Indiana Cops Seized Their Cash From a FedEx Hub. Prosecutors Just Agreed To Return It.
by C.J. Ciaramella, Reason, December 3, 2024.
Excerpts:
Indiana prosecutors will return $42,000 in cash they seized from a California small business, several months after the owners filed a class action lawsuit alleging that law enforcement is exploiting a major FedEx shipping hub in Indianapolis to seize millions of dollars in cash from innocent owners.
The Institute for Justice (I.J.), a public interest law firm, announced last week that prosecutors in Marion County, Indiana, have agreed to return the money to its clients Henry and Minh Cheng, who run a California jewelry wholesaler business. Police seized the cash from a FedEx package en route to them from a client in Virginia. County prosecutors then filed a lawsuit to forfeit their money through a process called civil asset forfeiture, claiming the Chengs’ money was connected to a violation of a criminal statute. However, the complaint never stated which statute.
And:
“I’m ecstatic at the prospect of getting my money back,” Henry Cheng said in an I.J. press release, “and this is just the beginning. What happened to my company shouldn’t happen to anyone. Indiana should stop trying to steal from law-abiding citizens by seizing property and figuring out later whether there’s any basis for keeping it.”
DRH comments:
First, it is not true that the prosecutors said, “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”
Second, this is another victory for the Institute for Justice, one of the charities I give to annually.
Hunter’s Pardon
by David Friedman, David Friedman’s Substack, December 4, 2024.
Excerpts:
A commenter asked how it was possible for Biden to be both corrupt and a decent man. My response is that I judge someone’s personality mostly by how he treats the people immediately around him; people we interact with directly are more salient, more real, to us than distant people, even distant people affected by actions we take. Morally speaking, stealing from Walmart is the same offense as stealing from a friend or a colleague but it doesn’t feel the same and it leads to a different prediction of future behavior. Someone who steals from a friend will feel free to steal from Walmart if he thinks he can get away with it, but probably not the other way around. Someone who gives up his weekend plans to drive a friend to the hospital in a medical emergency and take care of his kids and pets until the emergency is over might do less good for the world than someone who donates ten thousand dollars to a well chosen medical charity but he has given better evidence of being a good person, someone friends can rely on. A decent man.
And:
I saw it not as a question of what Joe should have done but of what the thing he did do tells us about what sort of man he is. A Joe Biden who cared enough about keeping his promises and preserving trust in the legal system, about his duty to the American people, to let the son he loved go to jail, would be a better man than the Joe Biden who pardoned his son — but that Joe Biden would not have taken millions of dollars of bribes funneled through his son to his family and this one did. A Joe Biden who let his son go to jail to spare himself the embarrassment, the loss of status, from pardoning him after repeatedly promising not to, would be a worse man than the Joe Biden who pardoned the son he loved. He would not be a decent man — and this one might be.
Or might not. The pardon not only covered the crimes Hunter had been convicted of but also any crime he may have committed from Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 1, 2024. The innocent explanation is that Joe feared further prosecution of his son after he was no longer in a position to protect him. The less innocent one is that Joe feared legal action against Hunter for offenses in which his father was a co-conspirator, leading to legal action against Joe.
DRH comment: This is the most interesting thing I’ve read on the Hunter Biden pardon. That does not mean that I totally agree with it. Notice in the first 2 sentences of the first quote above that David shifts from talking about morality to talking about personality. I would say more but I’m still pondering. I put this up mainly because I think many readers will find it interesting.
Kash Patel’s Threats Against Journalists Make Him an Alarming Choice To Run the FBI
by Jacob Sullum, Reason, December 5, 2024.
Excerpt:
What “crimes” did Patel have in mind? Lying about people might, depending upon the circumstances, amount to defamation, but it is not a crime, and any civil remedy for it would depend on lawsuits by the affected individuals, not the Justice Department. Rigging elections, if it involves the sort of fraud that Trump claims denied him his rightful victory in 2020, is a crime. But Trump never presented any evidence to substantiate his stolen-election fantasy, which in any case did not involve journalists who allegedly dumped phony ballots or manipulated vote counts.
DRH comment: Reading about Patel’s comments reminded me of the same misunderstanding of freedom of the press that Tim Walz showed in his debate with J.D. Vance.
Is Trump Aiming To Continue Biden’s Antitrust Insanity?
by Steven Greenhut, Reason, December 6, 2024
Excerpt:
The big news from last week is the Justice Department said that Google should divest itself of its Chrome browser to comply with the court’s finding that the company exerted monopoly power in the search business. “Google’s exclusionary conduct has, among other things, made Google the near-universal default for search and ensured that virtually all search access points route users’ valuable queries and interaction data to Google,” the government argued.
