Tag: Law

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Hucksters learn faster than any other people how to manipulate new technology to finagle people out of their money. The volume of junk mail, email, and texts I receive as opposed to actual communication from people I know and welcome is amazing. Almost every email I receive is junk — very rarely do I get a legitimate piece of email. Phone and texts are a bit better. I would say about half of what I receive there is legitimate. This is still a lot of junk.

What irritates me about this junk is that I thought laws were passed several years back to help the average citizen stop unwanted communication in what ever form — be it phone, text, letterbox or email. Report the offenders and these nuisances would stop.

But it has not stopped and the junk communications just keep coming. I realize it is complicated. A lot of the problems is the huckster operate outside the national borders so American laws are ineffective. Basically there is nothing we can do. The laws are pointless so the junk will continue to flow. So what if they are trying to sell viagra to lesbians. All they have to do is ignore the message, nobody is hurt.

I disagree. The best case scenario here is that I have to wade through hundreds of unnecessary emails and texts in order to find the ones that I actually need. This takes time. Every day precious minutes are stolen from me as I try to find what really matters to me amongst all this junk. This may be a small problem, but it is a problem. I don’t like it one bit and apparently there is nothing I can do about it because we couldn’t possibly stop hucksters from pursuing their businesses.

Never mind that these businesses are quite often engaged in ways to steal money from naive people. See the huckster has rights. It is the individual’s responsibility to stop the huckster.

It is so ingrained in our belief system of right and wrong that when we hear stories about someone getting bilked out of money, the gut reaction is why were the victims so stupid to fall for the huckster. The victim needs to smarten up because there is nothing wrong with parting a fool from his money. Unfortunately, the fool is in a dog eat dog world and apparently that is the way we like it.

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This might just be a wild hair up my ass but I keep thinking there is a better way to deal with criminals we can’t actually catch or prosecute — particularly those involved in the illegal drug trade. Pablo Escobar famously had more money than he could ever spend — loosing hundreds of millions of dollars to decay because he hid his money so poorly. And, despite the worms eating the dollars, he still had billions left to spend.

To start out with, let me acknowledge that Pablo Escobar was an asshole. He murdered people. There is no doubt about it. And the general resume for someone involved in the illegal drug trade would be someone similar in ilk to Escobar. They deserve stiff prison sentences more than their ill gotten money. The people hurt by these criminal deserve justice.

The problem is catching them and/or prosecuting them isn’t always successful. The criminal eludes justice and gets to keep his money which largely goes unspent and whatever money is spendable goes to mostly dubious ends. The victim doesn’t get any justice or restitution for what happened to them without prosecution.

The government wants somewhere in the neighborhood of 46 billion dollars to deal with illegal drugs. Some of this goes to drug treatment but at least 11 billion goes directly into enforcement. The question, then, is do we get a good return on this investment. Illegal drugs, for as long as I can remember, seem to be doing just fine. Yes, there is something to be said for there being no price on justice. The criminal justice system is taking the hard way out here — there has to be punishment for the criminal or there is no justice. Perhaps, but getting a financial settlement is better than nothing at all.

This means if a person wants a return to society with the ability to spend some of their cash legally, the drug dealer will surrender all of their hidden cash, pay a very stiff fine from those funds, pay any taxes due based on this money and get out of drug dealing. Since a lot of these dealers are sitting on pile of cash and are pretty tired with running from the law, they might jump at a chance to get out of the game.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But, then, much of the justice system is imperfect. What we are aiming for is a reduction in crime. If this takes some people out of drug dealing, it is better than getting nobody out of drug dealing.

Won’t this only encourage people to commit crimes if they aren’t punished for their crimes? Maybe but then, it is illegal now and a lot of people seem to be willing to take the risk. I think the government would have some discretion in how they move forward. Focus would be on the big dealers with large amounts of hidden cash. Also removing the bigger names from the drug trade might have some impact on the food chain for trafficking in drugs.

