Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/04/14/innocents-make-easy-marks.html
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In a different article, I had read that by 2014, Americans lost more money in civil forfetures to police agencies than they lost to burglary. Which would make the cops just one more mafia group out there.
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Perhaps the answer is to pay the protection money to the real Mafia, who might provide a better service.
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perverse incentives…in an organization that combines law enforcement and finance? Well, next you’ll be telling me a tiger crossed with a crocodile won’t eat his peas…
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So. When do we start asking how we stop a hostile quasi-illegitimate entity from governing us another single day? As in tomorrow or next week there is no more Trump administration? I feel like we’re at that point. I really do. They’re taking our money, seizing more of it illegally, and redirecting all of it from social investments into military, police, prisons, private defense, and oligarchs. We no longer have a federal government, we have an occupying force.
ETA: To be clear, I want a federal government. I think it’s very important to have a large power backing rights and large social projects that individual states cannot or will not take on. But what we have is a completely insulated band of oligarchs extracting all of our wealth and trying to break us down on every front until we are all indebted authoritarian wage slaves with no rights to assemble and no ability to ever pose a threat, and they’re super fucking close to achieving that.
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…but so was depositing $10,000 or less.
No. Depositing less than $10,000 is fine. What looks fishy is depositing $9,900 every day for three weeks. Your paycheck won’t get you busted.
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And yet, according to the report, 91% of those whose money was seized were innocent.
IOW, a series of deposits for X amount in Y timespan is not enough to make you shady.
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Look at what the “extremist brethren” do to non-police officers. What do you think they would do to someone they trusted to have their back if they felt that trusted colleague plunged a knife into their back instead?
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Which would be understandable, but cops are always asking that everyone else in minority communities do that exact thing, even if it might be dangerous, or otherwise those silent people are responsible for the acts of the extremists. That’s what @tinoesroho seems to be referencing with that statement – there’s more than a bit of a gap between what cops ask other vulnerable people to do and what they are willing to do themselves.
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They need the dough. Gotta keep up on the latest head bashing gear.
Your point is well taken. Unfortunately the way it’s going to play out is that we’re going to cruise down the same path until the system can no longer sustain itself. It won’t be stopped because some grass roots group really got under the skin of a shit ton of people. Unfortunately.
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Now that’s good capitalism!
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Libertarianism, in fact. The freedom to pay protection money to the capo of your choice, without pesky government interference.
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Multiple providers of protection each competing for our business?
It’s Republican porn!
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See also: Snowcrash
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Quit reminding me we got the Cyberpunk world we deserve, not the one we want.
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