[csense]

A couple decades ago when the government wanted to get civil forfeiture powers, they said it was only going to be for the worst organized crime bosses and drug lords.

Then within the last few years, a black kid who takes his life savings -- $10,000 cash -- and moves across the country to start a new life is (apparently entirely legally) relieved of it by two police officers and has no means to get it back, despite never being arrested nor charged with any crime.

History shows that it's impossible to trust the government's promise that they'll restrict any new capabilities to the worst bad guys.

[TallGuyShort]

Non-constitutional exceptions to the constitution are just like Darth Vader: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

[wonder_er]

Popehat [0] has an excellent list of questions to ask when giving a new power to the government:

1. Does the United States Constitution permit the government to do this?

2. What would this power look like if it were expanded dramatically in scope or in time?

3. What would this obligation look like if exercised indifferently by unaccountable people?

4. What would your worst enemy do with this power?

The list goes on, but points 2, 3, and 4 should be sufficient to cause pause for even the most aggressive supporter of expanding government powers.

[0] https://popehat.com/2016/06/02/libertarianism-as-ten-questio...

[tn13]

Government can not be trusted. Something that the founding fathers and understood and warned centuries ago despite their own inherent flaws.

Individual liberty is something that we need to defend actively from the government and that can not happen unless we take a diametrically opposite stance and do not concede even and inch of ground.

Example: People who supported civil forfeiture essentially thought that its okay to take things away from crime lords even if the charges are not proved. Now CF is coming after everyone.

I think the right solution here is to starve the beast. Force the government to lower taxes and leave them with substantially less money for needless wars, enforcing idiotic laws and other welfare schemes.

[hx87]

Taxes aren't the problem--it's the fees, law-enforcement-as-revenue-service, and other hacks to get around the lack of tax revenue that makes government nasty. I'd much rather pay taxes and zero out all government fees, civil forfeiture and non-criminal fines.

[tn13]

I lived in India for many years. India has idiotic laws but the government simply does not have enough money to enforce any laws. As a result we can simply ignore the laws and get about our business. (That also explains corruption and inability to scale a model).

For example my house was not connected by road. When we tried to build our own private road we realized we had to take clearance from 8 departments which would have taken us 2 years and several $$$ in bribes. We paid money to a contractor who build the road without any clearance and no government person ever showed up because they had more important job to do.

The problem is if you are going to have a higher number of cops per capita, they need to catch someone to justify their existence. The only reason we have "War against drugs" because there aren't any other wars that politicians are fighting with. Almost all problems are solved (compared to say India).

If gov. shuts down war against drugs they will start war against sex. American women enjoy freedom and safety that Indian women can only dream of and yet our government is busy passing all sort of laws to "protect woman". This is because these are empty minds working as devils workshop.

[wallace_f]

>The problem is if you are going to have a higher number of cops per capita, they need to catch someone to justify their existence. The only reason we have "War against drugs" because there aren't any other wars that politicians are fighting with. Almost all problems are solved (compared to say India).

Insightful comment.

I hope for a future where we focus on using government to govern ourselves in a way in which we reward people for doing bad things, and punish people for doing good things. Right now it seems to be a tool that is mostly focused to benefit those in power, at the expense of others. One cost of this is that the definition of what is unacceptably unjust is becoming increasingly inane. Our liberties are eroding.

[wallace_f]

Correction: that is (probably obvious) supposed to say, "reward people for doing good things, and punish people for doing bad things." My comment is uneditable now, though.

[uberuser]

>India has idiotic laws but the government simply does not have enough money to enforce any laws Kinda same in Russia. There is even a national joke: "The severity of Russian laws is alleviated by the lack of obligation to obey them." But it's excuse of course, we must change the things.

[freshyill]

You had me until you decided to turn it into a tax thing.

[794CD01]

The founding fathers also "understood" that negroes were subhuman and women existed solely to bear children. There is no reason to base modern decisions on 250-year-old morals.

[thomasthomas]

I agree with you but I would challenge the assumption lower taxes means less revenue

[wvenable]

Starving the beast doesn't work -- programs and infrastructure you want funded aren't and programs you don't want supported are fully funded. This has always been the way. Furthermore, under funded governments tend to much more corrupt.

