History of Asset Forfeiture - TLF071

I had no idea how far back the history of asset forfeiture goes. Find out all about it in this episode. Also, What's in the News with stories on private disaster relief efforts, cops getting off with murder, Motel 6 is a bootlicker, kindergartner suspended for imagination, and Maine nullifying federal food laws. I also discuss a new contest I'm running that you can win, and a new podcast project I've released for Pax Libertas Productions that you don't want to miss. This episode is brought to you by Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom, helping you to become a smarter and more informed libertarian than ever before, for just 24 cents a day. WHAT’S RUSTLING MY JIMMIES One thing I talk a lot about on this show is government theft. Taxation is theft, but so is forfeiture, both civil and criminal. I didn't realize how far back the history of asset forfeiture went until I found an article in the book I Must Speak Out: The Best of The Voluntaryist that was selected and edited by Carl Watner. There is a link to the free ebook version of this book in the show notes to this episode at thelavaflow.com/71. I found this book while doing research for my latest podcast project called Essential Libertarianism, which I'll be talking about a bit later in this episode. The article in the book is titled "'Sweat Them at Law with Their Own Money': Forfeitures and Taxes in American History" and it goes into detail on the history of this evil perpetrated by our government.  WHAT'S IN THE NEWS In private disaster relief news, there have been numerous accounts of private groups working to help with the disasters created by the various hurricanes we've seen recently, from the Cajun Navy to the Liberty Coalition for Disaster Relief, a group of anarchists working to crowdfund disaster relief and volunteer coordination. Check out their Facebook group. They are a great organization showing "Without government, who would help people in need?" The link is in the show notes to this episode. On this topic, several cruise companies sent ships to the Caribbean following some of these hurricanes, lending their massive ships to the relief effort, transporting provisions and picking up stranded tourists.  Interestingly enough, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, uses a private company as a benchmark for how things are on the ground during a disaster.  It's called the Waffle House Index and it's a three-color rating that uses green to denote that the local Waffle House restaurant is fully open, yellow for if it's just serving a limited menu (suggesting that it can't get the supplies it needs), and red for closed (a very rare occurrence for the 24-hour chain). In screw the government news, mere hours after Hurricane Irma, Miami-Dade County was ticketing residents for building code violations on their wrecked properties. In we investigated ourselves news, the US Department of Justice has decided they will not charge six Baltimore police officers in the death of Freddie Gray. The Department of Justice has been investigating the case since 2015, when Gray, a 25-year-old, black Baltimore resident, died of injuries he sustained while in police custody. In boot licking companies news, two Motel 6 locations in Phoenix, Arizona are routinely sending in leads to immigration agents when they suspect guests of being undocumented. While an investigation by the Phoenix New Times was unable to get confirmation from Motel 6 headquarters, employees at the motels in question said that collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is standard practice: "We send a report every morning to ICE—all the names of everybody that comes in," a front-desk clerk told the New Times. But this isn't anything new for Motel 6. In 2015, the ACLU released a statement of other nationwide collaboration with police and the government. In government indoctrination centers news, a 5-year-old imaginative boy’s parents are speaking out after they say their son was suspended from school for telling a teacher that he had a bomb in his backpack. In nullification news, Maine Governor Paul LePage signed a Food Sovereignty Bill into law, guaranteeing the rights of Maine towns to regulate food production locally, rather than submitting to federal regulation. Don't miss signing up for the new October The LAVA Flow contest by signing up at http://thelavaflow.com/email. PAX LIBERTAS PRODUCTIONS TRAILER I have a new podcast project that just released over the weekend and I think you will want to check it out. It's called Essential Libertarianism and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts including iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play and many others. Check it out at EssentialLibertarianism.com. Essential Libertarianism IS voluntaryism, and that is the basis for this show. A few months ago I picked up an old book from the early 80's called Neither Bullets Nor Ballots: Essays on Voluntaryism by Carl Watner, George H. Smith, and Wendy McElroy. After reading this book, I had a much better understanding of voluntaryism as a whole and it renewed my commitment to this philosophy. I began digging down the rabbit hole of content at Voluntaryist.com, the website for Carl Watner and The Voluntaryist newsletter which has been publishing continually since 1982, which led me to reach out to him about this project. He agreed to let me do it and he is excited about it as well!