The problem here is that the government since the 1960’s has been fighting a losing war with illegal drugs — mostly because a significant portion of the citizenry want to use them which makes the illegal trade of drugs profitable. This doesn’t look like it is going to change any time soon. I am betting that some of these people are tired of running and would like a way out. Right now, there is no realistic exit — it is death or jail. Letting them get out with something might make them think differently.

And their is precedent for this — the Sackler family. The Sacklers unleashed Oxycontin onto the American Public with devastating effect. The government, in order to get something out of this criminal family, made deals that involved financial penalties. It was far from a perfect deal, particularly for those families who lost loved ones to addiction. On the other hand, the Sacklers were able to hide a lot of their money and delay the legal process that they might never have gotten anything if they waited for justice. Again, the settlement wasn’t perfect, but it was something and something is better than nothing.

Maybe we forego punishment over an imperfect pay off.

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Conservatives recent field day complaining about the Somalian daycare center corruption is difficult to take seriously when this is accompanied by silence about the obvious corruptive practices of Donald Trump — things like the Qatari prince giving him a jet, or Trump pardoning of social security frauds and drug traffickers, or Trump awarding defense contracts to companies associated with his son.

But, no, the corruption outrage is limited to Somali immigrants or, rather, to any group seen to have connections to the Democratic party. Any fraud that may be associated with Trump or any of his billionaire friends are to grift without consequence. The stench of hypocrisy is just far too overwhelming. What really matters is who is committing the fraud but I don’t believe for one minute that you truly care about ending corruption.

In order for me to believe that they care I would think an investigation into Trump’s dodgy pardons would be a nice start. Oh, and if your defense is but Biden did it too. It’s a child’s defense after getting her hand caught in the cookie jar based in the notion that everybody is doing it, why are you getting bent out of shape because you caught me. That argument holds little, if any, moral principle.

So, by all means, let’s investigate the Somalian day care centers for fraud but you can get off your fucking high horse because nobody believes your show of faux moral indignation.

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I have to hand it to Donald Trump. He picks his targets wisely. Trans people are an infinitesimally small minority that most people don’t understand and don’t have any contact with. They are mostly an unknown, not likely to get people out into the streets. Immigrants can’t vote and are being blamed for many of the social ills that afflict the country. Their status is vulnerable because many are here illegally. Now, he has declared foreign drug smugglers as terrorists which gives the government the ability to blow them out of the water without trial. Brilliant. Trump gets to pick on two hated groups for the price of one — they are foreigners so they can’t vote and they are engaging in an illegal act so they aren’t very popular. Bingo.

Defending them is tantamount to saying I want drug smugglers importing their poison into the country. Is that what you want? It’s awkward position to have to defend but, then, defending despicable people is sometimes necessary to defend every citizen’s rights. So here goes nothing.

What is disturbing me is that I thought I understood my legal rights as a citizen. This understanding seems out of steps with what the Trump Administration believes. I thought that terrorists had the same rights as any ordinary thug. It seems like a regular old American drug dealer unloading drugs at a dock in an American city would be treated differently than the drug smugglers killed recently in the Caribbean. They should be given an opportunity to surrender and given an opportunity to explain themselves in court. Right?

As far as I can tell, they weren’t given an opportunity to surrender. Again this seems like a reasonable first step in any police action where lethal force might be used. Why kill the suspect when you can get them to surrender. But these suspects weren’t warned. This doesn’t seem like a difficult step to take. Put a helicopter in the air, have someone with a megaphone explain the situation to the trapped smugglers and give them an opportunity to surrender.

Then there is the killing. My understanding of using lethal force is that it is limited to imminent danger. Someone’s life has to be in danger now, not some person who might use the drugs a week from now. This doesn’t seem to be the case here. The U.S. Navy was in control. They didn’t ask them to surrender and there was no imminent danger to anyone until the Navy attacked the drug smugglers.

Finally, drug smuggling isn’t a capital crime. No where in the United States can anyone be executed for drug smuggling. Again, what would have happened if this had happened on U.S. soil? Also has the status of terrorists been designated to local drug dealers? Can we expect executions in the streets to ensue?

