Slippery Slopes in Action

Brazen, Intentional Theft by Government

http://youtu.be/YjmJXZICNDk

'Walking While Black' Warrants Police Interrogation

More Blatant Extortion/Theft By Federal Government

NY Times article.

Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required

ARNOLDS PARK, Iowa — For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.

The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.

“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”

The federal government does.

Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.

“They’re going after people who are really not criminals,” said David Smith, a former federal prosecutor who is now a forfeiture expert and lawyer in Virginia. “They’re middle-class citizens who have never had any trouble with the law.”

On Thursday, in response to questions from The New York Times, the I.R.S. announced that it would curtail the practice, focusing instead on cases where the money is believed to have been acquired illegally or seizure is deemed justified by “exceptional circumstances.”

Richard Weber, the chief of Criminal Investigation at the I.R.S., said in a written statement, “This policy update will ensure that C.I. continues to focus our limited investigative resources on identifying and investigating violations within our jurisdiction that closely align with C.I.’s mission and key priorities.” He added that making deposits under $10,000 to evade reporting requirements, called structuring, is still a crime whether the money is from legal or illegal sources. The new policy will not apply to past seizures.

The I.R.S. is one of several federal agencies that pursue such cases and then refer them to the Justice Department. The Justice Department does not track the total number of cases pursued, the amount of money seized or how many of the cases were related to other crimes, said Peter Carr, a spokesman.

But the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based public interest law firm that is seeking to reform civil forfeiture practices, analyzed structuring data from the I.R.S., which made 639 seizures in 2012, up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case.

The practice has swept up dairy farmers in Maryland, an Army sergeant in Virginia saving for his children’s college education and Ms. Hinders, 67, who has borrowed money, strained her credit cards and taken out a second mortgage to keep her restaurant going.

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Their money was seized under an increasingly controversial area of law known as civil asset forfeiture, which allows law enforcement agents to take property they suspect of being tied to crime even if no criminal charges are filed. Law enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited.

Critics say this incentive has led to the creation of a law enforcement dragnet, with more than 100 multiagency task forces combing through bank reports, looking for accounts to seize. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks and other financial institutions must report cash deposits greater than $10,000. But since many criminals are aware of that requirement, banks also are supposed to report any suspicious transactions, including deposit patterns below $10,000. Last year, banks filed more than 700,000 suspicious activity reports. Owners who are caught up in structuring cases often cannot afford to fight. The median amount seized by the I.R.S. was $34,000, according to the Institute for Justice analysis, while legal costs can easily mount to $20,000 or more.

There is nothing illegal about depositing less than $10,000cash unless it is done specifically to evade the reporting requirement. But often a mere bank statement is enough for investigators to obtain a seizure warrant. In one Long Island case, the police submitted almost a year’s worth of daily deposits by a business, ranging from $5,550 to $9,910. The officer wrote in his warrant affidavit that based on his training and experience, the pattern “is consistent with structuring.” The government seized $447,000 from the business, a cash-intensive candy and cigarette distributor that has been run by one family for 27 years.

There are often legitimate business reasons for keeping deposits below $10,000, said Larry Salzman, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice who is representing Ms. Hinders and the Long Island family pro bono. For example, he said, a grocery store owner in Fraser, Mich., had an insurance policy that covered only up to $10,000 cash. When he neared the limit, he would make a deposit.

Ms. Hinders said that she did not know about the reporting requirement and that for decades, she thought she had been doing everyone a favor.

“My mom had told me if you keep your deposits under $10,000, the bank avoids paperwork,” she said. “I didn’t actually think it had anything to do with the I.R.S.”

In May 2012, the bank branch Ms. Hinders used was acquired by Northwest Banker. JoLynn Van Steenwyk, the fraud and security manager for Northwest, said she could not discuss individual clients, but explained that the bank did not have access to past account histories after it acquired Ms. Hinders’s branch.

Banks are not permitted to advise customers that their deposit habits may be illegal or educate them about structuring unless they ask, in which case they are given a federal pamphlet, Ms. Van Steenwyk said. “We’re not allowed to tell them anything,” she said.

Still lawyers say it is not unusual for depositors to be advised by financial professionals, or even bank tellers, to keep their deposits below the reporting threshold. In the Long Island case, the company, Bi-County Distributors, had three bank accounts closed because of the paperwork burden of its frequent cash deposits, said Jeff Hirsch, the eldest of three brothers who own the company. Their accountant then recommended staying below the limit, so for more than a decade the company had been using its excess cash to pay vendors.

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Continue reading the main story

More than two years ago, the government seized $447,000, and the brothers have been unable to retrieve it. Mr. Salzman, who has taken over legal representation of the brothers, has argued that prosecutors violated a strict timeline laid out in the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, passed in 2000 to curb abuses. The office of the federal attorney for the Eastern District of New York said the law’s timeline did not apply in this case. Still, prosecutors asked the Hirsch’s first lawyer, Joseph Potashnik, to waive the CARFA timeline. The waiver he signed expired almost two years ago.

