Party of Big Government Overrides States Rights to Confiscate Private Property

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Yesterday, the esteemed Attorney General started to put into action his plan to make asset forfeiture more common in the US, by allowing cops to see property even in states that have or may ban it in the future.

Nightmare stories of asset forfeiture are common, and the evidence that they prevent crime is anything but. However, both Sessions and Trump have been proponents of the program and have expressed the desire to ramp it up.

Do you agree with the program and the fact that more private property is confiscated through it than property lost to all burglaries and robberies combined? Are you sick and tired of nanny state Republicans trampling on private citizen's property rights? Discuss away!

 

[Berzerker]

Trump also supports eminent domain to benefit business

the courts allow asset forfeiture and they allow no-knock raids, the 4th Amendment has little meaning to these people who told God they'd enforce it

 

[civver_764]

The Trump administration is completely wrong about drug policy. I'm very disappointed with them.

 

[Lexicus]

The Trump administration is completely wrong about drug policy. I'm very disappointed with them.

Apparently this disappointment is outweighed by your desire to see other people suffer from emotional distress though

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Apparently this disappointment is outweighed by your desire to see other people suffer from emotional distress though

C'mon man. Everyone knows that the most important aspect in analyzing public policy is whether it will 'make liberals' heads explode.' The average conservative would murder his family and burn down his house if you convinced them that it would upset the liberals enough.

 

[Tristan_C]

Do you agree with the program and the fact that more private property is confiscated through it than property lost to all burglaries and robberies combined? Are you sick and tired of nanny state Republicans trampling on private citizen's property rights? Discuss away!

I don't really know where Trump and Sessions come into the picture, except insofar as such characters are never far from the benighted thoughts of people reading The New Yorker. I do know that civil forfeiture was one of the tricks Sessions used to drive the KKK out of Alabama during the eighties. This bit of history was inconvenient to the narrative that Sessions is a racist so the media ignored it during his confirmation hearing. While neither of them can be relied on to correct drug policies, they could be relied on to fight Mexican drug cartels by, say, building a certain hypothetical thing that will make it difficult to cross illegally from Mexico.

Based on certain details in the NY article buried below the anecdotes, civil forfeiture has too many benefits to be done away with. The article reveals outrageous violations of the practice, so when it concedes that agents "have also used forfeiture to go after ruthless migrant smugglers, organized-crime tycoons, and endangered-species poachers, stripping them of their illicit gains" to the tune of 4 billion a year, the situation is far more complicated than the choice anecdotes. The town the author focused on was a thoroughfare for Mexican cartel traffic. While I think that drugs should be legalized and the prison industry rolled back, in the mean time the dealers and international traffickers seem to be bankrolling some of the enforcement apparatus.

 

[Berzerker]

Sessions drove the KKK out of Alabama? Was that after he found out they smoke pot?

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The Trump administration is completely wrong about drug policy. I'm very disappointed with them.

How are you disappointed ?

HE RAN AS A REPUBLICA N !!!!!!!!!!!!


I apologize. All-caps and multiple exclamation marks are undignified and I should be better than this ... but ... argh ... just ... Aaargh !!!!

 

[Farm Boy]

If you want to "win" the issue, you have to win over the Republicans. That's happening, albeit slowly, and piecemeal, through the furnace of the states. Take heart, rather than find scorn, when a Republican agrees with you on weed. It's a sign of the times, and believe it or not, it's a cause for hope. If you try to force them to find being a Republican and being anti-cannabis-prohibition a mutually exclusive proposition, you will likely do harm to your issue, rather than good, should they make the mistake of believing you.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Yeah...what triggered agitated me was the word disappointed.
It's always good when an American Rightwinger goes against the Republican party line (because the party is wrong about EVERYTHING!!!), but disappointment means you expected something better/different.
I know, I'm an outside observer of American politics, but I haven't seen any indication that the Reps are moving towards a sane drug policy. If you vote Republican you vote for Jailing Pot Smokers*.
Please, go against the party line. But you should know that you're going against the party line because you should know what the party line is. Especially in a country that has only two relevant parties.


*But hey, at least "Liberals" are against Jailing Pot Smokers and will cry about this pointless cruelty, so it's a win-win.
#LiberalTears

 

[Perfection]

I can expect something to go badly and still be disappointed when it does.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I can expect something to go badly and still be disappointed when it does.