Of all the shitty things that Donald Trump has done, this, I believe, is the worst because he has undermined my notion of what my rights are. I used to be able to say with some confidence what they were. Now you can say well as long as you don’t engage in drug smuggling you are safe. For now, maybe, but this man has intimidated his way into being the final say about what the law is and how the government interprets the law. So far he has used them against unpopular and marginal targets. As I am gay and reside in a more vulnerable part of the population, I question how safe I really am. All I can say is I don’t feel particularly safe anymore.

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The last time I rented an apartment was in the 1992. A lot has changed since then. For starters, back in the good old days, I signed a few pages of a contract, I would say about 3 pages at most, and was handed a key. As long as nothing broke down in the apartment, I never had a reason to talk with the building management and since I paid on the first of the month, there was no reason for them to talk to me. No contact whatsoever. In my eyes, the perfect landlord/ tenant relationship.

Some 30 years later much has changed. I should have gotten the hint when we signed the rental agreement. The sales person pestered us to sign the contract almost immediately after we agreed to rent the unit. All set up automatically through the portal. The portal would send us messages every day reminding us to sign our agreement. We would have gladly driven after to their office and done so, but signing a contract in this day and age isn’t such a simple matter.

The portal is the most important tool of a smart apartment. All communication must first come through the portal. Talking to anyone who works in the building is insufficient. Anyone who has ever put an app on their computer know this could be easy one two process or a descent into Hell. This was more of a descent into Hell — a half hour struggle to create a user ID, complete our personal details and finding the link to the contract. Whew.

Not terribly onerous but a little annoying and, honestly, driving up and signing the contract would have been faster because signing through the portal took a good hour. The biggest problem was that the document was 120 pages long and each page had to initialed. EVERY SINGLE PAGE (capital letters so you know I mean business here)

Bob was cooking dinner when he started the process. He thought he could complete the task while waiting for the water to boil and the pasta to be cooked. Boy was he wrong. He would glance at page, initial, send to computer and then wait for the system to complete the process. Some pages went through like a rocket into space, other pages resembled a glacier moving an inch over the course of a thousand years.

A lot of the 120 pages were in Spanish. These pages were duplicates of the English language pages. Now I realize property management were covering their asses, and this is necessary in these litigious time but I would think it could have been handle with a quick question at the beginning — do you want to see the contract in Spanish or in English — this is particularly helpful in eliminating needless time staring at a frozen computer screen. I get waiting endlessly for a screen to change for the English pages but why do I have to stare at a computer screen endlessly waiting for the Spanish language pages to change. I would call that user unfriendly.

Back to Bob and the pasta boiling. The pasta was ready and Bob wasn’t even close to finishing initialing the contract. He had to stop and concentrate on the meal but then he had this concern that will the app save all the pages he already initialed so he could come back later and complete the task or would he lose everything — always a concern when using apps. He opted not to risk losing all his work and convinced me to finish initialing the contract while he completed making the meal.

At this point, he had initialed 60 pages so neither of us could imagine there being many more pages to initial. Boy were we wrong. There were 60 more pages. I realize I was supposed to be reading the pages and understanding the contact before initialing. But 60 pages of paging through a legal document and looking at a twirling hourglass is boring enough, reading it was way too much to ask. Particularly when I realized I would have to complete the same task later for myself.

I decided to just rub my lucky rabbit’s foot, did a quick sign of the cross, filled my glass of wine and initialed away. I am hoping I haven’t agreed to indentured servitude. So far so good.

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Maybe it is because almost everything that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth is bat shit crazy and to actually single one statement out becomes difficult given the sheer volume of his output that so few Republicans have commented on it. But recommending vigilante justice has disturbed me more than any of the other recent comments. An hour of violence or a day of violence to stop drug store thievery seems like a fairly big breech of democratic norms. It takes the government out of the whole process and puts it squarely into the hands of his own supporters.

I was certain that some Republicans would, at the very least, caution him to use less violent language. Yet there is nothing and I mean nothing so far that resembles even a mild rebuke. Given that Republicans like to point out the Constitution and the original intent of our founders, it seems like a good time to remind Trump that the Constitution enshrines the right to a trial as opposed to grabbing suspected thieves off the street and teaching them a lesson (in other words – beat them up).

