More criminalizing the homeless. People in Hawaii who are at the poverty level are pretty much prisoners, because there’s no way they can afford to go elsewhere. And Hawaii is one of most expensive places to live within the US.
But with the rampant racism in Hawaii, this doesn’t surprise me at all.
There are a lot of homeless in Hawaii. And the locals are the most rabidly racist people I’ve met in my life. And a lot of the homeless used to be ex military in the 90’s. Lots of Vietnam vets who didn’t bother going all the way home.
In even the smaller towns there were people just sleeping on the streets. I get not wanting to criminalize them, but sleeping on the sidewalk on someone else’s property is criminal. Seemed like there used to be a lot of soup kitchens and places to get cleaned up and get donated clothing, but not many where you could stay for the night.
Met a guy on the beach that lived in his 280Z. Nice car, nice guy, hadn’t showered in ages, just moved his car from beach to beach. Was selling the best ganja on the leeward side of the island according to his pitch. Had no interest in a roof over his head, but his entire lifestyle was illegal.
Led by the best and brightest.
Yeah, and while he was a teacher and a coach… In other words, in a position where the well-being of children was supposed to be paramount.
Nice “family values”.
Of course, the charges he’s actually under are horseshit. You should be able to take your money out of the bank and fucking burn it if you want. (If you are dumb enough to lie about it, badly, then you get what you deserve I guess) Paying hush money isn’t illegal, and supposedly FBI investigations are supposed to be confidential.
This line right here…
“possible structuring of currency transactions to avoid the reporting requirements.”
Is the excuse for an awful lot of asset seizure right now. It was a stupid law, and I bet Hastert voted for it.
Then again, he likely wouldn’t have had millions of dollars to be blackmailed for if he hadn’t taken the lobbyist revolving door.
That law was designed to catch people such as drug dealers or people funneling money to other criminal enterprises or terrorist organizations. Yes, it caught him too, but that law is there for a reason. He doesn’t get a free pass. In fact, in this case, a criminal was caught, using the money for a criminal enterprise: paying money so that a crime was not reported. That comes under witness tampering and interfering with an investigation.
IMO, taking the lobbyist revolving door should be illegal as well.
One out of how many? When there are dozens of people that are losing their life savings because of this law?
Asset forfeiture is one of the worst crimes the government is pushing against it’s own people in America, and this law is one of the tools for that. Especially since 10k is also a break point on liability insurance. Keep your rates down by not insuring for over 10k, get busted by the feds and lose it all instead.
“It’s never illegal to resolve things, in a civil sense, by paying money. That happens all the time,” said Lisa Rasmussen, another criminal defense attorney involved in the Angelil case. "You can always go to someone and say ‘I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you don’t say anything about it.’ "
The illegality was him lying about what it was for, not actually paying it. Which makes it even more ironic that he was leading the charge against Clinton. One difference being Hastert apparently thought he dodged the bullet. It only took 30 years or so for it to hit him. And then another 4 to finally get him good.
I disagree. There is no way to catch the criminals without catching others who are doing the same thing (structuring), without so many caveats that the law would be worthless.
And frankly, if you are withdrawing that much, for a legal reason, there’s no reason to be structuring.
Ms. Rasmussen is correct, for civil matters. For criminal matters, such as child molestation and statutory rape, it is very illegal.
After thirty years aren’t we looking at statute of limitations time? They were quick to say they aren’t looking at it as extortion, and I haven’t seen other charges leveled.
I wish they had caught him back then. But they’ve always been sharper on abuse against women, I don’t think too many young men would admit it back then, it’s hard enough now.
It also applies to deposits, which is where most non law breaking people get hit. But again, if I only have insurance for up to 10k for my business, I don’t want to have more than 10k on me. So even purchases would be in lots under 10k and withdrawn in amounts under 10k. And if I was a small farmer who could get discounts for cash, I’d do it. Or if I was a antique buyer and seller.
I don’t recall any criminal rings, or terrorist organizations being brought down because they had too much cash on them, or were fiddling with their bank accounts. It’s usually the trunk full of coke and guns that gets them.
EDIT Wow, SOL on rape and sexual assault in Illinois is only 3 years if not reported in those three years, 10 years if reported. Busy at work and can’t find stat rape or child molestation numbers, but Illinois has one of the shortest SOLs I could find on rape, so I’d think the other would be similar. Indiana has no limit at all on Class A rape.
And more importantly, they did it that way because Fuck You.
(Not you fuck you, but them fuck you.)
Seriously, it’s a criminal offense to withdraw or deposit money from the bank in an amount that looks like you are trying to avoid taking out or putting in 10k. If I make two deposits a day, almost every day, that add up to 16k or so and neither of them are above 10k then I’ll eventually have my bank account frozen and face losing my business while I have to try to prove that I really run a coffee shop and don’t sell drugs or guns to terrorists.
It’s a law that assumes guilt. With no other investigation done other than looking at a bank balance sheet they will send the feds, and if they don’t like the answer boom. And the smaller of a fry you are the more likely that your assets were frozen before the feds even knock on your door.
Even after proving your lack of guilt they’ll still hold on to your money until you sue, then they’ll offer half back, or 2/3rds. Which is usually just a bit more than you’ll get back if you sue and subtract the legal fees, because of course the feds don’t pay court costs, even when at fault.
And now I have cooties for defending an accused child molester. But that’s how much I hate that damn law.
“I wish he had been more honest on it earlier on,” said Mangan, “was this a personal thing that he was promoting with his position or was this something he thought was good for the community?”
Why is it that it’s okay to dismiss politicians, who are gay or have gay relatives, who stand up against discrimination, as advancing their own personal agendas, but evangelist neo-cons can push their own “articles pf faith” (which is an opinion only) and it’s called “sticking up for principles”?
