Tag Archives: Bandit Gang Writ Large

New Mexico Cities Refuse To Obey New Law To Shut Down Civil Forfeiture

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“This business of civil forfeiture came to the public’s attention in late 2014, when an attorney charged with overseeing one city’s forfeiture programs described civil forfeiture as a ‘gold mine‘ and property seized through civil forfeiture as ‘little goodies.’  The resulting wave of public outrage brought landmark legislation, as the state legislature voted unanimously to abolish civil forfeiture. But cities across New Mexico are refusing to follow the law. In Albuquerque, police and prosecutors continue to use civil forfeiture and have even announced plans to purchase a new, bigger parking lot to hold all the cars they expect to seize—a parking lot that will be paid for through civil forfeiture.”

http://ij.org/case/new-mexico-forfeiture/

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Small Town Uses Code Enforcement Laws For Big Payoffs

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“Missouri limits how much money local governments can get from traffic tickets, so about 40 percent of the tickets Pagedale issued are for non-traffic-related offenses. In 2014, the city issued 2,255 non-traffic-related tickets. That is roughly two tickets per household.  The harm to Pagedale residents is significant, perpetual and completely overwhelming.  Pagedale’s policy of raising revenue by ticketing, convicting, fining and even jailing its residents turns policing on its head. Rather than ensure that the public is protected and wrongdoers punished, Pagedale sets a revenue goal and then uses its code enforcement powers to achieve it.”

http://ij.org/ll/december-2015-volume-24-issue-6/small-town-uses-code-enforcement-laws-big-payoffs/

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The fee to get rid of US citizenship just went up (again)

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“For those who didn’t wish to renounce their citizenship, there was a second option: relinquishment. Tina Turner did this but taking Swiss citizenship – something that took her well over a decade to get – with the intention of giving up her American passport.  It’s a bit of a semantics game, but it has worked for some folks. However, the US – with all of its nearly $20 trillion in debt – has caught on to yet another loophole by the ‘evil rich’, and has recently increased the fee for processing a citizenship relinquishment from $0 to the same $2,350 that renunciation costs.”

http://nomadcapitalist.com/2015/11/16/renounce-fee-relinquish-us-citizenship/

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IRS Says You Owe Tax? Congress Will Take Your Passport Starting January 1

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“House and Senate conference committee members worked this week on putting together a final version of the funding bill — the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act (HR 22) — that would then be voted on in both houses of Congress. The conference committee can be expected to produce a bill including the passport denial and revocation provision given that such a provision was included in the bill’s versions already passed in the House and Senate. ‘The list of affected taxpayers will be compiled by the Internal Revenue Service using a threshold of $50,000 of unpaid federal taxes, including penalties and interest, which would be adjusted for inflation,’ predicts the WSJ.”

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/congress-alert/2015/november/20/do-you-owe-taxes-congress-wants-to-take-your-passport/

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Stop-and-Seize Turns Police Into Self-Funding Gangs

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“With government unable to pay police as much as they need or would like, police are confiscating their revenue directly from the populace.  The threat to individual liberty from stop-and-seize is painfully clear.  Without requirements for an arrest or for a warrant, the power to confiscate cash is a clear diminution of property rights. Effectively, the police have been given official sanction to commit literal highway robbery without the threat of punishment. People whose property was seized must pay a lot of money and spend a long time in court for even the chance of getting it back, and police who seize money with no good reason don’t, apparently, suffer any threat of discipline.”

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-12/stop-and-seize-turns-police-into-self-funding-gangs

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Police Civil Asset Forfeitures Exceed All Burglaries in 2014

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“Between 1989 and 2010, U.S. attorneys seized an estimated $12.6 billion in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time averaged +19.4% annually. In 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% from 2009 and was six times greater than the total for 1989. Then by 2014, that number had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year, making this 35% of the entire number of assets collected from 1989 to 2010 in a single year. According to the FBI, the total amount of goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that the police are now taking more assets than the criminals.”

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/39102

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Even its Creators Want to Shut Down the Asset-Forfeiture Racket [2014]

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“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. I’m especially glad they include the government’s foolish and costly anti-money laundering laws as they discuss government run amok. A big problem is that these laws create perverse incentives for abusive behavior by bureaucracies.  Our presumption of innocence shouldn’t be eroded just because some bureaucrats are greedy to steal private property.”

https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/even-its-creators-want-to-shut-down-the-governments-asset-forfeiture-racket/

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New report: In tough times, police property seizures rise

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“The past decade has seen a ‘meteoric, exponential increase’ in the use of the practice. The government does not measure the number of times per year that assets are seized. But one common measure of the practice is the amount of money in the asset forfeiture funds of the Department of Justice and the U.S. Treasury, the two agencies that typically perform forfeitures at the federal level. In 2008,there were less than $1.5 billion in the combined asset forfeiture funds of the Justice Department and the U.S. Treasury, according to the report. But by 2014, that number had tripled, to roughly $4.5 billion.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-police-property-seizures-20151110-story.html

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Police Agencies Fold in St. Louis Area as Ticket Blitzes Stop

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“The new law says traffic citations in St. Louis County municipalities can’t exceed 12.5 percent of annual operating revenue, down from 30 percent. Policing in Charlack and in nearby Wellston, which dissolved its 23-officer force in May, is now handled by a recently created cooperative of local departments. Tense relations between the majority-black residents of Ferguson and the city’s mostly white police force grew in part from the excessive issuance of tickets. Some area municipalities were generating more than half their annual operating revenue from citations.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-10-22/police-agencies-fold-in-st-louis-area-as-ticket-blitzes-stop

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Say Goodbye to Open Borders

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“At the height of the ‘Grexit’ crisis, Greeks were limited to cash withdrawals of about €60 a day. For nearly two weeks, under the terms of an emergency decree, they could not send money out of the country.  But tens of thousands of Greek businesspeople had to pay for imported goods to keep their enterprises running. Those who’d thought ahead and stockpiled euros packed wads of currency into suitcases, flew to the countries where their suppliers were based and paid in cash. They didn’t have to declare anything and weren’t stopped as they boarded planes to other EU destinations.  That will probably not be allowed to happen again.”

http://thesovereigninvestor.com/asset-protection/say-goodbye-to-open-borders/

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