Trump has always had a penchant for vigilante justice but this is the first time he has so nakedly expressed his desire to see it enacted. It also makes his denial of violent intent on January 6 less believable. If Trump thinks violence is a suitable response for shoplifting, why wouldn’t he also think it was appropriate for something more important like losing a stolen election? What are the limits of Trump’s extralegal violence? He needs to explain how this tool might be used if he were to win.

It is incredibly disappointing that Republicans have chosen to remain silent about this blatant call for violence. Trump talking shit like this is hardly surprising. It is the game he has been playing since he entered the political scene. What is surprising is the silence of other Republicans. The American legal system is flawed but, then, all systems are flawed. We should work to create a better system instead of ignoring the system we have. If we decide to go outside this system, particularly with violence, who knows where that violence will take us. I suspect to a much worse place than where we are now.

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Missouri executed Marcellus Williams despite there being evidence that he was innocent. The family of the murdered woman asked that his sentence be commuted to life in prison so there was no pressure from them for execution. The county prosecutor found issues with his case and wanted further investigation. Missouri still went ahead because Williams was found guilty by a jury of his peers.

As if a jury sentence can’t be wrong when we know that human institutions are wrong all of the time. When the sentence is death, then the state should be confident that the verdict was correct. Any information that creates doubt regarding the verdict ineeds to be investigated to ensure that execution is merited.

This is why I am not a fan of capital punishment. A wrong verdict that takes away 20 years or so of a person’s life is bad enough but if the state discovers they were wrong, then the person, at least, has his life. Death can not be undone. Missouri seemed more concerned about carrying out the sentence than ensuring that the verdict was correct.

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I think most conservatives will agree that Kathleen Ryan, an Oakland County Michigan judge, needs to be removed from her position. The headlines are pretty cagey about why she got canned. It sounds like she is getting the ax for racism when actually it is for sexual harassment. Her racism is just the icing on the cake and I am sure will come into play if she eludes removal for sexual harassment.

Ryan’s problem, as a judge, is that her impartiality has been impinged beyond repair. She also appears to be a bit of an idiot which I think everyone, Right, Left and Center can agree on. Most smart public figures, in this day and age, know that it is unwise to speak this way unless they absolutely know for certain the other person agrees with them because her opinions are flagrantly racist. She was bound to piss off someone sometime and she did. Ryan was talking with an employee. If nothing else, this shows an amazing lack of good sense.

She could have relayed her opinions through a coded racist cant that lets everyone know what she was thinking without exposing her to racist’s complaints. Ryan gleefully and unapologetically cuts loose with her racism. Worse still, she is unaware that what she is saying is racist which is troubling. How is she supposed to rule in a case where racism is involved, if she has an inability to identify what racism is?

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Amir Locke’s death has brought to light again the troubling practice of no knock warrants. https://www.startribune.com/amir-lockes-killing-prompts-new-scrutiny-of-states-no-knock-warrant-laws/600144103/

I am finding it difficult to understand why such a practice is much of an advantage to the cops. In fact, no knock warrants seems like an inherently dangerous practice for all parties involved. When police barge into a person’s home in a country where a significant portion of the population has a gun, the situation is rife for overreaction. Police are nervous to begin with. A no knock warrant is being used for a reason. The cops anticipate a potential difficult situation and hope to avoid that outcome by not knocking. I am assuming that one of the situations they are worried about is potential violence. But what is the reasonable reaction to having your house broken into in the middle of the night? You are waking up to chaos, people screaming, loud noises. You don’t know who is entering your house. You might feel threatened and pull out your weapon.

From the start this is a dangerous situation, how does not knocking give the cops any advantage. Yes, the person is surprised and will have a more difficult time escaping, but when the surprised person has a loaded gun that doesn’t seem all that helpful to me. At the very least, it gives the person a moment or two to wrap their heads around the fact that they have cops at their front door and to do the right thing. If the cops think the person is dangerous or might flee, then the cops should prepare for these situations. To not give this knock is an invitation for disaster as the Amir Locke incident has proven.