Tag: Law and Disorder

What’s the Difference Between the IRS and a Thief

What’s the difference between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and a thief? There isn’t one:

The unmarked vehicles arrived in the morning. More than 20 armed agents poured out.

Hours later, Mii’s Bridal & Tuxedo was out of business after serving customers for decades. Its entire inventory of wedding gowns and dresses as well as sewing machines and other equipment were sold at auction.

The hastily-called sale held inside the store netted the IRS about $17,000 — not enough to cover the roughly $31,400 in tax debt alleged, court records show. The balance is now likely unrecoverable.

[…]

Regarding the speed of the sale, the government said in legal filings that the IRS used a special law that allows for a streamlined procedure if the agency determines the goods seized could “perish or waste” or become greatly reduced in value.

As a result, the IRS didn’t have to post advance public notice of the Mii’s sale or wait at least 10 days before selling the goods, as is normally required.

How are tuxedos, wedding dresses, and sewing machines perishable goods? They’re not. The IRS just made shit up so it could perform this act of theft without giving the owners enough time to involve lawyers.

While I spend a great deal of time brining up civil asset forfeiture laws, there are other laws on the books that allow the State to legally steal property without convicting the owner. Arcane tax laws are often used in this way. In this case the IRS once again used, or should I say abused, laws against structuring. I’ve mentioned this before but there is a law that requires people making deposits greater than $10,000 to report them. Many businesses don’t realize this is a law, they only realize that the bank requires them to fill out a bunch of additional paperwork if their deposit is above $10,000. So to avoid paperwork many businesses take deposits over $10,000 and divide them into multiple deposits that are each under $10,000. Doing this violates the law against structuring so the IRS combines the fact that many small business owners are entirely unaware of this law with the fact that it’s illegal to justify rolling in, seizing a small business’s assets, and auctioning them off.

These kinds of laws violate the concept of private property. So long as they continue to exist nobody in the United States can be said to actually own property, they can only lease property for as long as the State permits them.

But Wait, There’s More

Yesterday’s story about another puppycide committed by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) was already horrible. However, in the words of the great philosopher Billy Mays, “But wait, there’s more!” Not only did the MPD officer shoot two dogs for no reasons whatsoever, he apparently lied to the owners about having called in to get the dogs medical aid:

The family didn’t instantly take the dogs to the emergency vet because police told the family that “animal control” would be there in minutes to access the dogs’ medical needs. No one showed up, LeMay said.

I’m super sorry I jumped your fence like a burglar and gunned down your dogs. Don’t worry though, I totally called animal control and they’ll get here before your dogs bleed out. I promise.

If history is any indicator, this officer will receive either no punishment at all or a paid vacation while the department waits for this fiasco to fall out of the news cycle. Even if by some miracle the officer is fired the police union will likely step in and get him reinstated. And that is the problem. So long as officers remain unaccountable for their actions they will have no motivation to stop acting badly and stories like this will continue to hit the front page.

Another Day, Another Puppycide

On Saturday a 13-year-old girl accidentally tripped her home’s burglar alarm. This accident set into motion a series of events that has become all too common. The Minneapolis Police Department dispatched an officer to respond to the burglar alarm. Instead of walking up to the front door and knocking the officer entered the fenced in backyard, presumably by jumping the fence. Upon seeing the officer two friendly dogs approached him. The officer responded by showing the dogs good old fashion police love by pumping rounds into them:

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A woman in north Minneapolis says a city police officer responding to a home burglary alarm Saturday night shot her two dogs.

Jennifer LeMay posted home surveillance video of the shooting to Facebook, showing what looks to be a Minneapolis police officer firing his gun at two approaching pit bulls in a fenced-in backyard.

After firing, the officer is then seen jumping over the backyard fence.

There is a video of the shooting caught from the woman’s surveillance camera. It’s pretty clear from the video that the dogs weren’t aggressive. Unfortunately, the video doesn’t answer the question as to why the officer decided to jump the backyard fence instead of go to the front door.

The woman setup a GoFundMe campaign to pay for her dogs’ medical expenses. I feel the need to point out that absurdity of having to setup a GoFundMe campaign to deal with the expenses involved in police responding to a burglar alarm. It’s at the point where you’re often better off letting a burglar steal your shit than notifying the police that you’ve been robbed.

