Tag: Police State

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Democrat Congressman: ‘We’ve Proved That Communism Works’

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Democrat Congressman: ‘We’ve Proved That Communism Works’

Democratic Florida Rep. Joe Garcia — fresh off being caught eating his own earwax on camera — was caught red-handed (or is it yellow-fingered?) in another gaffe this week, claiming that low crime rates in border cities with lots of federal immigration workers is proof that “Communism works.”

Garcia made the comment during a Google hangout he convened last week to talk about comprehensive immigration reform with supporters. The Democrat attempted to point out how, for all their talk about limited government, many Republicans are fine spending loads of government money on border security.

“Let me give you an example, the kind of money we’ve poured in,” he said. “So the most dangerous — sorry, the safest city in America is El Paso, Texas. It happens to be across the border from the most dangerous city in the Americas, which is Juarez. Right?”

“And two of the safest cities in America, two of them are on the border with Mexico,” Garcia continued. “And of course, the reason is we’ve proved that Communism works. If you give everybody a good government job, there’s no crime.”

Read more: https://dailycaller.com/2014/05/21/dem-congressman-weve-proved-that-communism-works/#ixzz32RdhMM24

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POLICE STATE: Policing for Profit? Lawmakers, advocates raise alarm at growing gov’t power to seize property

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POLICE STATE: Policing for Profit? Lawmakers, advocates raise alarm at growing gov’t power to seize property

WASHINGTON –  Motel owner Russell Caswell wasn’t expecting to find himself at the center of a national controversy when FBI agents came knocking on his door.

They said they wanted his Tewksbury, Mass., business – and the land it was on – because they suspected it was a hotbed for drug-dealing and prostitution. The agents, who were working with state and local authorities, told a disbelieving Caswell they had the right to take the property, valued at as much as $1.5 million, through a legal process known as civil forfeiture.

Caswell, 70, fought back, and the case turned into one of the nation’s most contentious civil forfeiture fights ever – and one that legal experts say sheds light on a little-known practice that, when abused, is tantamount to policing for profit.

Civil forfeiture is when police and prosecutors seize property, cars or cash from someone they suspect of wrongdoing. It differs from criminal forfeiture cases, where prosecutors typically must prove a person is guilty or reach a settlement before freezing funds or selling property. In civil forfeiture, authorities don’t have to prove guilt, file charges or obtain a conviction before seizing private property. Critics say it is a process ripe for abuse, and one which leaves citizens little means of fighting back.

“You breed a culture of ‘take first, ask questions later,’” Larry Salzman, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, told FoxNews.com. “It’s thuggish behavior.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/09/policing-for-profit-lawmakers-advocates-raise-alarm-at-growing-govt-power-to/

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Get Ready for Regulators to Peer Into Your Portfolio

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Get Ready for Regulators to Peer Into Your Portfolio

Bad brokers, meet RoboRegulator.

In December, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees how investments are sold, proposed what it calls Cards, an electronic system that would regularly collect data on balances and transactions in brokerage accounts.

If adopted, Cards would revolutionize how regulators do their jobs and could make it harder for unscrupulous brokers to bilk customers.

But some critics think it could endanger the privacy and security of investors’ confidential data. And the proposal ups the ante for Finra, which often has been criticized for letting wrongdoers slip through the cracks.

Under Cards (which stands for Comprehensive Automated Risk Data System), Finra would collect—probably weekly—a record of activity at all of the more than 4,100 brokerage firms nationwide.

Finra would scour the data continuously, looking for any hints that a firm or a broker might be taking advantage of a client: excessive trading or commissions, switching from one mutual fund to another, overcharging for bond E*TradeETFC +0.04%s, overconcentrating in risky or illiquid securities, and so on.

https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/02/get-ready-for-regulators-to-peer-into-your-portfolio/?mod=WSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

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Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey: 37% of Voters Fear the Federal Government

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Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey: 37% of Voters Fear the Federal Government

Friday, April 18, 2014

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Likely U.S. Voters now fear the federal government, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Forty-seven percent (47%) do not, but another 17% are not sure.

Perhaps in part that’s because 54% consider the federal government today a threat to individual liberty rather than a protector. Just 22% see the government as a protector of individual rights, and that’s down from 30% last November. Slightly more (24%) are now undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

As recently as December 2012, voters were evenly divided on this question: 45% said the federal government was a protector of individual rights, while 46% described it as a threat to those rights.

Two-out-of-three voters (67%) view the federal government today as a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Just 17% disagree, while 15% are undecided.

Only 19% now trust the federal government to do the right thing most or nearly all the time, down from 24% in June of last year. Eighty percent (80%) disagree, with 44% who trust the government to do the right thing only some of the time and 36% who say it rarely or never does the right thing.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters believe that if America’s Founding Fathers came back today, they would regard the federal government as too big. Just three percent (3%) think the nation’s founders would consider the government too small, while 21% say they would view the size of the federal government as about right.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on April 15-16, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Just 19% of voters believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.

