Posted on 10/27/2014 4:28:30 AM PDT by Kaslin
I don’t particularly care how people vote, but I do care whether they believe in freedom.
That’s why I periodically share stories that should convince everyone to believe in the libertarian philosophy of small government, individual liberty, and personal responsibility.
The stories that get me most agitated are the ones that involve innocent people being robbed by bureaucrats.
And when I say robbed, I use that word deliberately.
Such as the case of an elderly couple who had their hotel stolen by government.
Such as the case of the family grocer who had his bank account stolen by government.
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 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 other people’s cash.
With all this background, you can probably guess I’m going to add to that list.
And you’re right. We have a report from the New York Times that has me frothing at the mouth. I can’t imagine any decent person not being outraged by this example of big government run amok.
For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000. The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.
In other words, this is an example of two evil policies – asset forfeiture laws and money laundering laws – coming together in a vortex of we’ll-screw-you-over-even-if-you’re-law-abiding statism.
And you can forget about the Constitution’s presumption of innocence.
Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?” The federal government does. Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.
Of course, much of tax code enforcement is based on the upside-down premise that taxpayers are guilty and have to prove themselves innocent.
But that still doesn’t make it right. And the IRS is just the tip of the iceberg. Stealing is now a common practice by all sorts of bureaucracies at all levels of government.
The practice has swept up dairy farmers in Maryland, an Army sergeant in Virginia saving for his children’s college education and Ms. Hinders, 67, who has borrowed money, strained her credit cards and taken out a second mortgage to keep her restaurant going. Their money was seized under an increasingly controversial area of law known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement agents to take property they suspect of being tied to crime even if no criminal charges are filed. Law enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited. Critics say this incentive has led to the creation of a law enforcement dragnet, with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing through bank reports, looking for accounts to seize.
Here’s just one horrifying example of how this process works.
In one Long Island case, the police submitted almost a year’s worth of daily deposits by a business, ranging from $5,550 to $9,910. The officer wrote in his warrant affidavit that based on his training and experience, the pattern “is consistent with structuring.” The government seized $447,000 from the business, a cash-intensive candy and cigarette distributor that has been run by one family for 27 years. …the government seized $447,000, and the brothers have been unable to retrieve it. …Mr. Potashnik said he had spent that time trying, to no avail, to show that the brothers were innocent. They even paid a forensic accounting firm $25,000 to check the books. “I don’t think they’re really interested in anything,” Mr. Potashnik said of the prosecutors. “They just want the money.” …“We’re just hanging on as a family here,” Mr. Hirsch said. “We weren’t going to take a settlement, because I was not guilty.”
Still not convinced about the venality of big government? Here’s another nauseating example.
Army Sgt. Jeff Cortazzo of Arlington, Va., began saving for his daughters’ college costs during the financial crisis, when many banks were failing. He stored cash first in his basement and then in a safe-deposit box. All of the money came from paychecks, he said, but he worried that when he deposited it in a bank, he would be forced to pay taxes on the money again. So he asked the bank teller what to do. “She said: ‘Oh, that’s easy. You just have to deposit less than $10,000.’” The government seized $66,000; settling cost Sergeant Cortazzo $21,000. As a result, the eldest of his three daughters had to delay college by a year. “Why didn’t the teller tell me that was illegal?” he said. “I would have just plopped the whole thing in the account and been done with it.”
By the way, some of you may be thinking that these terrible examples are somehow justifiable because the government is stopping crime in other instances.
But that’s not true. Experts who have looking at money laundering laws have found that there’s no impact on genuine criminal activity. But lots of costs imposed on innocent people.
Which probably explains why the first two directors of the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Officenow say the laws should be repealed.
If you want more information, here’s my video on the government’s costly and failed war on money laundering.
Sigh.
By the way, the government also abuses people in ways that have nothing to do with money laundering or asset forfeiture.
And there are more examples where those came from.
> Do you not vote (R)? Are you one of the lesser-of-two crowd?
What else have I got? Give my vote to the Libertarians and watch the DemonRAT win? I’ll vote for the R and flood his office with mail and phone calls when he goes against me. Then work to get a more conservative candidate to run against him and win in the primaries. Rinse and repeat.
1. Abortion.
Absolutely cannot agree with the Libertarians on this one.
2. Marriage “Equality”
If you don’t think this affects normal people, then ask your kids what they’re teaching about it in school. Ask the pastors in Houston who are being commanded to submit their papers and writings. Ask the pastors in Coeur d’Alene who are threatened with jail for refusing to conduct a “gay” wedding. Tell that to the hotelier in VT who had to close his reception facility for refusing to accomodate a “gay” wedding reception. Tell that to the Co. baker who was put out of business for refusing to bake a “gay” wedding cake. Tell that to the Texas photographer who was fined for refusing to photo a “gay” wedding. No sale there.
3. Open borders
This is a sick joke. Who determines what people are “peaceful”, how long they can stay, and what they can do while they’re here?
4. Legalization
Only if it’s accompanied by more severe sentencing for those who commit violence while hopped up.
you’re going to be a very busy person indeed if you chase around every example of hyperbole on al gore’s internets.
I’m sure there is a more productive use of your time.
There is a Conservative Party - in New York.
The Libertarian Party is so small that they don’t really speak for libertarians, and therefore their is no more libertarian consensus than there is a consertavive consensus, except for the need to get the government back into its Constutitional boundaries.
> There is a Conservative Party - in New York.
I don’t live in New York, but the state I live in does have a Libertarian party.
