Showing posts with label police state; war on drugs; private property. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police state; war on drugs; private property. Show all posts

Thursday, September 20, 2007

How The "War On Drugs" Brought Communism To America

Alan and Stephne Roos of Bothell, Washington are victims of Communism. The couple -- a butcher and dental assistant, respectively -- lost their automobiles to the officially sanctioned form of theft called "asset forfeiture" because their 24-year-old son Thomas has used them to conduct drug transactions.

Neither Alan nor Stephne has been charged with a crime of any kind. Under the Communist premises of the "War on Drugs," it isn't necessary to be convicted of a crime in order to lose one's property, since the State is empowered to seize anything its agents wish to steal, at any time they wish to do so, as long as some "drug nexus" can be established to justify the theft.

The theory and practice of Communism are based on the denial of private property, and the administration of "justice" under Communism is collectivist in nature. It is not necessary to prove the guilt or innocence of an individual accused of a crime against socialism, explained Lenin shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917; it is sufficient to demonstrate that the accused belongs to a collective regarded as an enemy of the State.

Once this is understood, it becomes clear that Communism came to America -- in principle, if only intermittently in practice -- in 1970 with the passage of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. That measure nullified the right of private property by permitting law enforcement to steal (or "forfeit") money and physical assets believed to be involved in, or the proceeds of, narcotics trafficking.

The very term "forfeiture" carries a connotation that property rights are contingent and can be revoked when those acting on behalf of the State choose to do so. Under the Anglo-Saxon tradition of liberty under law, property can be taken only following due process of law; this would require a criminal proceeding in which the accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty of a specific offense and convicted by a jury of their peers. None of this is true where "asset forfeiture" is concerned.

Under the first Bush administration, which was led by a former CIA Director (every individual holding that post is also the Kingpin-in-Chief ex officio of the global narcotics trade), a model anti-drug statute was created in Washington, D.C. and sent out to various state legislatures. The seizure and forfeiture provision in Washington State's version of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act is typical of laws governing the practice throughout the country, and the same is true of the forfeiture mechanism created by that statute. The experience endured by Alan and Stephne Roos could happen to anyone living in the USSA.

Thomas Roos, who had already served six months in jail on drug-related charges, was pulled over repeatedly in 2005 by police who found evidence of illegal drug transactions. In August of that year the local counter-narcotics soviet, called the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force (SRDTF), "forfeited" the family's late-model Nissan. Following another arrest, the SRDTF stole the second vehicle, a refurbished 1970 Chevy Chevelle "muscle car."

Alan and Stephne insist that they didn't know that their son was using the cars to conduct drug transactions, and that they were furious with him for doing so. They explained as much to the "designated hearing officer" for the County Sheriff's Department, who ruled that a "preponderance of evidence" existed that the cars had been used for drug trafficking.


Once that decision was made -- not by a jury, or a judge, but by an official of a Sheriff's Department that stood to profit from the seizure -- Alan and Stephne were informed that they had the burden to prove that they weren't aware of Thomas' activities in order to receive the "benefit" of the "innocent owner exception."

In other words:

Once the police stole Alan and Stephne's cars, what had been a right was transmuted into a contingent, government-granted "benefit." The Washington State statute specifies that "no property right exists" in assets that are stolen by the government in this fashion. And in order to qualify for the exception, Alan and Stephne, like all others in such a predicament, were required to prove their innocence -- not regarding a criminal act, mind you, but regarding what the state Court of Appeals called their "mental state."

Not surprisingly, given that (once again) the hearing officer worked for the department that had already stolen the cars, and had every reason to justify that theft, ruled against Alan and Stephne, insisting (in the words of the state Court of Appeals) "substantial evidence supported a finding that Alan and Stephne knew or should have known that Thomas was using the vehicles to acquire possession of drugs."

In upholding the theft of Alan and Stephne's property, the Court of Appeals pontificated that the "innocent owner exception" in an asset forfeiture applies only when "the claimant is able to demonstrate that the illegal activity for which the vehicles was used was undertaken without the claimant's knowledge or consent."

Add the "War on Terror" to that roster for the totalitarian trifecta.


If Alan and Stephne knew about, or consented to, Thomas' use of their cars to deal drugs, why weren't they charged as either co-conspirators or accessories, before their property was seized by the State?

But comrade, that's how the justice system works in bourgeois countries still groaning beneath retrograde, delusional concepts such as the sanctity of private property and the rights of the accused. The belief in Due Process of Law was the opiate of the masses, and eliminating that opiate was the central -- albeit unspoken -- objective in the Grand And Glorious War On Drugs.

Be sure to visit The Right Source and the Liberty Minute archive.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The Highway to Serfdom


















A state-organized mob led by a Chekist (secret policeman) calls for the extermination of "kulak" farmers in Soviet Ukraine during the early 1930s.

















"[T]he theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
-- Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Anastasio Prieto, a truck driver from El Paso, Texas, doesn't trust banks and prefers to carry his savings with him in cash. While this is a dangerous way to manage one's money, a cursory glance at recent headlines tends to validate Prieto's concerns about the stability of the fractional-reserve banking system.