The federal attorney’s office said that parties often voluntarily negotiated to avoid going to court, and that Mr. Potashnik had been engaged in talks until just a few months ago. But Mr. Potashnik said he had spent that time trying, to no avail, to show that the brothers were innocent. They even paid a forensic accounting firm $25,000 to check the books.

“I don’t think they’re really interested in anything,” Mr. Potashnik said of the prosecutors. “They just want the money.”

Bi-County has survived only because longtime vendors have extended credit — one is owed almost $300,000, Mr. Hirsch said. Twice, the government has made settlement offers that would require the brothers to give up an “excessive” portion of the money, according to a new court filing.

“We’re just hanging on as a family here,” Mr. Hirsch said. “We weren’t going to take a settlement, because I was not guilty.”

Army Sgt. Jeff Cortazzo of Arlington, Va., began saving for his daughters’ college costs during the financial crisis, when many banks were failing. He stored cash first in his basement and then in a safe-deposit box. All of the money came from paychecks, he said, but he worried that when he deposited it in a bank, he would be forced to pay taxes on the money again. So he asked the bank teller what to do.

“She said: ‘Oh, that’s easy. You just have to deposit less than $10,000.’”

The government seized $66,000; settling cost Sergeant Cortazzo $21,000. As a result, the eldest of his three daughters had to delay college by a year.

“Why didn’t the teller tell me that was illegal?” he said. “I would have just plopped the whole thing in the account and been done with it.”

Berlin Government Admits to Protecting Taxis from Uber Competition

Berlin Government Press Release

Here is the release using Google Translate:

Prohibition for the protection of the passenger

13:08:14, press release
, the State Department of Civil and Regulatory Affairs Berlin (LABO) the Uber BV has delivered a prohibition order and ordered the immediate enforcement of this Order. This excess may not use smartphone app or similar deals more or convey through this app offers violate the Passenger Transport Act now.

At the same time for each violation, a penalty payment in the amount of 25,000 Euros was threatened. Is the penalty recovered, then the Administrative Court may also order replacement obsessive against those responsible. Protecting the passenger has priority. The LABO as the competent supervisory and licensing authority can not tolerate that this goes in the context of requiring approval of passenger transport in the care of non-approved drivers in unlicensed vehicles and is subject to a disclaimer of insurance in case of damage. Moreover, available also serves to protect the driver, since the motor vehicle liability insurance does not cover the risk of passenger transport. The basic idea of the protection of the taxi trade also apply. Continued pursuit of the passenger without permission is also an offense, which is punishable by a fine of up to 20,000 euros. The injunction is not yet final. Uber may appeal against the order and apply against the immediate enforcement of judicial Eilrechtsschutz.

Another Murder by Government of a Peaceful Person Framed by a Hypocritical Government

Article

Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit.

Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. “To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,” a friend of Culosi’s told me shortly after his death. “None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia–Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation.” Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation. And that’s when they brought in the SWAT team.

On the night of January 24, 2006, Baucum called Culosi and arranged a time to drop by to collect his winnings. When Culosi, barefoot and clad in a T-shirt and jeans, stepped out of his house to meet the man he thought was a friend, the SWAT team began to move in. Seconds later, Det. Deval Bullock, who had been on duty since 4:00 AM and hadn’t slept in seventeen hours, fired a bullet that pierced Culosi’s heart.

Sal Culosi’s last words were to Baucum, the cop he thought was a friend: “Dude, what are you doing?”

In March 2006, just two months after its ridiculous gambling investigation resulted in the death of an unarmed man, the Fairfax County Police Department issued a press release warning residents not to participate in office betting pools tied to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The title: “Illegal Gambling Not Worth the Risk.” Given the proximity to Culosi’s death, residents could be forgiven for thinking the police department believed wagering on sports was a crime punishable by execution.

Paul Craig Roberts Clearly Points Out Today's Tyrannical U.S. Government

Great interview, especially starting at 24:34

German Judge Forces Family to Remain In Germany Because They Want to Home School

A SWAT team raided their home and kidnapped all of their children who consistently score highly in German state academic an social test.
Read shocking article here.

There are politicians that want to do this in the U.S.

This is why Government Sucks - No Knock Raid Terrorizes Woman

Obama the Child Murderer

Article
"The U.S. has incinerated innocent women and children as well as low-level minions who pose no risk to our country in the process of fighting our endless War on Terror. The irony of this war is that through our own actions, we are creating a new crop of jihadists who might have otherwise lived their lives out in peace."

Cop Shot and Killed in Self Defense in No-Knock Raid, Why Should Anyone Be Surprised?

Government mercenaries break into home over suspicion of a few plants inside that grow in nature. Let this be a lesson to the criminals with badges that breaking into homes unannounced will get you justifiably shot. Exactly how is a victim of a break-in supposed to know they are cops if they don't announce who they are? How can the police just assume that the home invasion victim will assume the invaders are the police? Is it not in the realm of possibility that someone breaking into your house in the middle of the night could be a murderous criminal?

