{"id":16063,"date":"2018-06-03T11:25:46","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T16:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=16063"},"modified":"2018-06-03T11:25:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-03T16:25:46","slug":"perverse-incentives-ctd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/06\/03\/perverse-incentives-ctd\/","title":{"rendered":"Perverse Incentives, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Returning to this long dormant thread<\/a> on civil asset forfeiture, or as I described it,<\/p>\n

… forfeiture is nothing more than judging a suspect to be guilty without trial …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

WaPo<\/strong><\/em> has a disheartening statistic<\/a> for me:<\/p>\n

\n

In 2017, federal authorities seized\u00a0more than $2 billion in assets from people, a net loss similar in size to\u00a0annual losses from residential burglaries<\/a>\u00a0in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Their accompanying chart is even more depressing – $2 billion is a local minima<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s not a lot more to add on this thread, outside of the ridiculous numbers involved. The numbers either indicate we’re in the midst of a massive crime wave, despite FBI statistics to the contrary, or those elements of government with access to civil asset forfeiture are abusing it.<\/p>\n

One more note from the article, which covers an incident in which a man by the name of Kazazi lost $58,000 to U. S. Customs:<\/p>\n

\n

The first thing the Kazazis noticed was that the dollar amount listed was $770 less than the amount that\u00a0Kazazi said he took with him. The\u00a0family said that the cash was all in $100 bills, making it impossible for it to add up to $57,330.<\/p>\n

[Wesley Hottot, the Kazazi family’s attorney,] said that these types of \u201cerrors\u201d are common in forfeiture cases and that it is \u201calways in the same direction\u201d\u00a0\u2014 government receipts coming up a few hundred or a few thousand dollars short of what defendants say they had.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Does the few criminals this helps to convict outweigh the government corruption it encourages? Better yet, these additions to the federal and state treasuries, small as they may seem, are a means to reduce taxes<\/em>. In an era in which taxation is such a keyword, is it really wise to use such a morally dubious and unprincipled approach to the problem of raising funds for public purposes?<\/p>\n

Shouldn’t we simply raise the proper taxes and be honest about paying for that which benefits us?<\/p>\n

I do believe I’ll be writing my Senators and Representative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Returning to this long dormant thread on civil asset forfeiture, or as I described it, … forfeiture is nothing more than judging a suspect to be guilty without trial … WaPo has a disheartening statistic for me: In 2017, federal authorities seized\u00a0more than $2 billion in assets from people, a \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16065,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16063\/revisions\/16065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}