91–100 of 130 posts
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The USA is post-Constitutional. There is nothing in the Constitution that permits the government to create the FBI and therefore the 10th should apply. As the FBI does exist, along with all of the other alphabet soup agencies, we can see that the Constitution no longer truly holds power.
Who would enforce federal laws if there were no federal law enforcement agencies?
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[flagged]
Category error. Federal departments are changes to the structure and function of government that should require Consitutional Amendments. The imbibing of Diet Coke by the POTUS is not substantial to the structure and function of government.
As far as I am aware, the Constitution says nothing about either that or Diet Coke.
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This is actually the same reason why I'm surprised when anyone that is into bitcoin likes the idea of the federal strategic reserve. The government specifically saying they won't buy any, they'll just put any seized bitcoin into the reserve to be used later. Why would anyone like that the government created an incentive to seize more bitcoin?
imo people who understand bitcoin and its purpose don’t want government to buy it for strategic reserve. That said if you hold your own keys then bitcoin protects you from this type of abuse of power
They also could prevent you from using the btc in any non-private transaction. Companies are required to know their customers, it wouldn't be hard for them to be forced to block specific bitcoin hashes. You could still trade it privately, but it would effectively be gray money and should be worth less.
Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In other countries, seizures go to general revenue, which means that the incentive to do it is diluted enormously. This is especially a problem with small police forces, or small polities where fines become a large proportion of revenue. You'd think that for the FBI the incentive would be diluted, given how huge they are, but m…
There's such an odd deference to the perpetrator's chosen language here. If I go take someone's wallet, I don't get to get away with calling it a "seizure", "forfeiture", or "revenue". It'd be called theft or robbery, and I'd go to prison. There's something infantile about how we go along with the state's fictions and pretenses rather than just calling their wording of "civil forfeiture" by its natural wording of "ro…
I'm a Federal Employee, not a LEO. If I take someone's wallet, I can claim qualified immunity.
https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-c...
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Well there was that Tea Party movement. But the reality is that America is addicted to spending more money than comes in.
The Tea Party was like Gamergate in that it was ostensibly about [overtaxation|ethics in gaming journalism], but was actually driven by [sexism against female games journalists|racism against President Obama], and swiftly co-opted by [the conservative establishment|the conservative establishment] as the right face of the post-OWS idpol wedge. (It would be foolish to think that the divided state of this country was a…
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If the government holds seized bitcoin as opposed to selling it, that will tend to increase the price.
I guess that's why, though the government would then have an incentive to seize as much as it can legally seize. It'd be one thing if the bitcoin was just thrown in a hole or destroyed. A strategic reserve is a financial asset though, the government will want to grow that fund to help fund pet projects while running a ridiculous deficit.
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Speed traps are frequently paired with abrupt and arbitrary changes to the speed limit which exist for the purpose of the speed trap. People who go fast through those are technically breaking the law, but morally they're doing nothing wrong (unless you're the kind of servile worm who derives morality from the law.)
I've never seen any strong evidence for this (only a handful of anecdotes), and my personal experience driving doesn't match. I saw speed traps all the time and don't remember a single one that was associated with a speed limit change. Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.
Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In other countries, seizures go to general revenue, which means that the incentive to do it is diluted enormously. This is especially a problem with small police forces, or small polities where fines become a large proportion of revenue. You'd think that for the FBI the incentive would be diluted, given how huge they are, but m…
General revenue is barely better. It's probably worse in many cases becase the elected part of the government can ask the thugs to seize harder to keep money coming in and then kick it back to them in the form of resource allocation or preferential treatment. That's how every speed trap town operates The only solution is to let the petty drug dealers get away with their cars and let the mob bosses get away with their…
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The whole of youth protection services and law enforcement for an entire state got caught running such a racket, imprisoning kids for money from the state, with the judges receiving kickbacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal Needless to say, although the criminal records for these kids got expunged (after 15 years, WAY too late and didn't mean anything anymore, and already had caused maximum damag…
Let me remind you that the judge in that scandal is a free man thanks to the President of the United States.
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The Tea Party was like Gamergate in that it was ostensibly about [overtaxation|ethics in gaming journalism], but was actually driven by [sexism against female games journalists|racism against President Obama], and swiftly co-opted by [the conservative establishment|the conservative establishment] as the right face of the post-OWS idpol wedge. (It would be foolish to think that the divided state of this country was a…
That narrative was created by the journalists Gamergate was against, to deflect against their criticisms. It was never actually true.
If you take a step back you'll see that while tea-party, occupy wall street, Maga 1, mostly peaceful 2020/BLM and Maga 2 all take aim at different points in the establishment they're all firmly rooted in the discontent that every day people have with the amount the powers that be are lightening their pockets for causes they don't agree with.
The grassroots movements will keep coming (and they will probably become more extreme too, and the powers that be will keep trying to co-opt and redirect them) until something changes.