In the article it says:
The
Comprehensive Forfeiture Act fixed all of these problems. The new bill was introduced by Senator Joe Biden in 1983 and it was signed into law the next year. With this law, federal agents had nearly unlimited powers to seize assets from private citizens. Now the government only needed to find a way to let local and state police join the party.
This came with the
1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act. In addition to a slew of new powers for prosecutors, the burden of proof for asset seizure was lowered once again (agents had to only
believe that what they were seizing was equal in value to money
believed to have been purchased from drug sales). More significantly, the bill started the “equitable sharing” program that allowed local and state law enforcement to retain up to 80 percent of the assets seized.
The Lopes story merely illustrates that criminals are hardly the only people falling victim to this policy.
The law took effect in 1986, the year before Thomas Lopes pled guilty to charges of growing a marijuana plant in his parents’ backyard. In 1987, when Thomas faced the judge, the government had just made it so that his local police had an enormous incentive and unchecked authority to seize property from private citizens, as long as they could show any flimsy connection to drugs. By 1991, the Maui police were running out of easily-seized property, so they started combing through case files within the five-year limit to find new ways to enrich their precinct from the expanded RICO powers. One such file brought the Lopes home to their attention.
But the Lopeses are only one example out of millions. In the year their home was confiscated by police for a minor, four-year-old drug charge, $644 million in assets were seized. In 2018 alone,
the Treasury Department’s Forfeiture Fund saw nearly $1.4 billion in deposits. The Lopes story merely illustrates that criminals (regardless of how one might feel about drug laws) are hardly the only people falling victim to this policy.
The decades-long abuse of this policy has reached such extreme proportions that people on all sides of the political aisle have been turning against it. As I am writing this (February 20th, 2019),
the Supreme Court has unanimously voted in favor of Tyson Timbs, whose $42,000 Land Rover was seized in 2015 following a conviction for selling $400 in heroin. The Court is asserting that asset forfeiture constitutes a fine, and the Eighth Amendment—which protects citizens from excessive fines—applies to both state and local governments. The consequences of the ruling remain to be seen, but it seems nearly certain that the unanimous decision was motivated by the increasing outrage against the Civil Asset Forfeiture policies.
Wikipedia says:
The
Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 (
Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States)
98–473,
S. 1762, 98
Stat. 1976, enacted October 12, 1984) was the first comprehensive revision of
the U.S. criminal code since the early 1900s. It was sponsored by
Strom Thurmond (R-SC) in the
Senate and by
Hamilton Fish IV (R-NY) in the
House, and was eventually incorporated into an
appropriations bill that passed with a vote of 78–11 in the Senate and 252–60 in the House.
[1][2][3][4] It was then signed into law by President
Ronald Reagan.
Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 - Wikipedia
I guess introduce and sponsor have different meanings, so I'll believe the article. But Biden was not alone in responsibility for it. It was passed overwhelmingly by Congress. most of the politicians were guilty. Since the law was abused the mistake should have been rectified somewhere along the line, but it wasn't.
Well, I don't have the degree of dislike for politicians that you do, but something is wrong here. Presidents are not alone in not rectifying this mistake. Some further info from Google:
As of August 2023, some say that civil forfeiture is illegal because the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a prompt hearing if the government wants to keep an individual's property. However, others say that this position is still being litigated in the courts.
In 2015, Eric Holder ended the policy of "adoptive forfeiture", which allowed state or local law enforcement to seize property and request that a federal agency forfeit it under federal law. However, in July 2017, the Justice Department took actions to reinstate police seizure powers.
Some states have abolished civil forfeiture, including Maine, Nebraska, North Carolina, and New Mexico. Other states allow it, but place the burden of proof on the government instead of the property owner.
It was pretty late in Obama's administration that something was done about this. This is not good. The Presidents before him did nothing at any time. Trump is more guilty, his administration reinstated it.
It's good that covid was fast tracked, but he tried to ignore covid as long as he could. Of course he wanted to elected and get credit for this, so the motive behind this was not the best. My understanding on this tax deduction thing is limited, but pushing limitations on tax deductions on property taxes think means that Trump's finances were hurt by this. He did do something that was moral, even if all other financial shenanigans were immoral.
I said I would get back to you and i am getting back to you. No snide remarks please.
As to that alternate source, I don't what to with it. I don't know how to access anything before 2017. I'll just assume that there were more whistleblowers in the Obama administration than that his predecessor's, which means he didn't control his administration from leaking information he didn't want to reach the public. There was also too much stuff going on that reflected badly on him. Not good.
We've spent too much time on this. I feel silly now. What I should be focusing on is what is actually important now, not the past.
ij.org
