Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Tennessee’

American Civil Forfeiture Laws Require Drastic Reforms

November 1st, 2012 1 comment

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.



POLICING FOR PROFIT: Feds try to take innocent elderly couple’s Mom-and-Pop motel

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.
Read more…

Petition to Support Equal Parenting Bill in Tennessee

April 1st, 2010 5 comments

Amanda Hutchings of South Carolina has started a petition In Support of the Tennessee House Bill 2916 to support the equal parenting time bill before the Tennessee House.

Please sign the petition if you support the idea that kids deserve significant time with both of their parents except in cases in which a parent is declared unfit by clear and convincing evidence.

We’ve previously discussed the bill in our article Tennessee House Considering Equal Parenting Bill. You can find the text of the bill there. It is very simple and anybody who truly cares about children should be able to see this is a bill that should pass.

Depriving a child of time with a parent should never be done without solid reason or agreement by the parents. This bill enshrines that ideal into law by raising the standard of evidence to that used in most civil courts in the US rather than the much weaker “preponderance of evidence” (sometimes called the 51% standard) used in many family law courts.

Even if you do not live in Tennessee, your support on this petition may help show those in other states that the time for equal parenting has come.

Tennessee House Considering Equal Parenting Bill

March 30th, 2010 10 comments

Tennessee Representative Mike Bell has submitted House Bill 2916 to change the law to provide for 50/50 equal parenting unless there is clear and convincing evidence that one or both parents are unfit to care for the children.
Read more…

Crimes Against Children: “Zero Tolerance” and “Kids for Cash”

October 29th, 2009 No comments

Our nation’s children are no longer safe in their homes, schools, or anywhere they go. Far too often, the threat is not from traditional miscreants such as school bullies, class-cutters, and neighborhood drug-dealers but rather from the adults entrusted with the care of our children. Intolerant and extremist teachers, school administrators, police officers, district attorneys, and judges are a serious and growing threat to our children. They believe that children who make a minor mistake or dare to express an opinion or personal preference that is not in compliance with government thought control and anti-free-speech policies should be treated like felons. Even having to attend to basic bodily functions like using the bathroom and eating in schools controlled by these extremists can be a threat to the safety of our children.

Our friendly faced jackbooted government goons have made up euphemisms for their agendas. Given their limited intelligence, their choice phrases must be succinct.

“Zero tolerance” is one catch-phrase invented by “safety minded” school employees. No tolerance for dissent, suppression of individuality, banning freedom of speech, enforcement of dogmatic thinking, and criminalization of opinions that are counter to the teachers unions is what it objectively means. Coming from a more sensible age in which I could chose the color of my clothes and a pocket knife was not a weapon of mass destruction but rather a basic tool that many kids carried to school, it seems to me that kids today should be raising civil disobedience groups and learning guerrilla warfare tactics after they have been exposed to this extremism. But oddly it seems to be gradually zapping many of them into mind-numbed drones. Or maybe they are too busy playing Grand Theft Auto and Halo to know that sometimes criminals and conflicts are real.

“Kids for Cash” is another catch-phrase invented by somebody in the government, quite possibly by thousands of them at about the same time. They realized that when they see smiling little kids, they think of $$$ MONEY $$$ in their pockets, so it was a natural expression of their intent to use other people’s children for their own economic security. Although it’s not clear which government agency invented it first, many of them, from the courts to “CPS” to schools, are living by it. Seldom is anything done to distract the government from viewing our children as money sources and pawns for profit except in the most bizarre and extreme cases that even the goons are embarrassed by it. I suspect when something is done to temporarily divert the greedy goons from monetizing our children, it is only because these extreme examples are getting so far out there that it’s amazing that parents and grandparents who love their young ones are not storming courthouses with automatic weapons to protect their offspring from true evil. You’ll see some of these cases below.

Teacher Will Kick In Your Face If You Use the Potty!

If you’re a kindergartener in Miami, Florida, and go the the bathroom without permission, you might get your face kicked in by your teacher.

(from From Sex to Assault: What’s Up With America’s Teachers? Teachers Busted for Kicking Students, Showing Up Drunk, Having Affairs With Pupils)

For a 5-year-old Miami student who came home from school with a cut lip from being kicked in the face, the bully wasn’t a playground menace — it was, she alleges, her teacher.

The preschooler’s offense? Using the restroom without permission during naptime.

Miami police arrested Head Start teacher Jean Dorvil, 56, on child abuse charges. Miami-Dade Schools Police Sgt. Ivan Silva told ABCNews.com that detectives found during the course of their investigation that Dorvil had allegedly kicked two other students during the school year.

[adrotate group=”10″]

Read more…

NFL Football Star Steve McNair Allegedly Murdered by Girlfriend

July 14th, 2009 No comments

The next time you hear somebody make a male-bashing comment about how women are always the victims of domestic violence at the hands of men, point out the case of 36-year-old Steve McNair. On July 4, 2009, the NFL football star who formerly played for the Houston Oilers, Baltimore Ravens, and Tennessee Titans teams was allegedly murdered while asleep by his 20-year-old girlfriend/lover Sahel “Jenni” Kazemi by four gunshots, two to the head and two to the chest. It appears Kazemi then turned the gun on herself in direct contact to her head.
Read more…