It’s not only Buttigieg, but also the federal judge in the Proposition 8 trial, Vaughn Walker.
And the folks that pushed Prop 8 also whined that if they had pulled a “good Christian” judge, they would have gotten a fair trial.
And I’m sure if a “good Christian” had been chosen that the opposition would have whined that if only they’d gotten a “good progressive” judge.
His timing is odd. If I’m reading it right, it’s after the primary, but before the general election. If it was necessary to come out, I would have thought farther away from an election would have been wiser. Oddly enough, in South Bend the only people he’s lost are inner city minorities, 26% of South Bend is black, and I’d wager most of them are Democrats, but I’d also wager they hold to the standard 47% or so against gay marriage. Anyone who is part of a PAC that has “Values” or “Family” or “Defense” in the name wasn’t voting D anyway.
And I can’t wait until people are just what they are without having to announce it. I have two gay coworkers now, and I found out they were gay because we were talking about home life, and with both of them it was worth mentioning because they had both been married in a “straight marriage” before coming to grips with being gay. Other than that, I don’t see what it has to do with anything. Did he announce he was white and liked big band music too?
There are plenty of quotes of people talking about a politician’s religion and it’s affects on their opinions and actions. Hell, people comment on their favorite sports team, the books they read, the TV shows they watch, why not their sexuality. People judge politicians based on their partners attractiveness.
I think the whole thing is a tempest in a teacup and I don’t care who he sleeps with.
I fully support www.jebbushforpresident.com
Yet another reason I don’t want Jeb.
You didn’t even look.
I support the website. I don’t support Jeb, himself.
I did look, the fact that he didn’t buy the fucking site ahead of time is yet another reason I don’t want him.
At least whatshername turned it to her advantage, Jeb probably still doesn’t know.
I am splitting this over here.
I was involved in the early efforts regarding hate crimes. What was eventually enacted had little to do what we were trying to do.
In 1994, I had to attend the funeral of a young man I knew. The last time I saw him alive was about a week before, when he came to me for support. He had been raped. When he had gone to the police department to report it, the officers laughed at him and made comments about “why would a fag complain about getting fucked?”
He committed suicide a few days later.
While at the funeral, I met his parents. I knew full well that they didn’t “approve” of homosexuality. I smiled as best as I could, conveyed my condolences, and remarked that I could understand, after what the guy had gone through, how he might feel there was no other choice. They had no idea what I was talking about. The father ushered me into a side room of the funeral home, and I explained to him what had happened. He was shocked, and ashamed that his son hadn’t felt that he could go to his father for support and help.
That news never made the newspaper. The newspaper also didn’t cover the issue when the father went to the police to demand an explanation.
What we were trying to do back then was not to claim special status or call for special punishments. We never addressed the perpetrators of the crimes at all. What we were trying to do is force the police to take the reports, take them seriously, investigate the complaints, and include the reports in the usual tallies of crimes. We were trying to force the prosecutors to actually take the cases to court, and to stop actively trying to dissuade the victim from pressing charges. We were trying to force judges to apply the same sentencing criteria to the perpetrators of these crimes as the criteria applied to people who committed crimes against non-gays.
But when we finally got some politicians to listen (thanks to allies like parents and other relatives of victims) and do something about it, they didn’t want to penalize those nice, normal, hardworking people at the police department, the district attorney’s office, or the courthouse. No, the only way we could get anything done was to focus solely on the perpetrators and impose different penalties.
And no, what we got is not working. The term “hate crime” has been co-opted in so many different directions, we still don’t have the numbers that we need to address the violence or the callousness of the system. There are no penalties for a police officer who pretends that he didn’t get a crime reported to him. There are no penalties for a lawyer who “accidentally” moves the case file into the recycling bin. There are no penalties for the judge who gives the perpetrator a wink and a suspended sentence.
Please don’t blame the activists. Blame the politicians (and their staffs) who are horrified by the concept of holding people accountable for not doing their job.
I’ve had similar conversations with people about racism in the South compared to the North. What made the 50’s so bad was that the actual government itself was aiding and abetting the racism. While there might, and I contend still are, be more racists in the North than the South the South had had it ingrained into the entire governmental structure in some areas that black people weren’t real people.
The response was to cast light on the issue and force people to see what was happening. Which you can pull off if you are a significant minority and can get enough of the majority to work with you. And it still took white people dying for people to decide there was something rotten. And then the 70-80% of people that are basically decent woke up and changed it. It’s not like there was a mass population movement in the 60’s, it was just that everyone woke up one day and the world was different. (Not really, but everyone pretended it was most of the time)
I can see how for gay people this just wouldn’t work. You can march in San Diego all damn year and it won’t affect Indianapolis, or even Chicago. And while gay people do cluster in some areas, it’s not like they are ever enough of the population to do this on their own. Even with significant support from others there just isn’t enough weight to do a Selma. Ideally mandatory reporting laws and such like were put in place on child abuse and domestic abuse would work better.
Putting in place additional punishments wasn’t blaming anyone for their behavior except some dirty criminal anyway. Putting in place additional reporting requirements and equality statues would require someone in charge to admit guilt.
Since I’m mostly a Republican, I’ll blame Democrats. But the real answer is tribalism.
If you mean the whole “us vs. them” mentality, I would agree that is the largest problem. It’s aided and abetted by the “it’s not my problem” and a particular kind of NIMBY.
I wish it were tribalism. We’d do a lot better using that model that the disjointed, disconnected society we have now. A tribe knew that everyone was necessary and that each contributed their own value to the greater whole. Instead we have this mercantile attitude of “if he/she doesn’t benefit me, why should I care?”