Unfortunately, the victim of the break-in will probably be convicted of murder because the vast majority of the people in the U.S. worship authority figures and they think they can do little to no wrong.

Article

According to the Bryan-College Station Eagle, Sowders had obtained a search warrant for the residence after obtaining information that the homeowner was growing marijuana and possibly had stolen guns. The warrant was a "no-knock" warrant, meaning police could forcibly enter the residence without giving residents a chance to respond.

Sowders, the first officer through the door, was shot and killed by homeowner Henry Goedrich Magee, 28, who has now been charged with capital murder. But Magee's attorney, famed Houston defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin, said Magee and his pregnant girlfriend were sleeping in the home when they heard "explosives" going off and loud pounding at the door. Moments later, the door burst open and a person Magee couldn't identify entered the residence. Magee grabbed a rifle leaning against his bedroom door frame and shot Sowders. According to DeGuerin, Magee shot him because he "believed the man rushing in was an intruder and he needed to defend himself."

"The danger is that if you're sitting in your home and it's pitch black outside and your door gets busted in without warning, what the hell are you supposed to do?" DeGuerin [no-knoch raid victim's attorney] said.

Coward Criminal Cops

Cop shoots man standing still with arms to his side. Dallas.

How Government Destroyed This Man's Life for $134 in Property Taxes

Article

"Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered. By sundown, he had nowhere to go."

"All because he didn't pay a $134 property tax bill."

Nobody owns their house, even if it's paid for. The government owns it. You must pay them if you want to keep it. If you don't, they will send men with guns to take it away from you. Does this sound civilized? Do you call this civilization?

Rise of the Criminal Cop

If this doesn't completely piss you off, nothing will.

Obama Wants Little Charlotte Figi to Suffer Horribly

Charlotte Figi's totally debilitating grand mal seizures were brought under control by the cannabis plant. Meanwhile, Obama, through breaking his promise to not use federal resources to prosecute medical marijuana facilities, is working hard to deprive this adorable little girl of her very life. What an absolutely disgusting and despicable human being Obama is. Words simply cannot adequately describe the incredible depths of evil in this man.

The above linked article shows how Obama appointed the most hard-lined anti-pot person imaginable to head the DEA.

The same must be said about the Bushes and all presidents, politicians and citizens who support the war against drugs the American People. Anyone advocating for the criminalization of certain plants that grow in nature is advocating for the destruction of this little girl's life.

Wrong-Door No-Knock Police Raid Results in Homeowner's Murder by Police State Mercenaries

Article

"Loraine Adams said she had no indication the men were police."

"I thought it was a home invasion. I said ‘Baby, get your gun!,” she said, sitting amid friends and relatives gathered at her home to cook and prepare for Sunday’s funeral."

"We did the best surveillance we could do, and a mistake was made."

--- That's the problem. They DID do the best they could. They simply don't give a rat's ass about citizen safety, only their own. They don't give a rat's ass about getting the correct house.

Watch, no-one in the police department will even get their wrists slapped. "Tax-payers" will be the other victims. In fact, the murderers are now enjoying extra paid vacation. They're playing golf on the "tax-payers'" dime.

Law Abiding Man Tricked by Government and Sentenced to 25 Years

Article


Take the case of 46-year-old John Horner, a fast-food restaurant worker who was prescribed painkillers after he lost an eye in an accident in 2000.

Three years ago he was befriended by a man called Matt (not his real name).

"We kind of clicked right off the bat. One day he came to where I worked. We were standing there talking, and I realised he was in pain," says Horner.

"He laid it out on me, 'Look dude, I can either pay my rent or go buy my prescriptions. I can't do both.' I decided Matt was a friend. I said, 'I'll help you out.'"


What Horner didn't know was that Matt was an informant working for the Osceola County Sheriff's Office in central Florida.

Over a period of several weeks, Horner provided Matt with four bottles of prescription pain pills - morphine and hydrocodone. He says he also lent him money. On the last occasion Horner handed over pills, he was arrested.

"The next thing I know I got a guy's knee in the back of my neck grinding my face into the concrete. I'm told, 'You're under arrest for trafficking.'"

"Legalities" of Interior "Border" Nazi Checkpoints

Interview with Ben Winograd, Staff Attorney for the American Immigration Council based in Washington, District of Criminals.

This link starts the video 15 minutes in where the interview begins. Video description has links to relevant information.

This video is discussed in the interview:

Cops Just Want Action, They Don't Care About Circumstances

There was no reason to murder this 16 year-old kid who was thinking about committing suicide.

They train constantly on tactical urban warfare, so when the slightest excuse to call them up occurs, they come out ready to rumble.

Video in link above.

How to Deal With Criminal Paramilitary Squads (cops)