You do give consent by continuing to live here past the age of maturity. When you're a child, and your parents have custody of you, they make that choice for you--you're a citizen here, here's where you'll live, be politically involved, and pay taxes. When you're old enough to make that choice for yourself, that's when you can stay--with all that entails--or go.

Assuming you can afford to move, renounce citizenship, etc.

Moving just within the United States can end up being an expensive endeavor as is. Moving out of it isn't any more affordable, meaning that your argument basically amounts to "tough luck, poor people".

Not that I believe taxes are inherently bad, but the implication that "you can always leave if you don't like it" is misleading at best (and realistically outright false for a rather large segment of the American population).

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

#393

Post by pipermerriam »

swombat wrote: post #170
ploxiln wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a US citizen who is very unhappy about "civil forfeiture", about mass surveillance, etc. But the reality is that most people in the US are not directly affected. I haven't really been affected, and I don't personally know anyone who has been. (yeah yeah it helps that I'm white.) Most US citizens who are aware of these things, like me, are very unhappy about them. But most people are not really aware, and one reas…

> In the US, you can talk about it, you can get a lawyer, you can have newspaper articles written. And is this helping Joseph Rivers, a victim of shameless organised theft and institutional racism? The "most people are unaffected" argument, which gets trotted out a lot, has a strong reek of the Martin Niemøller idea: ( http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392 ) First they came for the Socialists, and…

In all seriousness, what can I actually do. Nothing I've done in the past has felt like it moved the needle at all.

- Calling my local representative (Someone on the other end of the line thanks me and then politely dismisses me saying they'll pass it along). - Trying to inform friends and family (They don't really care for many of the reasons stated above)

I think apathetic is a good descriptor for my current state of mind around things like this. Any effort I've put into large scale change in the past has felt like spinning my wheels and generally decreased my overall happiness due to general frustration. Letting go of caring about politics was a major happiness/satisfaction increase in my generall well-being.

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

#394

Post by yellowapple »

bryondowd wrote: post #311
philh wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-tax is about not forcing people to pay for services they may not want. I don't think it's realistic, but your description of them is uncharitable. In a world where everyone gets hit on the head with a baseball bat once a week, some people are saying "what's with this? Can't we figure out some way of not getting hit by baseball bats every week?" And you're turning that into "I don't want to get hit by a baseball…

I'm not sure I lean one way or the other, but that isn't a good analogy. There's no benefit to anybody from a baseball bat to the head. Now, if a certain number of baseball bats to heads is required to appease the gods and increase fertility, health, etc in a majority of the population, you've got a better comparison. Maybe not everybody needs all those benefits, but the options on the table are to let some people op…

> There's no benefit to anybody from a baseball bat to the head.

Sure it is. It's good for the people being employed to operate the baseball bats. It's also good for the people being employed to make the baseball bats.

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

#395

Post by tracker1 »

wahsd wrote: post #297
falcolas wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speedy public trials, in this day and age, can take a year or more from the time of conviction. That's a long time to spend in jail - a location where you have no real freedoms.

That's the worst part of it, this process of flagrant violation of the Constitution. In essence, the government has become a treasonous organization in direct violation and contradiction to the Constitution. If the original authors could define a speedy trial in terms of days and a couple weeks, there is no rational justification for why in this day and age a speedy trial can't be a matter of minutes or hours, or at…

Are minutes/hours/days really enough for a defense counsel? Many times not... the time it takes to get to trial isn't only a matter of the government letting you rot. Not to mention that a given backlog and limited number of judges, the formation of juries, etc.

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

#396

Post by Zigurd »

pipermerriam wrote: post #393
swombat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, you can talk about it, you can get a lawyer, you can have newspaper articles written. And is this helping Joseph Rivers, a victim of shameless organised theft and institutional racism? The "most people are unaffected" argument, which gets trotted out a lot, has a strong reek of the Martin Niemøller idea: ( http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392 ) First they came for the Socialists, and…

In all seriousness, what can I actually do. Nothing I've done in the past has felt like it moved the needle at all. - Calling my local representative (Someone on the other end of the line thanks me and then politely dismisses me saying they'll pass it along). - Trying to inform friends and family (They don't really care for many of the reasons stated above) I think apathetic is a good descriptor for my current state…

Doxx the narcs. Track by their wifi radios in their smartphones.