The Freest Country on Earth

A lot of people in the United States mistakenly believe that peacekeeper and law enforcer are interchangeable terms. In a nation where the only laws on the books were laws against harming others that could be true. But a vast majority of the laws in the United States have nothing to do with harming others, which is what a vast majority of prisoners are being held for victimless crimes:

In light of that, let us review some statistics which demonstrate just how destructive the mass incarceration of victimless criminals has become to our society. The 2009 federal prison population consisted of criminals who committed these crimes:

Drugs 50.7%

Public-order 35.0%,

Violent 7.9%

Property 5.8%

Other .7%

Drug offenses are self-explanatory as being victimless, but so too are public-order offenses, which also fall under the victimless crimes category. Public order offenses include such things as immigration, weapons charges, public drunkenness, selling lemonade without a license, dancing in public, feeding the homeless without a permit. etc….

86 percent of prisoners in the United States are incarcerated even though they didn’t harm anybody. In other words, the officers who arrested them weren’t keeping the peace but were disrupting it.

Cop apologists are quick to claim that without police officers society would deteriorate into Mad Max. Again, this argument might carry some weight if police officers were peacekeepers but they’re not. The job of a police officer is to enforce the law as it is written. Since a majority of laws create victimless crimes that means the majority of police interactions involve individuals who haven’t disrupted the peace in any way. In order to do their jobs police officers necessarily have to be the initiators of aggression in the majority of interactions.

Without law enforcers the United States would actually be more peaceful since less people would be aggressed against for perpetrating victimless crimes.

Survival Tips for Minnesotas for the Next Two Weeks

For the next two weeks the road pirates are going to be increasing their fund raising efforts enforcement of the arbitrarily set speed limits:

On Wednesday, Zak, a lieutenant with the State Patrol, joined with officials from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety to put on the demonstration to show how long it takes to stop while traveling at various speeds and how drivers’ reaction time goes down the faster they go. It comes as law enforcement from 300 agencies statewide begin a two-week speeding enforcement campaign from Friday through July 23.

[…]

The state’s crackdown on speeding coincides with a national effort and is paid for using funds allocated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

While officers will be on the lookout for lead-footed drivers statewide, target teams will be stationed along routes known to see fast drivers, including I-494 in Bloomington, near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and on I-94 in the construction zone from Minneapolis to Brooklyn Center.

Since the threat of violence against motorists is going to increase I feel the need to point out some survival tips.

  1. Don’t be black. Studies have shown that road pirates tend to respond more violently to black individuals.
  2. Use Waze to both report any road pirates and to receive warnings about any reported road pirates.
  3. Turn on your smartphone’s camera, preferably to livestream the stop, and lock the screen. You want to have a record of the entire stop in case you’re murdered but you don’t want the phone unlocked because the officer might decided to rummage through it for evidence of more crimes. While such a search may be illegal the Supreme Court has ruled that illegally collected evidence is admissible in court.
  4. If you are a permit holder remember that Minnesota law only requires you to disclose if you’re carrying a firearm to an officer if they specifically asks. Don’t volunteer such information. If you do the police officer may panic and fire multiple rounds into you at point blank range. If this happens the officer will be acquitted of any wrongdoing.
  5. During a traffic stop make sure you have your license and proof of insurance out before the officer gets to your window. Failing to do so will require you to move your hands when the police officer is at your window and that might spook them. Like any wild animal, a spooked police officer is unpredictable.
  6. Have both hands firmly of your steering wheel at all times. By firmly I mean gripping your steering wheel so hard that your knuckles turn white. Only consider moving from this position if the officer gives you a direct order to do so.
  7. Assume the most submissive position possible. Police officers like to feel dominant. If they feel that their authority is being questioned in any way they might “fear for their life” and shoot you dead.

While this list could be extended I’m going to keep it brief in the hopes that you’ll be able to remember every point if you’re pulled over. If you follow these tips your chances of surviving a police encounter should increase. If for some reason, say due to your genetic makeup, you’re unable to follow one or more of these tips, well…

Deescalating the Police

Cop apologists love to point out that police officers are trained professionals and that their training makes them more trustworthy than the people who complain about their actions. Why is it then that untrained civilians are expected to deescalate the police:

The system is designed to exonerate police officers, not provide justice for their victims. My incident, however, gives me new insight into just how much the law values police lives over the citizens they are supposed to protect.

Chief Rausch said that when investigating complaints, it is essential to understand an officer’s mindset to determine the facts. A mindset is not a fact.

Here are the facts that Janish appeared to focus on – the unmarked cab, a black person, the duffel bag and the license plate.