During a stop at a weigh station in New Mexico on August 8, Prieto made a critical mistake: He cooperated with the police, assuming that as a law-abiding individual he had nothing to fear from them.


Never make that assumption.

A New Mexico state trooper asked Prieto for permission to search his truck for contraband, such as needles or cash in excess of $10,000. Displaying an ingenuousness that breaks my heart, the truck driver consented, informing the officer that he was carrying nothing illegal -- but admitting that he had $23,700 on board.

Never consent to a police search, for any reason.

Never admit to a police officer that you are carrying large amounts of cash.

Always
assume that a police officer would make the same use of that information that would be made by any other armed and potentially violent individual: He would find some way to steal your money.

And that is exactly what the officer did to Prieto, with the help of comrades from the federal Staatspolizei -- agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Border Patrol. Over his objections, Prieto was detained for several hours, photographed, and fingerprinted, while his truck was searched by agents with drug-sniffing dogs.

As Prieto had explained, his truck was devoid of contraband. So the police apologized profusely, returned his money, bought him a cold drink and sent him away with a friendly smile and a wave.

Oh, stop it! You're killing me! What country do you think we live in, anyway?

The police "forfeited" -- that is, stole -- Prieto's savings. The DEA agents who presided over the theft "told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he'd have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales," reported the Houston Chronicle.

You see, under existing laws and recent legal decisions, "possession of a large sum of money" by a motorist "is `strong evidence' of a connection to drug activity."

So ruled the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in a decision handed down almost exactly a year before Prieto was robbed at gunpoint in New Mexico. The case was entitled "United States of America v. $124,700 in US Currency" (.pdf).

You see, it's not necessary to find the owner of the money guilty of anything; the money itself can be convicted of involvement in criminal activity and "punished" by being permanently taken into government custody.

Prieto has been told it will take a year for him to recover his stolen money, should the regime condescend to give any portion of it back. Meanwhile, he is apparently left penniless, with no funds to maintain the truck that is the source of his livelihood. The collectivist State ruling us treated Prieto in much the same way the Soviet state treated Ukrainian kulaks -- at least those kulaks who were permitted to live, anyway.

If our money can be seized from us simply because some agent of the State wants to, in what sense is it our property?

Summary seizure and "forefeiture" of property -- including cash -- by police is one of the larger gifts bestowed on our society by the murderous fraud called the "war on drugs." Ten years ago, Congress enacted a "reform" measure intended to rein in the practice, but as we see it is pointless to attempt to reform a practice that should be abolished outright.

Invariably, "forfeited" cash and goods are depicted as the ill-gotten gains of narcotics trafficking; it's never explained, however, how those supposedly dirty proceeds are magically cleansed once they are handed over to the police. The bounties seized by police are often used to buy the latest in tyranny tech, such pimped-out SWAT vehicles and other goodies for the jackbooted pests who are deployed to bring in the loot; this makes a nicely self-sustaining system of official corruption.

As the clip below documents, it's just nice to have some extra money to blow on kewl gadgets with little practical value:





Thanks to asset forfeiture, the Bridgeport, Connecticut police can simply steal the money to buy such cool toys without having to request it from officials who are expected to represent the interests of the local taxpayers.

In fact, asset forfeiture has made it possible for corrupt police departments (or do I repeat myself) to cut out courts and juries and get straight to the business of plunder.

To expedite the process, Bradenton, Florida's Police Department devised a "Contraband Forfeiture Agreement" (.pdf) for use by officers carrying out drug enforcement raids. Citizens who sign such agreements surrender their property -- such as cash or cars -- "to the DEPARTMENT free and clear of all claims or liens"; they also waive their due process rights. In exchange, the police agree not to prosecute.

Janie Brooks, a local resident in her mid-50s, was taken into custody by police who claimed to find drugs in her car. The automobile and $1,200 in cash were confiscated, and Brooks was intimidated into signing the agreement.

"He [the officer] kept rushing me, like, `Go ahead, things will be better if you did," recalled Brooks. "It was like, there's gonna be some big time stuff that happens to me if I don't sign it."

Asked for his expert opinion of the practice, law professor Joseph Little of the University of Florida overcame a tragic handicap -- decades of legal training -- to offer a sensible assessment: "It sounds like robbery to me."

Indeed it does -- robbery coupled with extortion and more than a hint of terrorism. And it was immensely profitable: The county's asset forfeiture fund at one point topped $150,000.

Using almost exactly the same methods -- traffic stops, contrived searches, and armed extortion in lieu of prosecution -- the Dallas County, Iowa Sheriff's Department sucked up $1.7 billion from motorists traveling along I-80 between 2002 and 2006. This profitable racket had to gear down just a bit after Sheriff Brian Gilbert was convicted of stealing $120,000 in stolen money.

But Gilbert's lenient sentence -- a $1,000 fine, a year's probation, and a brief term of "community service," rather than a prison term -- suggests that his comrades have a license to steal from the general public, as long as they don't skim from the State's take.

The same priorities governed the Soviet Union, of course: The police were free to expropriate the bourgeoise at whim, but stealing from the State was a capital offense.


Please be sure to visit The Right Source and the Liberty Minute archive.