Civil forfeiture laws have been upheld by the Supreme Court. You might think they are a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but reasonable people disagree with you.
I’m doubtful of the effectiveness of such an extension (depending on your intent). I tried watching the Kitten Academy livestream while listening to the Trump–Clinton debate but wasn’t able to continue listening when Trump “called out” Clinton for not saying “Law and Order”. That is to say, juxtaposing Trump and kittens does not balance out to the pleasant side of the scale. On the other hand, there are a lot of good nicknames for Trump used on Boing Boing and Jezebel (among others I can’t think of at the moment). An extension to randomly replace “Trump” with one of those might help, or at least give you a chuckle at Darth Cheeto’s expense.
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Hey, they do it in Canada…and we’re all leftie and stuff…
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Unfortunately there are so many nic-names for him that I don’t think any extension would be able to filter them all.
Any legitimate reasons could be satisfied by requiring any siezed assets to be auctioned off and added to the state general fund, or better yet, simply destroyed. That would end 99% of the cases, and we could argue about the legitimacy of the remaining 1%. But it isn’t about justice or law enforcement, it is about money, and “taxpayers” wanting police but not wanting to pay for them, and police wanting more equipment and toys than the local government has decided they are willing to pay for. As long as it is used to fund law enforcement, it has zero legitimacy.
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popo, do you live in some sort of wacky commune somewhere?
Because I’m trying to wrap my head around somebody not having any property at all…even homeless transients have like, random stuff in a shopping bag, right?
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It seems like he’s reversing stuff one John Oliver show at a time.
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I never cease to be impressed by the competence and intellectual honesty of people who think that tweaking capital gains taxes by a couple of points is essentially a communist revolution; but running a program where armed state agents just expropriate whatever they fancy is good old law 'n order.
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Police are much more trustworthy when they aren’t moonlighting as pirates.
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Gee, if only there was a branch of government tasked with upholding the Constitution from illegal actions orchestrated by the Executive Branch. You know, a so-called “check and balance.”
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I wish! Sometimes I try to encourage others to start one with me.
Sure. There is lots of stuff around me, I just don’t lay any claim to it. There is no superstitious relationship between person and inanimate objects which makes them “belong”. But that’s not to say that I can’t and don’t live among and make use of objects. You are you, and things are things, there is no connection unless you choose to imagine one. Sometimes I wonder if people really find it difficult to understand - or if they really just don’t want to understand it. It seems simple enough to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if others assume I am being similarly difficult.
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Hmm…maybe I just like snarling at people who get too close to my food.
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In Saint Paul, a Police Gang Strikeforce used their power for a shopping spree.
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Outside of poorly dubbed anime or low-production-value kiddie cartoons; nothing should actually call itself “Metro Gang Strike Force”. (And, if it must, there should always be an implicit breathless exclamation point; and ideally a transforming robot or the like)
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“Make America Great Again”
Every day this phrase becomes more and more ironic. Trump/GOP policies are making big business and the police-state stronger, and regular citizens weaker and poorer.
Who is this “America” them speak of today?
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Yeah, they do it lots of places. The thing that’s really obscene in the US is allowing the local police force that took the assets to keep the assets. At least if they go into general revenue at a provincial/state level you don’t have such a direct push for corruption.
I’m also not sure if Canadian cops are running a database to track people who may be travelling with large sums of cash so that cops can find them and take their money at the midpoint of their journey. I wouldn’t be that surprised if some cops were sharing info, but I don’t think the RCMP runs an official database and takes their cut a subscription fee.
It seems like just bad law, and I don’t understand what good the law is supposed to do, but the problem is more cops operating like organized criminals who are running a protection racket on the public than it is the specific law, I think.
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All relationships are conceptual. “Owning something” and “being friends with” are equally abstract, equally “superstitious.”
Seems impossible to me to live without abstraction, so we’re kind of free to choose which ones we want to participate in. “Ownership” is a useful abstraction from my perspective. Like friendship.
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It worked to get cops on board for the drug wars.
But bribing cops creates corrupt cops, even if it is the feds that does the bribing.
Of course, bribing Congress Critters creates corrupt Congress as well.
I’ve always thought that many movies fail at showing how cops can be corrupted. It doesn’t happen completely because of one instance. Maybe you start off by telling a cop he doesn’t want to be around that rapist who “got off with a technicality” tomorrow at 3:00. And when that rapist gets beat up, the cop has started down the road to be bought.
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Dammit! I thought we were doing it correctly; once convicted, proceeds of crimes were forfeited to the government. I don’t have a problem with convicted criminals losing their loot.
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