A Question

by Bryan

5 comments

1 Kryten42 { 10.18.14 at 11:15 pm }

Well, one of the main reasons the Police can afford nice expensive toys is the insane Civil Forfeiture laws:

The New Yorker: Taken

“We all know the way things are right now—budgets are tight,” Steve Westbrook, the executive director of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas, says. “It’s definitely a valuable asset to law enforcement, for purchasing equipment and getting things you normally wouldn’t be able to get to fight crime.” Many officers contend that their departments would collapse if the practice were too heavily regulated, and that a valuable public-safety measure would be lost.

…

In West Philadelphia last August, an elderly couple named Mary and Leon Adams were finishing breakfast when several vans filled with heavily armed police pulled up to their red brick home. An officer announced, “We’ll give you ten minutes to get your things and vacate the property.” The men surrounding their home had been authorized to enter, seize, and seal the premises, without any prior notice.

“I was almost numb,” Mary Adams, a sixty-eight-year-old grandmother with warm brown eyes and wavy russet hair, recalled. When I visited her this spring, she sat beside her seventy-year-old husband, who was being treated for pancreatic cancer, and was slumped with exhaustion. A little earlier, he had struggled to put on his embroidered blue-and-yellow guayabera shirt; his wife, looking fit for church in a green jacket, tank top, and slacks, watched him attentively as he shuffled over on a carved-wood cane to greet me. Leon explained his attachment to their home in numerical terms. “1966,” he said. “It’s been our home since 1966.”

As well as destroying innocent Americans lives, the Cops have scammed Canadian visitors to the tune of about $2.5 billion and many other tourists have been hit also, especially Asians.

Jon Oliver did a great piece about it (as usual):
John Oliver: Civil Forfeiture Laws Make Cops The ‘Anti-Spiderman’ (VIDEO)

Seems that the worst criminals you have in the USA are the Pigs, who apparently outnumber Police!

I should make up some tourist brochures, like:
“Satan welcomes you to the USA.
It’s my new residence!”

2 Bryan { 10.19.14 at 12:27 am }

The Civil Forfeiture Law was part of the War on Drugs™ and it has been abused ever since with some towns using it “to keep taxes low”. All of the armaments are supposedly ‘surplus’ of the US military sold to law enforcement for bargain basement prices, and are often purchased with Department of Homeland Security grants. I would note that the Federal government stopped funding the program to help law enforcement officers go to college to improve their professional skills. This was apparently a conscious move to keep cops ignorant but heavily armed.

This country panics over a disease that is deadly, but not easy to get with a little caution and common sense. It’s not like it’s airborne, like SARS, MERS, or the flu. And even though they panic, no one wants to spend the money to fix the health care system.

3 Steve Bates { 10.22.14 at 9:51 pm }

The US was almost the country that invented the concept of public health… not quite, but close… but that was before various associations of deeply, premeditatedly ignorant people, some for religious reasons, some for political, some for racist motives, gained enough political power to control the flow of information… and misinformation… to the population at large. Remember, ignorance is strength…

4 Bryan { 10.22.14 at 10:51 pm }

Outside the body the Ebola virus is relatively easy to kill. Longer gloves and a bucket of Clorox would go a long way to eliminating problems. The Spanish nurse was apparently cured with blood serum from an Ebola survivor.

People have been intentionally terrified. When do we get to call Faux terrorists?

5 hipparchia { 10.25.14 at 7:24 pm }

“deeply, premeditatedly ignorant people”

I love it; I’m going to start using this phrase every chance I get…