In
the year 1215, Magna Carta provided a freeman of England with the right to a
trial in a fixed, local law court, and protected him from being “amerced
[fined] for a slight offence, except in accordance with the degree of the
offence; and for a grave offence he shall be amerced in accordance with the
gravity of the offence, yet saving always his contentment; and a merchant in
the same way, saving his merchandise” – i.e., even for a “grave
offence,” a man shall not be deprived of the ability to make his living.
Four-fifths
of a millennium later, a 21st-century American merchant does not enjoy the
rights of his 13th-century English forebear. The Economist reports on
yet another case of “civil forfeiture” by the corrupt and diseased IRS – a
Michigan grocery store owned by the Dehkos family:
Fairly
often, someone takes cash from the till and puts it in the bank across the
street. Deposits are nearly always less than $10,000, because the insurance
covers the theft of cash only up to that sum.
In
January, without warning, the government seized all the money in the shop
account: more than $35,000. The charge was that the Dehkos had violated federal
money-laundering rules, which forbid people to “structure” their bank deposits
so as to avoid the $10,000 threshold that triggers banks to report a
transaction to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
This
is a quintessentially Washingtonian form of shakedown. First, they pass a stupid
law that has the effect of making millions of routine, law-abiding transactions
appear suspicious (in this case, deposits over $10,000). Then, the vast bloated
support state of the Republic of Hyper-Regulation adjusts accordingly (in this
case, insurers who’ll cover a mugging of $9,975 decline to cover one of
$10,037). But by then, just to cover themselves coming and going, Washington
has passed another stupid law making it an additional crime to avoid committing
the original crime (thus, “structuring” your deposits to avoid the $10,000
threshold).
Meanwhile,
no one has prosecuted or even convicted the Dehkos family — or even charged
them with anything. Because these days, unlike in King John’s, the state
doesn’t need to:
Prosecutors
offered no evidence that the Dehkos were laundering money or dodging tax.
Indeed, the IRS gave their business a clean bill of health last year. But
still, the Dehkos cannot get their cash back. “They offered us 20%,” says Ms
Thomas, “But if we settle, it looks like we’re guilty of something, which we’re
not.”
Oh,
yeah, the coup de grâce: The grand old federal tradition of “settling.” In
the shakedown state, nobody’s guilty or innocent, it’s all about the settling.
My
weekend column observed en passant that “tyranny
is always capricious” and that, in a land of
300 million, people seem to figure the likelihood of it happening to them is
comparatively remote. I wouldn’t be so sure about that, as an ever broker state
grows ever needier. As the
next senator from New Hampshire, I will pledge to outlaw “civil forfeiture.” You should
demand no less from your representatives.
Source: The National Review On-line, The
Corner By Mark
Steyn, November 12, 2013 2:46 PM
Good for you!
ReplyDelete