Posted on 09/20/2014 7:40:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
If you ask me about the most wasteful department in the federal government, I’ll state that there are lots of good choices, but if forced to identify the best candidate for elimination, I’ll go with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
If you ask me about the entitlement program most in need of reform, I’m tempted to say all of them, but ultimately I’ll argue that we should first fix Medicaid by devolving it to the states, accompanied by block grants as a transitional funding mechanism.
But if you ask me to identify the most evil and despicable thing that government does, I have no hesitation in picking asset forfeiture, which is the horrifying practice of bureaucrats stealing private property simply because they think the owners may have some connection with criminal activity.
*Such as when the government wanted to steal someone’s truck because a different person was arrested for drunk driving.
*Such as when the government tried to steal the bond money a family has collected to bail out a relative.
*Such as when the government seized nearly $400,000 of a business owner’s money because it was in the possession of an armored car company suspected of wrongdoing.
*Such as when the government sought to confiscate an office building from the owner because a tenant was legally selling medical marijuana.
*Such as when the government killed a man as part of an anti-gambling investigation undertaken in hopes of using asset forfeiture to steal the gamblers’ cash.
*Such as when the government tried to steal $17,000 from a motorist even though they never charged him with a crime, much less convicted him of any offense.
If you click the links and read those disgusting examples of thieving government, you’ll agree that all decent and human people should be libertarians.
And if you need more evidence that asset forfeiture should be eliminated, John Yoder and Brad Cates, the first two directors of the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Office, have a column in today’s Washington Post, and they unambiguously disown the bureaucracy they created and the evils it has spawned.
As two people who were heavily involved in the creation of the asset forfeiture initiative at the Justice Department in the 1980s, we find it particularly painful to watch as the heavy hand of government goes amok. …Asset forfeiture was conceived as a way to cut into the profit motive that fueled rampant drug trafficking by cartels and other criminal enterprises, in order to fight the social evils of drug dealing and abuse. Over time, however, the tactic has turned into an evil itself, with the corruption it engendered among government and law enforcement coming to clearly outweigh any benefits.
I don’t mind taking the money/property from kingpins, but there has to be a bottom limit, and yes, there needs to be a felony conviction to go along, and NO, all money would go to the US Treasury, not to local police stations.
Do all that and it just may work...
asset forfeiture?
Isn’t that the IRS? Don’t we forfeit our assets to them on a regular basis? Seems like the function of the government is to see that we forfeit our assets.
There is no power the police will not abuse.
The EPA has or is moving toward that very thing. They want the powers to garnish wages for a fine they impose, without a court order. So when you violate a stupid rule they have set up to try to save the earth, they can impose a million dollar a day fine and then garnish your wages, take your assets and eventually get the violating property and other property you may have, when you don’t have 30 million dollars to pay after 30 days of fines.
I agree that Asset-Forfeiture and confiscation needs to be ended. I also feel that same way about property taxes.
While I think most of what the government does with this power is BS, I still think it would be a useful tool when fighting illegal immigration if any pols had the spine to do that.
“There is no power the state will not abuse.
There is no power the police will not abuse.”
Not much that I can say to argue that point...
Someone on Fox News Bulls and Bears or Cavuto on Business reported that some lawmaker wants a war tax
Illegal aliens have assets to forfeit?
There is no power the police will not abuse.
This is what big-government "conservatives" refuse to learn from history.
Asset forfeiture laws allow us to take the ill-gotten gains of drug kingpins and use them to put more cops on the streets and more prosecutors in court.
In the last 5 years alone, the Justice Department shared over half a billion dollars in forfeited assets with State and local law enforcement.
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=2764&year=1991&month=3
More Bush family fascism
But Reagan era guys like Yoder and Cates are just now realizing what evil they created
They were warned back then, they refused to listen
They attacked the foundation of Liberty: Private Property
Asset forfeiture is the foundation of the Communist state
So, tyranny is OK if it's used for a cause you like?
Every dime an illegal alien makes here is only possible because he has broken the law. Taking wealth generated through crime is not tyranny.
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