You also can't lower taxes without hurting employment and nobody wants higher unemployment.

[thaumasiotes]

> You also can't lower taxes without hurting employment and nobody wants higher unemployment.

This is counter to virtually everything I've seen asserted about economics, as well as the raw world data on hours worked compared to tax rates.

There is a "leisure effect" whereby getting more money for the same amount of work (the effect of lowering taxes) means that people choose additional leisure over additional work, because they don't need the extra money from additional work as badly. It is much less strong than the effect whereby raising the returns on work leads people to do more of it, because they're getting more out of the extra work than they used to.

What are you thinking of when you make this claim?

[wvenable]

I meant people working directly or indirectly for the government.

[Aelinsaar]

What is to be done, when dicking us over and harshly keeping us in line is profitable, and we keep electing them to do it?!

[ktRolster]

  >What is to be done

Pay more attention to the election and government processes. Inform people. Most people don't know about civil forfeiture (even the name is enough to bore many people), so they don't know cops are stealing from people.

A people that doesn't pay attention to the government gets screwed by the government every time, no matter what rules are in place. That's why Lawrence Lessig is trying to change the rules to encourage people to take part.

[update]

> Most people don't know civil forfeiture

Most people don't care about X (civil forfeiture, whistleblowers, Controversial invocations of the Patriot Act, etc.)

> Pay more attention to the election and government processes.

Yes but this completely ignores the fact that most Americans are apathetic to these issues.

What I learned this year was that (as another poster put it) "Gerrymandering, fraud, bribery, voter suppression" were visible, they would also be tolerated.

Also, if you're under investigation by the FBI for espionage, most Americans will STILL vote for you. And the other major half will vote for someone who is clearly racist and (imho) dumb as nails.

[wallace_f]

Unfortunately, I've also learned the same in the last year.

My interactions with people after reaching adulthood have also taught me that people have different inclinations, ethics, intentions and internal reward systems. Some people gain satisfaction by helping others, or doing 'good;' while some others, gain satisfaction from hurting others, or feeling superior to them. Unfortunately I've met a lot of terrible people, and that makes me wonder what we should reasonably come to expect in who we collectively elect?

[ridgeguy]

If you consider the incentives and selection filters that operated on those who successfully sought elected office, it's a little discouraging.

We might do better drafting from a pool of otherwise qualified people who really don't want the job!

[Ntrails]

There was a cool article on why in many cases random selection is better than human choice https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-can-t-choose-wisely-choose-ran...

I've just never really solved how to apply it to politics. I've long felt that if you're going to have 2 "houses", one ought to be appointed by ballot as a check/balance on the elected members (a variation of hereditary peers in many ways but without the same bias).

[wallace_f]

It does seem to be the case that someone who doesn't really want the job, but is otherwise qualified, is the best person for it in this case. It seems to me to be very likely that this is true for both politicians, as well as LEO, including the FBI, CIA, and probably all other three letter agencies as well.

[mmanfrin]

    if you're under investigation by the FBI for espionage

Espionage? Jesus Cripes the rhetoric in this election just gets more and more out there.

[update]

> The judge in my case was clear about a number of issues. First, the very definition of “espionage” is incredibly broad. Espionage is the act of “providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it.” Period. My judge also said that there did not have to be mens rea, or criminal intent, for there to be guilt in an espionage case. And the concept of “harm to the national security” was irrelevant.

--John Kiriakou (He was the first CIA officer to be convicted for passing classified information to a reporter) [1]

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

[1] http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/all_whistleblowers_shoul...

[Zikes]

This presumes the election process is fair. Gerrymandering, fraud, bribery, voter suppression, it's a wonder we even call the US a democracy anymore.

[sheepleherd]

any creation of voting districts is a Gerrymander. What method do you favor, and how is yours better?

[slavik81]

That's simply inaccurate. Gerrymandering is specifically the redrawing of electoral districts in a purposefully unfair manner. It's commonly prevented by setting up independent commissions to do the redrawing of districts, rather than allowing the incumbent politicians to draw the lines directly.

It's named after the former Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, who redrew the districts to ensure his party would win the senate. Apparently, he had to draw the districts in rather unusual shapes to achieve this, and they kind of ended up looking like a salamander. Hence, Gerrymandering.

