mirror of
https://github.com/nhammer514/textfiles-politics.git
synced 2024-12-26 07:49:37 -05:00
99 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
99 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
AMERICANS ARE PUTTING UP WITH A SPIRALING GESTAPO STATE
|
|
By Paul Craig Roberts
|
|
Special to the Los Angeles Times
|
|
|
|
What will become of "law and order conservatism" now that we know
|
|
that our law-enforcement agencies -- from the Justice Department to
|
|
local police forces -- can be as criminal as the miscreants that they
|
|
are supposed to pursue?
|
|
|
|
Unspeakable acts of cold-blooded murder and fabricated evidence now
|
|
routinely characterize everyday acts of law enforcement in the United
|
|
States.
|
|
|
|
In Malibu, Calif., a 30-person raiding party of sheriff's deputies,
|
|
federal drug agents and the California National Guard broke into the
|
|
home of Donald Scott and shot him dead. Scott, it turns out, was a
|
|
reclusive man, heir to a European fortune, whose $5 million, 200-acre
|
|
ranch was targeted by federal agents under drug-forfeiture laws. No
|
|
drugs or marijuana plants were found, but an alert Ventura County
|
|
prosecutor, Michael Bradbury, did find that the raiding party had an
|
|
appraisal of Scott's ranch, along with notes on the sale price of
|
|
nearby property. Gideon Kanner, a Los Angeles law professor who has
|
|
examined the case, concluded that the feds thought Scott might have a
|
|
wife who indulged in drugs and decided to see if they could bag a $5
|
|
million piece of property for the Treasury.
|
|
|
|
In pre-democratic times, this was known as "tax farming". Government
|
|
officials simply seized whatever they could and raked off a
|
|
commission. Today, the commission is in the form of the
|
|
bureaucracy's budget. Ever since President Reagan's budget director,
|
|
David Stockman, invented "budget savings" from tougher Internal
|
|
Revenue Service and drug enforcement, the pressure has been on these
|
|
marauders to farm more revenues. The results are mounting abuses of
|
|
citizens and occasional deaths.
|
|
|
|
What will be done about it? Nothing. Scott, awakened from sleep by
|
|
the sound of his door crashing in, made the mistake of walking out of
|
|
his bedroom with a gun in his hand. The military force got off with
|
|
a self-defense plea. Shades of Waco, Texas, where the FBI and the
|
|
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms folks killed 86 men, women
|
|
and children, while the attorney general took all the credit to show
|
|
how tough she is.
|
|
|
|
Noted defense attorney Gerry Spence told the Montana Trial Lawyers
|
|
Association in July that he had never been involved in a case with
|
|
the federal government in which the government had not lied and
|
|
manufactured evidence to gain a conviction. "These are not the good
|
|
guys", he said. "These are people who do what they believe is
|
|
necessary to do to bring about a conviction." The law gets hung with
|
|
the victim.
|
|
|
|
What, you might protest, about the Los Angeles and Detroit
|
|
convictions of police officers who beat black motorists? Aren't
|
|
these signs that checks and balances work and that we are free from
|
|
the arbitrary application of power that medieval serfs had to endure?
|
|
Alas, these police offers were not done in because they abused their
|
|
power, but because they were charged with racism and violating the
|
|
civil rights of a member of a "preferred minority". As incredible as
|
|
it may seem, in the United States only blacks have any protection
|
|
from abusive state power. They have a special, racial civil-rights
|
|
shield. The rest of us must make do with happenstance.
|
|
|
|
Formally, a person could protect himself by getting rich. But today
|
|
that just makes you more of a target. Witness the fates of
|
|
billionaires Michael Milken and Leona Helmsley -- and of Donald
|
|
Scott. Politically ambitious prosecutors need drama, and they don't
|
|
get that from the local drug pusher. Federal drug agents are not
|
|
going to waste their time and risk their lives rounding up Jamaican
|
|
drug gangs (who shoot back) -- especially when inner-city juries may
|
|
not convict either out of fear or feelings of racial solidarity --
|
|
when they can pick soft targets like Scott.
|
|
|
|
Nothing makes it clearer that the United States is no longer a
|
|
"nation of laws" than federal wetlands regulations. These "laws"
|
|
have been created entirely by bureaucrats and courts. All over
|
|
America, people are finding their uses of their property circumvented
|
|
and themselves in jail because of these regulatory police and their
|
|
"laws".
|
|
|
|
Recently, the Clinton administartion said: "Congress should amend the
|
|
Clean Water Act to make it consistent with the agencies' rule-
|
|
making." And Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and John H. Chaff, R-R.I.,
|
|
have introduced a bill to codify all the wetlands regulations that
|
|
are being enforced without any legal basis.
|
|
|
|
Note that the two senators did not introduce a bill to stop unelected
|
|
bureaucrats from illegally creating laws and running all over our
|
|
constitutional protections. Not even a wrist slap. To hell with the
|
|
U.S. Constitution, say the senators. Let's pass a law that future
|
|
courts will use to give carte blanche to the regulatory police.
|
|
Let's ennoble the bureaucrats. Divine rule cannot be blocked by
|
|
special-interest lobbying.
|
|
|
|
Roberts, former assistant Trasury secretary, is chairman of the
|
|
Institute for Political Economy.
|
|
|