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

#397

Post by swombat »

pipermerriam wrote: post #393
swombat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, you can talk about it, you can get a lawyer, you can have newspaper articles written. And is this helping Joseph Rivers, a victim of shameless organised theft and institutional racism? The "most people are unaffected" argument, which gets trotted out a lot, has a strong reek of the Martin Niemøller idea: ( http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392 ) First they came for the Socialists, and…

In all seriousness, what can I actually do. Nothing I've done in the past has felt like it moved the needle at all. - Calling my local representative (Someone on the other end of the line thanks me and then politely dismisses me saying they'll pass it along). - Trying to inform friends and family (They don't really care for many of the reasons stated above) I think apathetic is a good descriptor for my current state…

If you feel like you can't effect change where you are (a fair conclusion), I would suggest at the very least looking into moving to another country which is more representative of your values.

Yes, it seems like giving up. But then over time the more smart, educated, likely wealthy people leave the US and take residence somewhere less objectionable, the less economically competitive the US will be. Eventually it will decline.

At the very least, you'll know that you weren't one of the people contributing to sustaining this system. It might seem like a drop in the ocean, but, as the conclusion of Cloud Atlas puts it, what is the ocean but a multitude of drops?

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

#398

Post by Zigurd »

strictnein wrote: post #298
Qantourisc wrote: post #101

As a potential tourist or traveller (I am not to be fair), I wouldn't risk travelling to the US. I'm not sure if there are actual tourists who feel the same, but I'm sure there are other avoiding the US.

Whenever I'm overseas I try to watch whatever local news is available, plus channels like BBC and Russia Today (yes, I know, not great, but RT is entertaining). The portrayal of the US on the news is so out of whack with reality that it's really kind of depressing. Reporting bad news out of the US seems to be a hobby of the world's media, as does misreporting our politics and social issues. I've worked for foreign co…

Your viewpoint is just very difficult to understand. You can't build a great nation on parks. The US has slid to mediocre rankings by many measures. We're #1 at hardly anything anymore. Except maybe the use of big foam fingers that claim we are. That degreades the quality of life here.

If we don't fix that stuff, it will be China's world sooner, while they are still a one-party authoritarian state, rather than later, to give their middle class time to express their political discontents.

And on top all that, hitting the update button multiple times because it didn't apparently do anything and then finding you have three copies of your post is a leading cause of desperate people turning to needle drugs.

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

#399

Post by [deleted] »

strictnein wrote: post #298
Qantourisc wrote: post #101

As a potential tourist or traveller (I am not to be fair), I wouldn't risk travelling to the US. I'm not sure if there are actual tourists who feel the same, but I'm sure there are other avoiding the US.

Whenever I'm overseas I try to watch whatever local news is available, plus channels like BBC and Russia Today (yes, I know, not great, but RT is entertaining). The portrayal of the US on the news is so out of whack with reality that it's really kind of depressing. Reporting bad news out of the US seems to be a hobby of the world's media, as does misreporting our politics and social issues. I've worked for foreign co…

[deleted]

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

#400

Post by [deleted] »

strictnein wrote: post #298
Qantourisc wrote: post #101

As a potential tourist or traveller (I am not to be fair), I wouldn't risk travelling to the US. I'm not sure if there are actual tourists who feel the same, but I'm sure there are other avoiding the US.

Whenever I'm overseas I try to watch whatever local news is available, plus channels like BBC and Russia Today (yes, I know, not great, but RT is entertaining). The portrayal of the US on the news is so out of whack with reality that it's really kind of depressing. Reporting bad news out of the US seems to be a hobby of the world's media, as does misreporting our politics and social issues. I've worked for foreign co…

[deleted]
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