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!
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.
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.
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.
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.