angiEmedia

Under US law knowns as “civil forfeiture,” governments claim they can take property suspected to be involved in a crime without arrest, prosecution, or conviction of the owner of the property. They don’t even have to prove any crime was committed. All they have to do is state the property is suspected to have been used in a crime or to have been acquired as a result of a crime. Nobody has to be convicted for the owner to lose the property to the government. The government can then liquidate it and keep the proceeds unless their victim is wealthy enough to be able to fight them in court at significant expense.

How are the proceeds from government theft (civil forfeiture) used? There are few if any restrictions. The use is typically at the discretion of whomever runs the agency receiving the proceeds of the government-backed theft. The funds can be used to pay a police chief’s salary, or to buy private gym memberships for law enforcement officers, or to throw a Christmas party for the cops involved in the theft.

Motel Customers Can Cost Motel Owners Their Properties

The Caswell family of Lowell, Massachusetts, is about to lose its motel to the Federal government because criminals who rented motel rooms sold drugs or committed crimes on the premises.

The Institute of Justice, which is helping the Caswells fight the government action, points out that only about 0.05% of their 125,000 room rentals over the past two decades resulted in arrests of customers committing crimes. That works out to around 3 or 4 arrests per year.

Despite this, the government plans to take the motel valued at over $1 million. If they succeed, it will be a windfall for them because the motel is free and clear without a mortgage. They then plan to split up the proceeds between the US Federal Government and local law enforcement.

This same abusiveness is often applied by the government against many others, not just owners of motels. A more common example is that you loan your car to a friend who then uses it to do something like transporting yet another person who was carrying drugs or stolen property. Even though your car was used to commit a crime without your knowledge or approval and your friend may not have even known what was happening either, you will likely lose your car to the government without any reimbursement.

Police Dogs Help Cops Steal

The cops don’t even have to file a case against you to do steal your property. They don’t even have to arrest anybody for a crime. All they have to do is claims there is a suspicions of a crime involving your property. All they need to do is to get a police dog to act suspicious around your property and they can then take your property.
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Poster by Art Chantry

I ran across the article 6 Completely Legal Ways The Cops Can Screw You while writing another article today and found it quite alarming. It makes it clear that the United States we live in today is by the government, for the government, and against the citizens and US Constitution.

A quick summary:

1. The police can take your things, sell them, and keep the proceeds. All they have to do is state they suspect your property was used while a crime was committed, even if they don’t think you committed the crime. They don’t have to charge or convict anybody of a crime to do this, just state a suspicion.
2. Police in Ohio can give you a ticket for speeding and get a conviction against you with no objective speed measurements, only an “expert observation” that you were speeding.
3. Police in Texas can arrest you for drinking even if you are of legal age in a legally operated bar. This law has reportedly been used to harass gays and Hispanics by rounding them up in bars and arresting them.
4. Police in Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, and several other states can arrest you for filming or video recording them and confiscate the films and recordings, even if they are breaking the law and abusing somebody. Nobody seems to have considered how this may make legal surveillance cameras suddenly illegal if the police show up.
5. In Washington, D.C., police can arrest women who carry more than two condoms. They can legally assume any woman carrying more than two is a prostitute.
6. In Ohio, police can obtain your identifying information including name, address, and social security number without your permission and then use it just like an identity thief. One woman found this out after the cops used her name, address, and social security number to pay and plant an undercover stripper in her community while other cops watched the performances live and via the Internet. They are under no obligation to clean up the mess they made of your identity.

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Three candidates are running to fill deceased Massachusetts politician Ted Kennedy’s position in the U.S. Senate. They are Scott Brown, Martha Coakley, and Joe Kennedy. Massachusetts citizens will be voting in this important race on January 19, 2010. We urge them to vote for Scott Brown to support the rights of children and parents to be involved in each others’ lives.

Of the three candidates, Scott Brown is the only one with a record of supporting shared parenting. He’s presently a state senator in Massachusetts who has co-sponsored shared parenting legislation.

Martha Coakley’s track record in office makes it clear she supports prosecutorial and judicial abuses against parents, particularly men and fathers. She’s an attorney general and her track record in similar offices shows she is strongly against civil rights and against correcting the unjust outcomes of wrongful prosecutions.

Joe Kennedy’s positions on such matters are unclear, perhaps in part because he’s not presently in office. But he is running as a Libertarian candidate, an advocate for smaller government, and is no relation to the Kennedy clan or Ted Kennedy’s leftist politics.
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Unless you’re a mean-spirited religious bigot, you’ll be shocked by this story of yet another insane “zero tolerance” action against a child. An 8 year old boy in Massachusetts was recently suspended from school because he drew a picture of a Jesus-like figure on a cross and placing his name on the drawing.

The boy’s father, Chester Johnson, is proclaiming that the school is religiously discriminating against his son and may also be racist. He says the school pulled his son out of lunch line to question him, then sent him home. He claims his son has been traumatized by the religious discrimination against him. He states the boy made the drawing in part because the family had just visited a Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and there were crucifixion status there as is common in many Christian churches. The images were fresh in his mind and his drawing reflects that.

School “Zero Tolerance” Overreaction

Others point to the school simply overreacting and creating problems out of nothing. The boy had been receiving special needs reading and speech education, but has never had any problems with violence. Chester Johnson claims the school would not led his son return unless his parents paid for a psychological evaluation.
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The Associated Press has recently published news of an investigation it conducted into people being framed for child pornography by the use of computer viruses and other malware. The results make it clear that innocent people are having their lives ruined by government witch hunts for child pornography after unknowingly becoming victims of computer viruses.

Michael Fiola: Victimized by Virus, then by Massachusetts Government

Michael Fiola’s computer was infected by a virus that cost him his job, his life savings, and nearly his freedom. His life was threatened repeatedly. Even his car tires were slashed by somebody who heard the accusations against him. All this happened because the virus downloaded child porn to his computer and the government persecuted him for years before finally admitting that they couldn’t prove their case.
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