Then here are other facts that he ignored – he knew his mother-in-law was selling the car, it was broad daylight, and I knew her first name, but not her last name. I offered to show him the keys, registration and bill of sale signed by his mother-in-law.

Those are the actual facts. Officer Janish’s mindset was the scenario he created in his head. His fears weren’t facts.

The moment I arrived at Officer Janish’s mother-in-law’s house I became a suspect, and under the law, it seems that Officer Janish became a victim. He could have stayed at his house, called 911 and waited for the sheriff’s department to arrive. Instead he grabbed his weapon and came outside to confront me.

Had I not reacted calmly, Officer Janish likely would have been within his legal rights to shoot me although I wasn’t doing anything illegal. My mere presence with a duffel bag was deemed a threat.

Had the author, Tonya Jameson, not reacted calmly he could have been another Philando Castile and it’s likely Officer Janish would have suffered no consequences. This is yet another situation where an untrained civilian was required to deescalate a supposed trained law enforcer.

Cop apologists have a lengthy list of appropriate responses during police encounters. If it’s a traffic stop make sure to have your proof of insurance and drivers license in hand before the officer gets to your vehicle. Make sure both of your hands are firmly placed on the steering wheel. Ask the officer how he wants you to proceed and follow his instructions to the letter. Don’t make any sudden movements. If you’re stopped by an officer on foot make sure your hands are visible and nowhere near your pockets. As with during a traffic stop, ask the officer how he wants you to proceed and follow his instructions to the letter and avoid sudden movements. Oh, and remember that if an officer is abusing their authority or using unnecessary violence against you that you must shut up and take it. The only appropriate place to deal with that kind of situation is in the courts.

According to cop apologists law enforcers are trained professionals but must be treated in a similar manner to wild animals. This attitude is nonsense. Since law enforcers are trained professionals the burden of deescalating situations should be on them. However, the legal system is setup to require the opposite, which is one of the reasons why police remain mostly unaccountable for their actions.

Socialized Healthcare

Socialists believe that socialized healthcare is the most wondrous invention since concentration camps. Through the wonders of socialized healthcare everybody will receive all of the medical care they need. Unless, of course, the State deems an individual’s medical care to be detrimental to itself. Meet Charlie Gard, an infant who suffers from infantile onset encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. Charlie, in addition to suffering from a very rare disease, was unfortunately born in the United Kingdom (UK). The UK has a socialized healthcare system, which means that the State gets to decide who gets what and it has not only decided that Charlie shouldn’t receive medical care but it has decided that he must die even though his parents have raised enough money to try an experimental procedure through a private medical practice:

For ten months, Charlie has been living in the intensive-care unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. In March, his doctors decided that there was nothing more they could do for him, and they recommended that his parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, withdraw his ventilator. They refused, on the grounds that an untried experimental treatment was available in the United States. The hospital, in accordance with British law, applied to the courts to forestall further treatment. In April, the High Court found for the doctors and against the parents. In May, the Court of Appeal upheld the initial decision. In early June, the Supreme Court agreed. And this week, the European Court of Human Rights — the last court of jurisdiction — refused to intervene. Charlie’s parents have raised enough money from private donations to fund the experimental treatment, but the court decision prohibits his removal to the U.S. Whenever they see fit to do so, the doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital can now remove Charlie’s life support.

Why would a government sentence a child to death even though the parents are able and willing to gund the medical expenses? Most likely because the government has done some longterm calculations and decided that even though the child may be cured of his immediate disease he could end up requiring more medical care throughout his life, which would hurt its bottom line.

The second biggest problem with socialized healthcare (the first being that the system is coercive in nature) is that it’s paid for through the money stolen by the State. Statists like to think that the State is above human greed but in reality it cares just as deeply about profits as any business. Members of the State want to line their pockets and their friends’ pockets with as much tax money as possible. Any money that goes towards healthcare can’t go into their pockets so they’re incentivized to reduce healthcare costs as much as possible. If that means sentencing people to death then people will be sentenced to death.

Stealing a Skyscraper

Civil asset forfeiture is widely used by law enforcers to steal cars, cash, and other valuable items that are easy to transport. Over time law enforcers have become bolder and have now gone so far as to steal an entire skyscraper:

The government can seize a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan that it says is controlled by Iran, a jury concluded on Thursday, allowing federal prosecutors to complete what they called the largest terrorism-related civil forfeiture in United States history.

