The controversial practice allows the government to seize people’s property – even without filing criminal charges – if it is suspected of being linked to criminal activity.
I’m here to carry out a Citizens’ Asset Seizure of Donald Trump. I have reason to believe that all of his obscene wealth is linked to criminal activities, possibly including drug related offences.
That might just actually work in Texas. At least if you can prove that wealth was used to abort a pregnancy. It’s worth a shot.
There’s no way “fits the profile,” rises to the level of a “preponderance of evidence,” needed to prevail in a civil case. Carrying that much cash might meet the “reasonable suspicion,” level, which would justify a nice, long talk with the officers, and possibly even seizing the money. But then it is the government’s job to bring actual evidence that a crime has been committed. Not just “cash is bad, therefore we’re taking it.”
I think that there is compelling evidence that he is, at least, partially responsible for a couple of total obortions.
It isn’t just aimed at one of the varieties of people of color, its aimed at all of them, especially Latinx peoples. The DEA is quite broad minded when it comes to which people it chooses to be racist toward.
No. It doesn’t. Cash is legal tender and it is legal to carry it around just because you feel like it and doing so is not evidence of anything other than that you have cash that you want to carry around with you. If Elon Musk pulled $30,000 out of his pocket would you think he should have a “nice, long talk with the officers”? No? Well then you shouldn’t think any different for any other person.
Plus interest, compensation, and damages, right?
Right?
Now, absolutely. Back in 1971, the main minority that Nixon wanted stopped were black people.
I could see a situation where it would be justified to put a freeze on someone’s assets after they’ve been charged with a major crime—i.e. you wouldn’t want a Bernie Madoff type crook skipping the country with all their ill-gotten dough while awaiting trial—but that should be a “temporarily restrict the suspect from using it” type of situation rather than a “your assets belong to us now” situation.
I wouldn’t even necessarily want the law to apply even with an arrest and conviction. The forfeiture should only involve profits that can be traced to the illegal activity and don’t involve any third parties. Civil forfeiture has been pursued when there was a conviction, but the property in question belonged to someone else, such as a person dealing drugs while driving someone else’s car and the car gets forfeited even though the owner didn’t know about or authorize the activity.
So, take Tony Montana’s mansion, but leave his kid’s toys alone.
As always, our tyrannical government is just only interested in stealing by any means possible under some thinly veiled “law” from the citizens. Then again perhaps if we all decided at this point and time to follow up on Thomas Jefferson’s good words and start this whole thing over.
A little rebellion is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government. - Thomas Jefferson
Are you suggesting we back those militia freaks who want to overthrow the Federal government? Because I say nuts to that.
But it’s working out so well for them! /s
I don’t see our current system working so damn well currently. The Republicans and Democrats have the system rigged to basically prevent any other party from getting elected to office. For some unknown reason we have to spend ungodly amounts of money on the military 725 billion last year. We out spend the military budgets of of the next 11 countries highest spending: China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Australia. We also piss away nearly 60 billion a year in foreign aid to other countries instead of taking care of our own citizens first. Congress is just a bunch of corrupted politicians lining their pockets with all the money from lobbyist and special interest groups. The lack of term limits and just fuels this to no end. Literally these morons have no idea how the real world works with most of the bills they come up with and try to pass. Most of them they pass just simply end up wrecking stuff once someone figures out how to pervert the intent like the Civil Asset Forfeiture law. The US is in decline just like the Roman Empire and no one is going to stop it.
I don’t see the militia freaks proposing anything that’s likely to work out better, especially for the people who have been historically marginalized.
Right now we have a choice between doing the (admittedly very hard) work of making our government more just and functional, and letting literal fascists burn down what protections we have left.
With all due respect to Thomas Jefferson’s accomplishments as a statesman, I’m not going to take the words of a man who bought and sold human beings and raped young girls as some kind of gospel for dealing with the problems we’re facing in the 21st Century.
To be fair, I don’t think he’s calling on the spirit of Jefferson so much as the ghost of Robespierre.
Pre-emptive measures no less.
No, that’s more a byproduct of how we conduct our elections. There’s a reason we’ve had a two party system in this country almost from day one, when political parties aren’t even mentioned in the Constitution. The current two parties didn’t even exist then, and yet we still had two parties and a third couldn’t gain a foothold. Until it did and supplanted one of the previous parties. The way we run our elections is just really conducive to only allowing two parties to be relevant. And those two parties don’t even have to rig anything to keep it that way. They just have to make sure we stick with first-past-the-post voting.
Jefferson wasn’t so enamored of slave rebellions.
He was a duplicitous bastard who mouthed pretty words…
That all said - what we need now is the government to put down a nazi insurrection. Just like it was needed in the insurrection to continue slavery
First-past-the-post does tend to lead to political duopolies (monopolies? I guess we’ll see…) But I can’t go along with the system not being rigged. The two parties have made it nearly impossible for anyone else to even get on the ballot. The requirements are so onerous that even if they get there, third parties and their candidates have to exert enormous effort to stay there, since they have to start from scratch each election to do work the two main parties are exempt from having to do. The rules for getting on the ballot are arcane and bizarre, and the parties change them seemingly at whim. Keeping the race to themselves seems to be the one thing the two parties can consistently agree on.
