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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (3182)	10/19/2006 1:30:29 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

I strongly oppose it as well. But you get the idea of "be tough on crime" combined with "fight terrorism" (the terrorists could wire money) combined with the idea the idea that "its only money, not a real infringement on your rights", combined with "if you have any good reason to send the money you can tell them and get it back", and you can get the least libertarian sides of both the right and the left to support or at least accept this. You also have a "public choice" problem. This program gives the prosecutors and the politicians more power. It might even give them more money (presumably not in their personal account, but the departments seizing the money might get to keep it). So you have an incentive to defend it and continue it. And the program probably has taken some money from actual criminals at some point. When the program is challenged its supporters can point to such a case and say "see we are defending you from criminals". You get people like Goddard saying "If it is successful, our human-smuggling investigations would be crippled, and Western Union and other money transmitters would continue to profit from illegal activity,". In other words "you have to let us continue to have the program or criminals will go free and Big business will profit from illegal activity. I doubt that damming warrants are required to investigate human smuggling esp. such warrants without probably cause. And really this is more than warrants this is seizure Its taking value not really evidence (they can get all the information about the transfer without taking the money itself). And as for Western Union "profiting from illegal activity", there profiting in the same way that a 7/11 would profit if a bank robber bought a carton of cigarettes with stolen money. There is nothing illegal about transferring money or charging a fee for doing so. Western Union isn't a criminal in this case. None of the arguments for it that I can think of make a lot of sense, but they might be politically effective as long as many people don't consider infringements against economic freedom and property rights to be as serious as other government actions against rights or liberty that aren't "economic". Look at the acceptance of McCain Feingold (and attempts to push even further). You can say what you want, but you can't raise money to say what you want unless you register with the government and subject yourself to government restrictions, such as # A wholesale prohibition on soft money contributions and expenditure to national political parties—unlimited donations nominally made for non-campaign purposes, but potentially used to influence federal elections. # A prohibition on soft money contributions and expenditure to state and local political parties, with a few limited exceptions. (Although donations are allowed from 527 groups, allowing George Soros to give $23,581,000 through his various 527 groups during the 2003-2004 election cycle) # Federal candidates and officeholders prohibited from accepting or spending soft money. # A ban on supposedly non-partisan "issue ads" funded by soft money from corporations and labor unions - those referring to candidates for federal election without expressly advocating their election or defeat -- in the 60 days prior to a general election, or 30 days prior to a primary election. # Disclosure of sources of finance for "electioneering communications" in excess of $10,000 per year. en.wikipedia.org Or look at "civil forfiture" and "guilty property" that results in property being taken by the government without conviction.