[…]

The government has agreed to distribute proceeds from the building’s sale, which could bring as much as $1 billion, to the families of victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks, including the Sept. 11 attacks. The office tower is highly coveted real estate; Nike recently signed a 15-year deal to rent seven of its 36 floors.

And, of course, the State received a rubber stamp approval from an “impartial” overview committee:

The jury, which deliberated for one day after a month of testimony, found that the Alavi Foundation, which owns 60 percent of the 36-floor skyscraper at 650 Fifth Avenue, violated United States sanctions against Iran and engaged in money laundering through its partnership with Assa Corporation, a shell company for an Iranian state-controlled bank that had owned the remaining 40 percent.

This is what happens when juries are instructed to rule on the letter of the law instead of whether or not the action was just. Civil asset forfeiture law is pretty clear about allowing the State to seize any property that it claims to be associate with a drug crime or terrorism. Because of that any jury ruling on a case involving civil asset forfeiture that is instructed to rule based on the letter of the law is bound to find any act of civil forfeiture, no matter hour absurd, to be legal.

In addition to the skyscraper, the State also seized several bank accounts but that’s pretty par for the course. Unfortunately, this precedent means that more high valued properties are likely to be seized by the State in the coming years. Yet again we see that one cannot own property in the United States.

Federal Judge Slaps Down California’s Prohibition Against Possessing Standard Capacity Magazines

I’ll end this week in a high note. California passed a law that would prohibit the mere possession of standard capacity magazines. That law was set to take effect tomorrow but a federal judge slapped it down for obvious reasons:

A federal judge on Thursday blocked a California law set to take effect Saturday that would have barred gun owners from possessing high-capacity ammunition magazines.

The judge ruled that the ban approved by the Legislature and voters last year takes away gun owners’ Second Amendment rights and amounts to the government taking people’s private property without compensation.

California law has prohibited buying or selling the magazines since 2000, but until now allowed those who had them to keep them.

“Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of otherwise law-abiding citizens will have an untenable choice: become an outlaw or dispossess one’s self of lawfully acquired property,” San Diego-based U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez wrote.

Granted, the State seizing property without compensating its rightful owner isn’t new. Civil asset forfeiture has allow the State to get away with doing so for decades now. However, this prohibition didn’t even have the pretext of a law, other than itself, being broken, which is a new step in legal depravity and apparently one that went too far for one federal judge.

I also find myself laughing at the fact that the judge noted that this law would turn “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of otherwise law-abiding citizens” into criminals. If that criteria was always applied then no laws would get passed since all of them turn otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals. Although I believe it was unintentional, that judge was a man after my own heart when he issued that statement.

Your Citizenship Has Been Revoked

The Nazgûl Supreme Court recently ruled that illegally obtained evidence can still be presented by prosecutors. Accountability was thrown out of the window with this ruling since there is no consequences for illegally collecting evidence. This ruling was controversial enough that three of the judges disagreed with one of them disagreeing quite loudly:

In her dissent to the ruling in Utah v. Strieff, which revolved on the matter of reasonable suspicion, Sotomayor cited James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me to describe what’s it’s like to live in constant fear of “suspicionless stops” as a person of color.

“Although many Americans have been stopped for speeding or jaywalking, few may realize how degrading a stop can be when the officer is looking for more,” wrote Sotomayor. “This Court has allowed an officer to stop you for whatever reason he wants — so long as he can point to a pretextual justification after the fact.”

Sotomayor said the court’s ruling had essentially classified all Americans as inmates in the prison-industrial complex.

“By legitimizing the conduct that produces this double consciousness, this case tells everyone, white and black, guilty and innocent, that an officer can verify your legal status at any time,” Sotomayor wrote. “It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.”

I’ve heard many people, conservatives and liberals alike, make the distinction between citizens and non-citizens when it comes to rights. They claim that one of the advantages of citizenship is that you enjoy the protection of the Bill of Rights. However, this ruling by the Supreme Court nullifies that claim because pesky things like warrants no longer need to be acquired before a search is performed. All a police officer needs to do is have a legal excuse for initiating an interaction with you and from there they can collect whatever evidence they want, legally or illegally, and it can be used against you in a trial.

This trend is nothing new though. Our so-called rights, which are really a set of temporary privileges, have been dwindling since ink was being applied to the paper that became the Constitution (the Constitution itself was nothing more than a power grab by the federal government). Every new law has been a further restriction to our freedoms. And while we’ve enjoyed a few scraps of freedom here and there they have paled in comparison to the freedoms we’ve lost. The United States has become a police state. Anybody who denies that is a fool.