Posted on 09/12/2014 6:13:33 AM PDT by reaganaut1
One of the greatest political philosophers, Frederic Bastiat, wrote that the law should exist to protect life, liberty, and property, but unfortunately is often perverted into a means of “legal plunder.” In other words, the law is used to legitimize the use of force to deprive people of their wealth.
A recent Washington Post article Stop and Seize shines a light on actions by police that perfectly exemplify the sort of abuse Monsieur Bastiat warned about. In it, readers learn how police forces across the country exploit civil asset forfeiture laws to deprive hapless, innocent people of cash and other property.
What civil asset forfeiture amounts to is seizing property from someone on suspicion that it was in some way connected with a crime. The individual need not ever be convicted or even charged, but won’t get the property back without going through legal procedures which place the burden of proving innocence on him. Just to cite one of many cases given in the Post’s story, consider the plight of Mandrel Stuart,
“a 35-year old African American owner of a small barbecue restaurant in Staunton, VA was stunned when police took $17,550 from him during a stop in 2012 for a minor traffic infraction on I-66 in Fairfax. He rejected a settlement with the government for half of his money and demanded a jury trial. He eventually got his money back, but lost his business because he didn’t have the cash to pay his overhead.”
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Hey, the Welfare State beast needs to be fed and its squeezed all the tax money it can out of those crazy enough to remain residents in these jurisdictions. So they start taking whatever assets they can get their hands on. This is why Jefferson said a little revolution every now and then is a good thing. The only way to stop the state from taking everything is to destroy it every once in a while.
This is stealing.
You expect this in Mexico or some other 3rd world country but not in the United States!
This is just one way assets are being redistributed.
EPA is expanding wetlands definitions, even farmers won’t be able to farm their own land.
FEMA in largest bait and switch in US history, gave low cost flood insurance in exchange for requirement to have flood insurance on all loans. Now insurance rates will only be allowed to rise 20% per year for existing policy holders and new buyers will pay full rates. Result is homes in flood zones are now unsalable.
I have always been agains’t these asset forfeiture laws. I think they are unconstitutional. It all started with the war on drugs where if you got convicted of a crime you did the time and lost everything you owned. It needs to stop.
Bull Cheese. Forfeiture laws work. They are a very effective tool in the WOD. Naturally there will be abuses, but the majority of cash and cars siezed are uncontested. Why? Drug dealers write off these losses as a cost of doing business.
Other effective tools in the WOD would involve eliminating the entire 5th Amendment, the 6th Amendment, and the 8th Amendment. Too many protections there for drug dealers. We just know that they are usually guilty anyway, so why not eliminate all of the costly formalities?
Also, eliminating the 3rd Amendment and quartering troops in private houses would be quite an effective deterrent against drug dealers.
Only Libs would be against such reasonable, common-sense measures to control the scourge of drug dealers.
Gee, everyone wake up from the 20 year sleep?
Two decades ago this was a recurring issue for Republicans.
Nothing changed and so it faded.
One more thing to hold the “Republican” Congress to account for: when do you end this disgusting theft?
No forfeiture without conviction.
Civil forfeiture laws can punish innocent people by depriving them of their home or livelihood for their property being used illegally by others that they have no knowledge of or can’t take reasonable steps to prevent. Every one agrees that is unjust and unfair. No one should be deprived without a prior judicial hearing of their assets just because they’re related to someone who committed a crime.
But that is exactly what civil forfeiture does and it does not breed respect or understanding for law enforcement especially when you are not even being charged with a crime but they can still decide your assets can forfeited to pay for what someone else may have done. Its worse than that because there is no due process that comes into the picture. Unlike in a criminal case where you can be punished after you’re convicted, in a civil forfeiture, the state’s action against you can have no connection whatsoever with whether you are criminally culpable in the first place.
If you’re a criminal, the answer is simple: don’t own anything in your own name. You can’t forfeit what you don’t own.
I think that's the way Al Sharpton and his ilk operate.
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law---which may be an isolated case---is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.
The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.
Someday I'll convert this book to an epub. I did the initial conversion to HTML years ago.
Perhaps because the deck is stacked against the owner: "The government must initially prove by a preponderance of the evidence [NOT beyond a reasonable doubt] that the property is subject to forfeiture. The owners must then prove by a preponderance of the evidence that they had no knowledge of the underlying crime." - http://www.nhbar.org/publications/display-news-issue.asp?id=7171
Its just too expensive and time-consuming to contest a civil forfeiture.
After all, you have to prove you aren’t guilty. Just the way corrupt cops and prosecutors like it.
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