[sheepleherd]

You (and everybody else) don't understand what I mean because you haven't thought about it as much as I have.

By what principle do you think districts should be drawn--they must be redrawn due to shifting population--so do you intend to draw exaggerated patterns to spread out minority opinions, or to clump them together? Or are you suggesting that you flip coins topologically? What if flipping coins results in a salamander of some sort, you want to use soap films to find the minimum enclosing surfaces? "Mathematically neutral" methods of drawing districts will result in some parts of the country randomly enhancing minority opinions while other parts of the country will randomly diffuse them, with results that will lead partisans to complain bitterly.

My point is, there IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. There is only your preference.

[JadeNB]

> You (and everybody else) don't understand what I mean because you haven't thought about it as much as I have.

Even if true, this is surely the least civil way, and one of the least convincing ways, to state the fact.

> My point is, there IS NO RIGHT ANSWER. There is only your preference.

That seems to be a different claim to:

> any creation of voting districts is a Gerrymander

(which you said above). Two reasons why:

1. As slavik points out, a gerrymander is, by definition, intentionally (not incidentally, accidentally, or unavoidably) unfair.

2. More importantly, "all district-drawing schemes are unfair", while probably true, does not mean that they are all equally unfair, or that we should give up on seeking fairness. It seems rather like http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm .

[Aelinsaar]

Surely believing that you, of all other people (many billions of them!) only you have "thought about it" enough? That strikes me as a delusional belief to hold.

[omginternets]

I think people are reacting to your tone. In terms of content you may well have a point: is the drawing of district lines sensible in the first place?

[Zikes]

Wikipedia's definition[1] is "In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries."

It can be clearly recognized where it occurs, and there are plenty of examples in the Wikipedia article. I don't have the skills or knowledge to say exactly how it should be done, only that it shouldn't have extreme obvious political bias.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

[sheepleherd]

if you scour the discussion history of the wikipedia page you will find my comments many months ago disputing that the article implies that there is some "fair" way to draw districts without laying out what that way should be.

I contend that the system we use, the gerrymandering system, is the most defensible, it's democratic. Don't like it, vote for somebody else.

[JadeNB]

> Don't like it, vote for somebody else.

The explicit goal of gerrymandering is to render this remedy ineffectual.

[oh_sigh]

If you're referring to the case I think you are, it is pretty clear that that "black kid" was actually a money runner for drug dealers. He claimed to have withdrawn the money from his bank, but could never provide any kind of evidence that he had done this.

[EdHominem]

And what case proved that assertion?

Because in non-corrupt situations it's not your responsibility to explain yourself to not be robbed by the police.

[oh_sigh]

Getting your money back would be very simple - just show you withdrew it from the bank and it was deposited normally. If you can't show you withdrew it from a bank, show it was earned from a job and show pay stubs. If you can't show it was earned from a job, get testimony from people who employed you.

If you can't do any of that - you may be a drug dealer or drug/cash runner.

I'm fine with you having some kind of moral outrage at asset forefiture, but while it is currently the law, there are ways of going about getting your money back. Again, feel free to argue that you shouldn't need to prove where it came from, but, while you do need to prove it, you have those options available to you in pretty much any circumstance where you can save up $11k.

[prutschman]

How much does it cost to hire a lawyer to (try to) get your $11k back?

[oh_sigh]

I'm sure there were people lining up to defend him pro bono because he was a national case...

[Sacho]

We've gone from "the kid is actually guilty", to "well if the kid is innocent it would be trivial to get his money back", to "well if the kid is innocent it's not trivial to get his money back but because it was a national case there's bound to be someone willing to do the work for him out of altruism".

While these may all be true, on your way to be right you've discarded everyone who doesn't get media spotlight, is innocent, and still has their assets forfeited.

No one was disputing your original point anyway - yes, there are ways to get your money back - which you shouldn't have lost in the first place. That's the whole problem with these half-assed, poorly thought-through laws - they are intended to only be applied to criminals, so by assumption the person they are applied to is a criminal, so it's no big deal if they have to jump through ridiculous, possibly life-ruining hoops to go back to their normal life.

Another point that isn't really discussed - after sacrificing the civil liberties of people who have to go through civil forfeiture, is there a worthwhile effect on the drug lords and drug runners, or is this a case like DRM?