OK, I get that. That's pretty much my default position on Post-Schröder German Social Democrats.
It's still a mystery to me how anyone could expect a Republican administration to tacitly approve of marijuana consumption. Especially when the first party guy to support Trump said that he liked the KKK until he found out that they smoke pot.

 

[Perfection]

OK, I get that. That's pretty much my default position on Post-Schröder German Social Democrats.
It's still a mystery to me how anyone could expect a Republican administration to tacitly approve of marijuana consumption. Especially when the first party guy to support Trump said that he liked the KKK until he found out that they smoke pot.

Presumably he doesn't expect them to do that, and he supports Trump Adminstration for other reasons.

 

[Berzerker]

It's still a mystery to me how anyone could expect a Republican administration to tacitly approve of marijuana consumption. Especially when the first party guy to support Trump said that he liked the KKK until he found out that they smoke pot.

The Democrats and Republicans have taken billions in bribes from drug dealers, pot doesn't need drug dealers

 

[GoodSarmatian]

The Democrats and Republicans have taken billions in bribes from drug dealers, pot doesn't need drug dealers

I know that they've both taken bribes. Our politicians are taking bribes.
Still, to my understanding there are some politically relevant Democrats and no Republicans in favor of "pottery".
Maybe I'm mistaken. How many relevant (by which I mean governors or senators) Republicans want to legalize pot ?

 

[Berzerker]

Gary Johnson (R-NM) was the only governor I know, he ended up running as the libertarian prez candidate. The Dems talk, but when they got control they shut up... Both parties play to the base and head for the less provocative center for elections. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has supposedly introduced a bill in the senate to end federal prohibition. I doubt it'll even get a vote for lack of support.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Snyder actually helped formulate regulations to keep the medical marijuana business in Michigan running after dispensaries were made illegal in the Supreme court in 2013. That kind of seems pro- medical weed anyway. I don't know many federal GoPers in favor of it. Even the almost Libertarian Rand Paul has said it shouldn't be made legal.

The thing that bugs me the most about this is it's the State's Rights party that's attempting to supersede state laws. Terribly hypocritical.

 

[Tristan_C]

There was ample opportunity for the Democrats to deal with this years ago. The 111th congress (2008-2010) was an augmented D majority, and they controlled the White House. Why wasn't weed legalized? Why weren't other drugs decriminalized? Procedure could have been employed to break a senate fillibuster (as per Obamacare), and of course there would have been no veto.

Why does this discussion focus on the Republicans? A lot of conservatives hate drugs and the Republicans are reputedly the "law and order" party that is more easily pliant to the needs of the prison industry. But they had no control of government for two years. Why wasn't anything done then? Why does it "bug you most" that the party less friendly to drugs is against legalizing them, when the party supposedly gung-ho about legalization didn't even try?

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

At that time states were just starting to legalize. At the time many viewed CO's legalization to be an experiment that may lead to federal legalization if it turned out to be successful. In 2008-2010 the legalize sentiments just weren't as strong. Now we have examples of legalization and a lot of the imagined problems just haven't manifested. There's even the reduced opioid death rates in states that have legalized as evidence of positive effects that just weren't present in 2010.

Why does it focus on Republicans? Kind of a silly question. They're the ones in power and they're the ones attempting to ramp up the drug war. Sessions is actually looking into the legality of infringing on state legalization legislation while a Democrat pharma shill like Cory Booker is sponsoring legalization legislation despite his despicable loyalties. Federally this is partisan even if it isn't partisan on the state and local level.

 

[Ajidica]

There was ample opportunity for the Democrats to deal with this years ago. The 111th congress (2008-2010) was an augmented D majority, and they controlled the White House. Why wasn't weed legalized? Why weren't other drugs decriminalized? Procedure could have been employed to break a senate fillibuster (as per Obamacare), and of course there would have been no veto.

I would argue that they had bigger fish to fry (you know, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, keeping the international financial system from going all Hindenburg on us, for examples).
Plus, as Vic pointed about above, the legalization movement wasn't very strong in 2008-2010 and Obama was issuing regulatory guidance and executive orders to focus law enforcement efforts away from Bob the Stoner to areas that actually matter.