Men and those 40 and over are more likely to fear the federal government than women and younger voters.

Democrats, as they do in most instances, have a less critical view of the federal government than Republicans and voters not affiliated with either of the major parties. Most GOP voters (53%) and 43% of unaffiliateds fear the federal government. Just 18% of voters in President Obama’s party agree.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of Republicans and 59% of unaffiliated voters view the government as a threat to individual liberty, a view shared by only 34% of Democrats. GOP and unaffiliated voters are twice as likely as Democrats to believe that the federal government rarely or never does the right thing.

Majorities of all three groups, however, agree that the government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests.

Forty-two percent (42%) of voters with a gun in their household fear the federal government, compared to 30% of those who do not have a gun in their home. Fifty-two percent (52%) of union members share that fear versus 35% of those who are not unionized.

Sixty percent (60%) of all voters favor a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes over a more active government with more services and higher taxes.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/april_2014/37_of_voters_fear_the_federal_government

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America’s police have become too militarised

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Cops or soldiers?

America’s police have become too militarised

Mar 22nd 2014 | ATLANTA | From the print edition

Gary Mikulec, chief of the Ankeny, Iowa police force, which raided Ms Prince’s home in January, said that the suspects arrested “were not very good people”. One had a criminal history that included three assault charges, albeit more than a decade old, and on his arrest was found to have a knife and a meth pipe.

It is easy to see why the police like to be better armed than the people they have to arrest. They risk their lives every day, and are understandably keen to get home in one piece. A big display of force can make a suspect think twice about pulling a gun. “An awful lot of SWAT tactics are focused on forcing the suspect to surrender,” says Bill Bratton, New York’s police chief.

But civil libertarians such as Radley Balko, the author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop”, fret that the American police are becoming too much like soldiers. Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams (ie, paramilitary police units) were first formed to deal with violent civil unrest and life-threatening situations: shoot-outs, rescuing hostages, serving high-risk warrants and entering barricaded buildings, for instance. Their mission has crept.

https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-americas-police-have-become-too-militarised-cops-or-soldiers

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Supreme Court Expands Police Power to Seize Your Assets Before Conviction

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Supreme Court Expands Police Power to Seize Your Assets Before Conviction
Damon Root
|Feb. 27, 2014 3:22 pm

It’s been a banner week for law enforcement at the U.S. Supreme Court. On Tuesday, in the case of Fernandez v. California, the Court broadened the power of the police to conduct warrantless home searches. But it was a decision handed down on Monday that’s likely to have the greatest impact on our criminal justice system.

At issue in Monday’s ruling in Kaley v. United States is an area of the law known as asset forfeiture. In essence, asset forfeiture is designed to help law enforcement officials seize the ill-gotten fruits of criminal activity, such as cash, cars, or homes. To that end, prosecutors are permitted to freeze the assets of criminal suspects during trial if there is probable cause to believe those assets constitute “proceeds” of the alleged criminal activity. Notice that this freezing occurs before the suspect has been duly convicted.

That timing matters a great deal to the plaintiffs in this case, a married couple by the name of Kaley who have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of selling stolen medical supplies. That may sound like a finding of guilt, but in fact grand jury proceedings are a non-adversarial process where the prosecution alone is permitted to call witnesses and present evidence. The suspects have no opportunity at that point to rebut anything the government alleges against them.

https://reason.com/blog/2014/02/27/supreme-court-expands-police-power-to-se

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NSA Official: ‘We Are Now a Police State’

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NSA Official: ‘We Are Now a Police State’
December 19, 2013 – 10:54 AM
By Matt Vespa

Last year, high-ranking NSA official Bill Binney said, “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.” Now, Binney says that the U.S. has already become a full-blown police state.

Binney told Washington’s Blog on Wednesday that:

“The main use of the collection from these [NSA spying] programs [is] for law enforcement. [See the 2 slides below].”

“These slides give the policy of the DOJ/FBI/DEA etc. on how to use the NSA data. In fact, they instruct that none of the NSA data is referred to in courts – cause it has been acquired without a warrant.”

“So, they have to do a ‘Parallel Construction’ and not tell the courts or prosecution or defense the original data used to arrest people. This I call: a ‘planned programed perjury policy’ directed by US law enforcement.”

“And, as the last line on one slide says, this also applies to ‘Foreign Counterparts.’”

“This is a total corruption of the justice system not only in our country but around the world. The source of the info is at the bottom of each slide. This is a totalitarian process – means we are now in a police state.”

– See more at: https://www.cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/matt-vespa/nsa-official-we-are-now-police-state#sthash.LOUz0Dxo.NyI3jnfi.dpuf