I don’t find it particularly shocking that successful companies dominate some aspects of the internet marketplace. Other companies are free to develop their own search engines. I relied on Chrome for the research for this column because it’s the best choice available. It costs me nothing to use it and I had other choices, so it’s unclear how the government is protecting me. If the court follows DOJ’s lead, it will likely make searching more convoluted and less secure.
As Google’s chief legal officer explained in a blog post, the DOJ’s filing represents “unprecedented government overreach” as the feds seek to, for instance, require “two separate choice screens before you could access Google Search on a Pixel phone you bought.” Government bureaucrats, attorneys, and the courts shouldn’t be dictating specific application designs, but to populists that’s fine because, well, they’re sticking it to Big Tech.
DRH comment: The Google suit reminds me of the suit against Microsoft in the late 1990s, which I wrote about here. It also reminded of the suit against Alcoa in the 1940s. I quoted from the Alcoa judge’s comments in my article on Microsoft.
How Shopping Malls Are Being Transformed Into Apartments In The U.S.
CNBC, December 5, 2024.
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Dec 8 2024 at 2:53pm
“The Google suit reminds me of the suit against Microsoft in the late 1990s”
Netscape technically won that case but only got a dollar I think. Its similar inasmuch as Netscape was a browser at the time trying to compete with Internet Explorer and the fact that it was really a better browser made Microsoft leery, not so much about Netscape’s browser but about Windows itself. So Microsoft bundled Windows with IE and so if you wanted Netscape you had to buy Windows, IE AND Netscape. So before let’s say you wanted Windows, you got that for $199 (I think that was the price too but I AM relying on memory) and then IE was $50 and Netscape was $50 and you chose which one you wanted and 90% of the market (and these were commercial licenses of course, individuals could download it for free) and Microsoft cut Netscape’s funding off by bundling it so that instead of $249 for Windows and Netscape, you had to Choice A: Windows + IE = $249 or Windows, IE and Netscape for $299. And that destroyed Netscape even though it was really a better product. Of course Microsoft was really defending Windows and TRILLIONS. The O/S system today probably would be Netscape.
Now there would be other browsers of course, indeed Chrome….
“Other companies are free to develop their own search engines.”
Yes, indeed, but hold on here a second, because at some point Verizon bought Y! but Verizon wasn’t ALLOWED to sell a Yahoo search engine only phone. In fact G! went to great lengths to try to ensure through its advocacy for net neutrality in the US that ISPs wouldn’t be able to discriminate against the likes of Google/Youtube, etc.
Because what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander.
The industrial age common carriers like railroads, airlines and the obvious predecessor to the internet, telephone companies played such a central role in the economy that they wielded power over basic access to trade/economic opportunity. We’re merely dealing with the information age equivalents. Shed no tears for google, they made themselves a major artery of commerce, that’s fantastic, but there’s limits.
“I don’t find it particularly shocking that successful companies dominate some aspects of the internet marketplace.”
I do actually and that was part of the thrust of Google’s arguments in the US (they argue differently elsewhere when it suits them) against walled gardens.
And you’re paying for it, honestly those phones we’re all glued to, they probably should be free kind’ve sort’ve like toll free numbers.
Craig
Dec 8 2024 at 3:00pm
“A commenter asked how it was possible for Biden to be both corrupt and a decent man. My response is that I judge someone’s personality mostly by how he treats the people immediately around him;”
Hitler was nice to his dog apparently, but I digress because ultimately its very easy to criticize Biden for pardoning his son, the nepotism is so clear as to be unworthy of comment though honestly I felt some of the charges against him began to feel a bit vindictive. On the flip side, as a dad, if I had the pov that Trump was a fascist I wouldn’t blink at pardoning my son under that circumstance simply as a form of self-defense. So I GET where Biden is coming from.
“But the principal argument for reposing the power of pardoning in this case to the Chief Magistrate is this: in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a welltimed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth” — Federalist 74
I might suggest however that perhaps Biden should issue more pardons, perhaps include Trump himself, perhaps many others people feel Trump might be vindictive towards. Likewise Trump will likely also pardon many of the J6 rioters as well.
All together that very well might be for the best in a way not dissimilar from that described in Federalist 74, as a way to break the cycle of lawfare and to restore the ‘tranquility of the commonwealth.”
Craig
Dec 8 2024 at 3:09pm
I’m sorry third comment, I guess your reading piqued my interest this weekend.
“County prosecutors then filed a lawsuit to forfeit their money through a process called civil asset forfeiture, claiming the Chengs’ money was connected to a violation of a criminal statute. However, the complaint never stated which statute.”
Cases like this often times possess interesting titled like US v $42,000 but yes, typically they are supposed to cite the statute, but the circumstances do seem a bit sketch. $42k by Fedex? Really? The circumstances DO give rise to a reasonable suspicion of money laundering/tax evasion.
Nevertheless, when that happens usually somebody is supposed to file one of these: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8300.pdf
I’d bet a dollar that didn’t happen.