States, feds allow assets used in crimes to be seized

Source: Arizona Daily Star




Read more: http://www.azstarnet.com/altds/pastframe/metro/237372

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This expansion of asset seizure suggests 'we' didn't learn from questionable "War on Drugs" seizures in the past or maybe 'we' did, it depends entirely on one's point of view.

who perpetrated sub-prime crimes?

American Drug War : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8740703353227564451&q=American+Drug+War&ei=RY0fSJj0NYGe-AHyss3EAQ&hl=en

Skull & Bones CIA, Inc.

Of course this only applies to individuals, not corporations. If you loan your car to a friend and he gets arrested for drug possession, you've just lost your car. But if he get arrested on a Southwest 767, Southwest gets to keep the plane.

Is it fascism yet?

I didn't get to vote on it so it is not legitimate. In my eyes, it is a "criminal enterprise".

To Blackwater giving them half of seizures. Used to be called privateers. Make it pay big bucks to to Blackwater like Iraq but here the govt gets an official slice. Don't forget the immunity clause for the innocent Americans killed (or raped) as collateral damage.

Public/Private partnership in the war on crime. No liability, all profit. Allow Blackwater to subcontract their authority. Maybe an Amway business model.

ROEs: Shoot on site, dead or alive.

If the feds, or any LEA decides to take you down, they can sieze everything on suspicion, until they either take their own sweet time giving it back(usually trashed) or they can just keep it. Which they often do, even after the person has been found not guilty or completely exhonerated. For instance, parents have lost their homes when their children are busted for drugs while living there. Or cars.

The larger lesson you can take away from all this is that in the eyes of the government, no part of your property is your own, you only posess and control it at the sufferance of the government and they can divest you of it for many, many reasons, and as they see fit.

Some democracy we got us here, huh? Wasn't this way always, it just came to pass from that tiny slice of paradise called "The War on Drugs", which has the extra added benefit of creating a large and largely disenfranchised underclass, AKA: goddamn cheap labor and no threat of being a real economic player.

Seizure laws are one of the most totalitarian things that have happened to this country, excluding George Bush. I used to live in Illinois and there was a case I knew of personally where a man was selling drugs and living with his Grandmother. She had no idea he was doing this and lost the house. Never got it back either. What the hell happened to due process? By the way, don't blame Bush for this one, though I'm sure he's all for it. It started happening under Bubba Clinton

in these seizure cases also. Isn't the word a kleptocracy?

http://www.ricoact.com/

It started before Clinton and opposition to The War on Drugs and its more noxious tendancies has long been a political third rail.

It's also been very effective at creating fear in the populace, although its fallen on hard times with that, thanks to The War on Terror and Brown Folks.

Too many politicians are too stupid to effectively govern, much less breathe, so The War on Drugs has been a great free gimme for them. A little demogoguery, a lot of fear, say goodbye to those your rights, which only get in the way of what some people really want to do.

King's could sieze anybody's property on a whim.

and the crime need not be more than a misdemeanor. E.g., the woman who lost her half-ownership of the family car when her husband drove it downtown and solicited a cop. Anthony Kennedy: "well, she didn't lose much; it wasn't an expensive car".

I don't think the government should be able to take your property prior to a conviction, except that which it is illegal to possess (like confiscating illegal drugs).

Under current law, the government is simply required to meet its low standard of proof - probable cause that the property is subject to forfeiture - then the burden shifts to the property owner to prove either the "properties innocence," or that the owner did not know and did not consent to the property's illegal use.

The government's probable cause burden, in reality, means only slightly more than a hunch and far less than what is necessary to prove guilt in a criminal court. It is commonplace to have a seizure and forfeiture of money and property based solely on hearsay "evidence" that is deemed too unreliable to be admissible in most other judicial proceedings.

These burdens, easy on the government, hard on the property owner, often result in the seizure of property owned by one against whom the government cannot support a criminal charge.

An owner can only overcome this presumption by proving that he had no knowledge of the illicit activity or did not consent to that activity. That is, the owner is required to prove a negative.

http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/sentencing/10837leg19970611.html

Jefferson's original wording in the Declaration of Independence, later changed to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."