Putting the government back into its Constitutional cage is probably not going to happen without considerable force. Such force brings with it the threat of something even worse than we have now. Pandora’s box has been opened. Getting the demons back into the box is going to be extremely difficult.
It took the totalitarian statists and collectivists over 100 years to edge us into the situation we have today. It will probably take that much time, if not more, to push it back. But we need effective tactics with an overarching strategy. Playing the party game ain’t gonna do it.
Changing the party from the inside out has a chance. The commies were able to pull the Republican Party to what would be considered far-out, over the top LEFT just a generation ago. That puts the DemonRAT party to the Left of Lenin, Mao, and Castro.
Libertarians want ALL drugs legalized including whatever new drugs and drug cocktails that come down the pike, and for them to be allowed to be advertised and marketed.
The Libertarian party perfectly represents libertarianism and is the 3rd largest party in America.
Libertarians trying to persuade conservatives that they are really just conservatives, don’t like the fact that being a political party, the libertarian ideals have to be put into written form for it’s party’s platform.
That is total nonsense, the license goes back about 700 years and it's equivalents go back centuries more.
Thomas Jefferson did not have a marriage license to keep him from marrying a black woman.
"Marriage licenses were introduced in the 14th century, to allow the usual notice period under banns to be waived, on payment of a fee and accompanied by a sworn declaration, that there was no canonical impediment to the marriage. Licenses were usually granted by an archbishop, bishop or archdeacon. There could be a number of reasons for a couple to obtain a license: they might wish to marry quickly (and avoid the three weeks' delay by the calling of banns); they might wish to marry in a parish away from their home parish; or, because a license required payment, they might choose to obtain one as a status symbol."
What took you so long?
That was non responsive to the information that you learned from post 46.
You need to realize that the libertarian party perfectly reflects libertarian thought.
There is nothing on which their party does not stay true to libertarianism.
The making and using of new drugs are incentivized by the War on Drugs: until the law catches up with the latest drug, its legality gives it an advantage over better-understood but illegal drugs.
and for them to be allowed to be advertised and marketed.
They probably do - and on that point they and I part company ... I wouldn't even be sorry to see the alcohol ads taken back off the air (in a manner consistent with the Constitution).
Actually it is just the opposite, in the libertarian world the market to develop fantastical new drugs and combinations of drugs for getting high would be unlimited and all the giant pharmaceutical companies and new drug companies and basement drug companies and drug cartels, would be entering the market, and they wouldn't have to worry about safety concerns or side effects or fatalities, since they would all fit the libertarian area of recreational drugs.
Actually it is just the opposite, in the libertarian world the market to develop fantastical new drugs and combinations of drugs for getting high would be unlimited
As the text you omitted (underlined) from your "reply" shows, you're flat wrong - people who want to get high but not get arrested have an incentive under drug criminalization to use new poorly-understood drugs that they would not have under drug legalization. There would probably still be a small number of nuts with no sense of self-preservation - but drug criminalization can't stop them today because it's not possible to write a law against drugs that don't yet exist.
they wouldn't have to worry about safety concerns or side effects or fatalities, since they would all fit the libertarian area of recreational drugs.
You're hallucinating - libertarians believe the law has a proper role in punishing actual direct harms such as you describe.
I posted what I know, you posted what you feel, no response was necessary.
You did the opposite, you posted a falsehood and ignored the facts.
If you are posting the truth then it should be easy to show where their party disagrees with libertarianism, and why libertarians cannot change the party’s platform.
It should be as easy as pie for libertarians to destroy the party if it is a false front operation.
Yeah, they're a bunch of drug-addled, baby-killing, packer-philes, who want smaller government.
But other than that they're decent and moral.
Where are the elected local officials in all this?
No, a few little variations in concoctions have not had any great meaning in the drug world, but if it were legal to play with all the drugs and drug cocktails and creation of new ones by big business and marketing them, then the last 50 years of getting stoned would have destroyed us.
As it is, because of the laws, very few Americans could even name one of those variations, whatever they might be.
*”You’re hallucinating - libertarians believe the law has a proper role in punishing actual direct harms such as you describe.”*
Libertarian position: “ We favor the repeal of all laws creating “crimes” without victims, such as the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes, since only actions that infringe on the rights of others can properly be termed crimes.”
Do libertarians want drugs to be legal, or not?
Republicans citing religious arguments against "gay marriage" were a much bigger cause. If Republicans had properly framed the issue, libertarians would have realized that "gay marriage" is in fact anti-libertarian. Even without laws "legalizing" so-called "gay marriage" homosexuals were free to have whatever sort of relationships they wished. What they couldn't do was use the power of government to compel other people to honor their relationships.
If Republicans had framed the issue as one of "Should homosexuals be allowed to force other people to honor their relationship in the same way they would a heterosexual marriage", very few people would have sided with the leftists. But the way the leftists framed the issue, the gay activists were able to portray the Republicans as promoting religious oppression, and the Republicans who kept citing Biblical arguments played right into the leftists hands.
> If Republicans had framed the issue as one of “Should
> homosexuals be allowed to force other people to honor their
> relationship in the same way they would a heterosexual
> marriage”,
That is EXACTLY how I framed the argument to my Libertarian friends and relatives. Most saw it my way. I told them that we would all be forced to “celebrate” somebody else’s fantasy.
Hey, you can entertain whatever fantasy you want, just don’t force me to participate in it or pay for it.
That was how I framed my argument.
The Left framed it as a 14th amendment issue, evading the fact that homosexuality is BEHAVIOR NOT ANCESTRY.
Not really.
For libertarians, it wasn’t just marriage, it was all homosexual issues, the military, adoption, everything.
“Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government’s treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws.”
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